Flaming Pablum

Pre-`Pablum Pics

Appropos of nothing in particular, I treated myself to a scanner recently. A compact little Cannon Lide 70, to be exact. As such, I've been doing a bit of experimenting and thought I'd give it a bit of a test drive. Back in the 90's (it still sounds weird to say that), I fancied myself as a bit of a novice photographer, keen to experiment with filters, wide-angled lenses, etc. I even took a crash course in black'n'white dark room technique back in the summer of `98, finding it to be an incredibly complicated process that left me with much greater respect for the labs where I'd formerly dropped my film off. Much like the lost art of letter-writing in the wake of e-mail, digital photography seems to have rendered dark room technique somewhat moot. In keeping with this sad fact, I purchased a digital camera upon the birth of my daughter back in 2004 and have sadly not looked back. Convenience and immediate gratification have seemingly overtaken art and painstaking craft. It's an inevitable fact that accompanies the advance of technology.

In any case, I exhumed a few of the photographs from the last decade that I was fond of for the purposes of scanning them, hoping that they'd look as nice when digitally captured and compressed. We'll see. Here are a few random shots of downtown Manhattan from the early Spring of 1998. Click on them to enlarge.

Point Blank Potshots at Pop Music

A few items of note have crossed my transom of late that I thought I'd address, so here they be. Let's start with...

THE GOOD:

* For a start, let's begin with what is categorically THE BEST THING EVER.

* I must confess that I was only somewhat aware of the Black Keys (a bluesy indie rock duo from Akron, Ohio -- home of Devo, let's remember) and frankly kept confusing them with the comparatively tuneless cacophony of the Black Dice (much-feted, ersatz Neo-No Wave/post-hardcore ensemble from Brooklyn). In any case, the Black Keys are kinda like a more hirsute, less tonsorially-conscious version of the White Stripes (only they're both dudes -- and were never married, nor do they try to convince people that they're siblings). "Your Touch" is really the only track of theirs I've ever paid much attention to, but I think it kicks a man-sized platter of ass. Plus the video (featuring a goodly amount of violent gunplay and, um, faberge eggs) is a scream. See it here.

THE BAD:

*Yes, this is almost a week old, but I'm only getting around to commenting on it now. I should mention at this point in the proceedings that I enjoy contemporary R&B (with precious few exceptions) about as much as I enjoy being vomited on. With that disclaimer in mind, please read on: While it's not like I've ever shared his tastes, agreed with his viewpoints nor particularly admired his writing before, I found Kelefa Sanneh's slavishly fawning article in The New York Times regarding Beyoncé’s latest dollop of sonic offal to be particularly eggregious. Listen, people: to each their own and all that, but let's get something straight: Beyoncé is an evil, vaccuous dingbatty diva-replicant with a shamelessly voracious ego and a not-even-that-accomplished voice. Let's stop crowning her as the new messiah, shall we? Stop treating your ears like urinals.

AND THE UGLY:

* I'm still not quite sure what to make of this, but surely when an "alternative hip hop" group -- in this case, the Gym Class Heroes -- sees fit to lift the hook from the title track of Supertramp's Breakfast in America (as they've done on their single, "Cupid's Chokehold"), that's a sign of the apocalypse, right? I should start packing provisions and preparing my family for the coming of the four horsemen, correct? Don't get me wrong -- I admire Gym Class Heroes' balls for doing it (surely it's not going to win them any favor in the Hip Hop community), but I just wonder how it came about. And, for the record, I must confess to owning and, despite my better judgement, actually liking that Supertramp album as well.

Seeya Cedar Tavern???

I realize that I wasted an awful lot of bandwidth lamenting the slow, arduous demise of CBGB, but I spotted something last night that really threw me for a loop. Walking South down University Place on my way home from work, I couldn't help noticing that the mighty Cedar Tavern (a.k.a. "My Second Living Room" 1996-2002) was closed. I initially calmed my nerves by suggesting to myself that they'd probably closed it temporarily for a movie shoot or to change the oil in the fryer or because of a death in the family or something. When I got home, my neighbor said he'd heard that they were closing it for several month so as to build yet another condominium above it (the Cedar Tavern is a stately two story building with lots of, I suppose, lucrative air space above it). Sure enough, upon my stroll by it on my walk to work this morning, a small sign tacked to the window said that the Cedar would be closed for the "next several months" to accommodate said construction. More can be gleaned from this article.

