And in my best behavior, I am really just like him

The Village Voice’s review of Sufjan Stevens’ BQE Symphony started off with this:

“All my friends who don't live in New York hate New York. Near as I can tell, they imagine the city as one giant, loathsome American Apparel ad, a crass, joyless, narcissistic, careerist, emaciated, insincere, hopelessly uptight, suffocatingly twee cesspool of white-privilege Williamsburg hipsterdom.”

This description prefaced the review to describe not only the trying-to-hard-cuteness of the show, but no doubt its audience too. My desire to go probably puts me in at least three of those categories if not all in some people’s eyes.

Sufjan’s symphony about an expressway sold out so quickly though that I didn’t get a ticket and as much as I love him wasn’t will to pay the $150 asking price on craigslist.

Still, without actually attending, I can mostly agree with the review. Sufjan is helluva talented, and yeah some of his songs make me get a little teary, and damn if he isn’t cute. Which is exactly the problem, he sometimes over does the cuteness, and sometimes gets a little too ambitious (even he had to know the 50 state thing was going to get old fast), or overkills a good thing (the wings, the Avalanche CD). Still though, he tries, which is more than you can say for a lot of people. Sooner of later he’ll realize that when he doesn’t try so hard he makes some pretty amazing music.


(Sufjan trying too hard)

As for me, well that’s in the eye of the beholder I guess. I think the description of New York isn’t totally off base, but then again I still don’t think I consider myself a complete New Yorker. I’m more of a citizen of the world…

Rest in Peace

Just in time for Halloween, now you even have to feel guilty about dying, because your burning or rotting body is polluting the air and water. I mean really, can't death be the one time you can finally stop caring about all the suckers you left behind?*


*That said I think the whole expensive casket/headstone/giant spaces of land/embalming thing is kind of crazy, but I also think death is the one time you don't get to tell people what to do.

Doggie Howser + Animal= Great Music

Even though they kind of seemed like they didn’t want to be there, Two Gallants put on what was perhaps the best show I’ve seen this year*

I have been listening to their new CD and EP kind of non-stop lately and unlike some of bands, they are actually just as good live as recorded, at times even better (like when they played three songs into each other with obviously rehearsed yet improvised feeling transition mini-songs).

I probably would have enjoyed the show a lot less if I would have been on the floor closer to the stage where not only would I have to be much closer to people than I prefer, but would have had to endure a mosh pit (Really? People still do that?)

From my seat directly behind the soundboard, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that drummer Tyson Vogel looked exactly like what Animal would like if he was a person, and Adam Stephens looked like a scruffier much cooler version of Neil Patrick Harris (See Photographic evidence below). And according to this interview, Vogel most likely is modeling himself after Animal, but I doubt Stephens wants to be compared to Doggie Howser, MD.

Regardless, it was a good show, despite the fact that it made me slightly more depressed than I was going in, and they seemed kind of like they were just fulfilling their obligation to ROCK (and were possibility as depressed as me).


Animal and Tyson Vogel

Neil Patrick Harris and Adam Stephens

*Disclaimer: I have been to about three shows this year, but that makes Two Gallants no less brilliant.

Saying Things are Over is so Over-Rank Them Instead!

So evidently The New York Times thinks Brooklyn is over because Heath Ledger moved, which is nothing short of the lamest reasoning