Blacker Than Black

Happy post-Thanksgivin', y'all. Just got back to the C of NY after a lengthy weekend out at my mom's on the Island of Length. As predicted, the sleeping was problematic, but it was nice to have the fam-damily all together. In any event, on the bus ride out on Wednesday night, this song crept into my headphones from the forgotten days of the early `90's. Goodbye Mr.MacKenzie was a Scottish collective who never got much notice nor respect on these shores, but I count this single among my very favorites from the decade in question. The MacKenzies had two things going for them, notably Big John Duncan on guitar (ex-of Troops of Tomorrow-era Exploited and once and future Twisted Sister/Nirvana guitar tech/roadie) and fiery back-up vocalist, Shirley Manson -- later of Garbage. I interviewed lead singer, Martin Metcalfe once back way back when, and found his brogue virtually impenetrable, but he was a nice gent all the same.

In any event, "Black Than Black" is a corker of a single, and I still turn it way up whenever it plays. Do the same or be lame.

All That's Old is New Again: Goth Edition

There's a new British band that's been making the rounds of late called The Horrors. Their maiden voyage to the States kicked off to a rough start on Halloween when right in the middle of their first show, someone from the audience leapt up onto the stage and suckerpunched the lead singer (welcome to New York City, boys!) In any case, I checked out their much-feted e.p. as it was making its way around the office. Sonically, while not exactly ground breaking (by a loooooong shot), their sloppy blend of gothy garage rock is endearing enough, but one look at their press photo and the following connection occured to me.

The Horrors in 2006

The Sisters of Mercy in 1985

In the face of two, stick with the original. Speaking of which, the Sisters' first three albums have been digitally re-mastered, appended with extra tracks and lovingly re-released. Fetch'em here!

The Slumber of The Beast

After a brief albeit entirely deceptive détente, it seems the struggle for domination in our household has resumed with a vengeance. Charlotte and Oliver (ages 2 and 8 months, respectively) have devised a visceral, two-pronged assault that is swiftly crippling our defense systems and preying on the fraying sanity of my wife and I, hitting us where it truly hurts. By day, Charlotte has fully embraced an unwaivering strategy of not napping, opting instead for two and a half hours of singing, exhorting, giggling, speaking in tongues, banging on the walls and jumping up and down in her crib, not unlike a slightly cuter version of "The Exorcist." While we've resorted to not acknowledging such cloyingly giddy, high-volume shenanigans, the ramifcations of these non-naps are that in the ensuing hours, she becomes a zombified powder-keg, prone to shrill whines and irrational tantrums, figuratively pooing on any practical afternoon plans.

While Charlotte's arguably adorable wrath is the scourge of the daylight hours, it's Oliver who rules the night. In addition to already tirelessly abiding by what I'd call a "rooster shift" (waking at the proverbial crack of dawn and crowing accordingly), Oliver has recently taken to greeting each of the small hours with piercing and seemingly unplacatable demands for nourishment and attention. And once we have managed to settle him down and gently place him back in his little bed, he slyly waits until we've crept back into our bed before loudly resuming his clarion call. A bonus ploy of divide and conquer, Oliver's shrill entreaties pit my wife and I against each other (i.e. "it's your turn to get him!," "But I have to go to work in the morning!," "Oh yeah? Well, I have to deal with them all day!" etc. etc.)

Put simply, our children WILL NOT SLEEP, and my only explanation for such behavior invariably involves the occult. This is the devil's doing, surely. For this encroaching holiday weekend, we're packing up the little demons and carting them off to my Mom's place out on the `Island, where Thanksgiving may very well give way to Angstgiving as a result.

Stay tuned.

Noo Yawker in The New Yorker - November 27, `06 issue

I don't highlight these too often anymore, but every now and then -- when they don't edit my copy too savagely (read: make legibly coherent) -- I feel like shouting them out, so to speak. In this particular issue's Night Life section of the "Goings ON About Town" listings, I wrote the blurbs regarding upcoming shows by Me First & the Gimme Gimmes, Wolfmother, Little Steven's Underground Garage Fest (featuring The New York Dolls, The Chesterfield Kings and The Supersuckers), Pere Ubu and the The Bush Tetras (now that is a double-bill worth checking out!!!) and Senses Fail. While I'd strenuously recommend high steppin' on over to your local newsstand to procure a copy of this issue for thine own self, you can always opt for the easy route and simply click here.

What A Difference A Year Makes

"Posts about Jay-Z??? Posts about big, shiny Nike sneakers? What happened to the Alex I knew? You've become brainwashed by your job! WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU?!"

So exclaimed a friend of mine very recently, presumably in jest. What can I say? Yes, I've written entries about Jay-Z. Yes, I've written entries about entirely ass-kickin' big, shiny Nikes. Of course my job has has a profound effect on my life (and, summarily, the otherwise idiotic and inanely trivial content of this weblog) How could it not? This is my life now.

What a difference a year makes. At this precise time last year, I'd already had one interview for the Job I now hold and was otherwise trapped in a stifling rut at my then-job as a News Desk Editor at TIME Magazine. Adding insult to injury, I'd also just volunteered for some extra work at an adjunct operation of the magazine, but that was really not working out (without going into too much detail, I was in way over my head and dealing with a sizably impatient instructor). I was persevering, however, in the event that the promise of the new job (the one I know have) didn't pan out. Compounding this uncomfortable egg-shell dance was the inability to free myself from a twice-a-week vampire shift that was severely complicating my life at home (with a baby in the house and another on the way). It was a tense period. My plane was flying on fumes.

As fate saw fit, I did manage to secure that new job, an opportunity which was indescribably liberating and terrifying at the same time. For all my misgivings, I dearly loved (and still love) the people I worked directly with at TIME, but I'd gone as far as I could go and then some. It's not that I wanted to leave, I had to leave, but was still very sad to do so. But after a decade plus there, the prospect of working anywhere else was an entirely foreign and intimidating concept. While the first few months were hugely scary, in the ensuing year at my new job, I believe I've managed to acclimate and find my stride (which is not, however, to say that I've mastered it -- something I'm still striving to do). I'm busier than I've ever been. From the moment I walk in the door until the second I step on the elevator at the end of the day, it's a fairly constant sprint. There's always something to be done, some issue to address, some problem to rectify, some task to tackle, some question to answer and some deadline to meet. It can be hectic and exhausting and frustrating and numbing, but I'm more engaged that I've ever been. At the end of each day, I'm tired, but it's a fulfilling fatigue. It's hard work, and I'm doing my best.

But getting back to my friend's concerns -- while, yes, I've broadened my once-furiously-narrow vista to accommodate elements of popular culture that I was once either oblivious of, sneered dismissively upon or found abjectly abhorent, I'm still the same surly bastard who listens to Cop Shoot Cop, the Stranglers, the Virgin Prunes and droves of other long-since forgotten, dormant and/or defunkt bands that will never get any airplay on MTV. That said, I've found that working with (sometimes disarmingly) younger folks with new ideas and fresh perspectives has made me appreciate that which I might not have given a fair shake to in the past. I'm still curious to hear the new stuff that's making the rounds, but this doesn't mean you're going to catch me listening to Fall Out Boy or Akon -- you're more likely to find me sucking on a urinal puck that subjecting my ears to that anaemic piffle.

And as far as my newfound fascination for big shiny Nikes, let it be known that…

JAZ COLEMAN ALSO ROCKS THE BIG, SHINY NIKES!

Thus the Fire Remains Honored.

Jay-Z Little Thing Called Hov*

Perhaps you're a fan of Jay-Z. I'm not, really (I know, I know -- SHOCKER!) -- although I have nothing against the man. Actually, I kinda like a couple of his singles, notably "99 Problems," if only for those big-ass power chords -- hey, I'm a rock guy who likes big, loud guitars. Sue me. In any case, if you are a big fan of Hov, why not go check out the Jiggacentric hard work of my colleagues? Today, Saturday, Jay-Z is undertaking a rather herculean nationwide tour, hitting seven cities in 24 hours (doing short sets in each). We over at The Job are following him every step of the way. Why don't my favorite bands do this?

Again, more Jay-Z than you can shake a wad of bills at. Go check it out, why don'tcha? Throw ya diamonds up, it's ya boy (or so I'm told).

*Incidentally, I know this is positvely the worst title for this post, but I couldn't think of a better one.

Unleashed in the (Upper) East

As discussed in this previous post, I went in for my worryingly named BAER exam last week, a midday appointment which sent me scrambling out of my Times Square office right after our 12:30 meeting to the far flung reaches of the Upper East Side. For all my swaggering tough talk about being a native New Yorker, I should qualify the statement every time by noting that I actaully grew up on the Upper East Side, a point which makes the fact a little less impressive, as far as I'm concerned.

A snot-nosed little child of privilege, I grew up going to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum. I went to grade school with one of the Shah of Iran's sons and Robert Chambers, a.k.a. "the Preppy Murderer" (he was in the class ahead of me, and -- at the time -- a perfectly nice gent). In grade school, we played soccer on the Great Lawn and ran laps around the Resevoir. In the Spring, my friends and I would bike recklessly around the neighborhood's leafy sidestreets. In the winter, we'd stand on the islands in the middle of Park Avenue and chuck snowballs at the big modern sculpture on 92nd street (which made a great, hollow, metallic "boonnnnnnnnnnng" sound when hit squarely) and taxi cabs (which, by the way, is a deplorable thing to do). I even lived at a Park Avenue address for a while-- though you never appreciate such circumstances until you're no longer in them. By the time I left the Upper East Side in 1996, I was living between York Avenue and East End, a perfectly nice -- if soul-warpingly dull -- part of the Upper East Side dubbed "Yorkville." It was a ten minute walk to the nearest subway (and a ten minute walk home after you got off the subway). When I left, I vowed never to return.

That all said, whenever I do travel up to the Upper East Side -- specifically into the upper 80s and lower 90's ("Yorkville" and "Carnegie Hill," repectively), I can't help feeling like I'm going home. No one in my family lives around there anymore (my step-father de-camped to Connecticut, my sister departed for Westchester, my Dad moved somewhere up his own ass and my Mom moved across town to the West Side), but having spent such a huge swathe of my life in that neck of the woods, there's no shaking that feeling of familiarity. My grade school's up there. My high school's up there. The streets I played on, walked on, hung out on, got mugged on, misbehaved on,...they're all still up there. It's for this reason that I'm always shocked when I see drastic changes in the neighborhood. I suppose that it's entirely naïve of me to expect the area to remain static -- as if frozen in amber -- but when I climbed out of the #6 train station at East 86th and Lexington last week, I was blown away to see what looked like nine-tenths of the entire block entirely razed. A byway I'd spent an inordinate amount of time on in my youth (E.86th street between Lexington and Third used to play host to many movie theaters, fast food joints and record stores back in the day), I just wasn't expecting to find a huge part of it…..well….missing, as if some unfathomably huge Tyranosaurus Rex had just leaned down and bitten it out of the ground.

Having arrived a good forty minutes ahead of my appointment -- `cos I'm neurotic like that --- I decided to stroll about some areas of my old `hood. A lot of the familiar spots were still there --- the barber shop on Lexington Avenue I went to when I was a little boy, the church I received my first communion in, the supermarket my Mom used to go to, the bicycle shop I used to fill my tires in -- largely unchanged. But lots of the ol' haunts -- the comics shop I feverishly visited every week, the pizza parlor I wasted a fortune in quarters at playing "Tempest," the record stores (remember those?) -- they're all long gone. But it's still "home." For all my bluster at how boring the area is -- and it is -- it's still not a bad place to live. At the very least, you've got Central Park, which I've sorely missed since I moved downtown a decade ago. These days, with Oliver growing larger and more worryingly mobile by the hour, my wife and I are starting to think about moving. We so love living downtown, and especially our neighborhood, but finding a bigger apartment -- much less even a comparable apartment -- than our current one seems indescribably unlikely. While I swore that I'd never go back, I'd totally consider going back to the Upper East Side (or parts of it, anyway) if it meant that we could stay in Manhattan.

Otherwise, Brooklyn or Westchester awaits. If we're lucky.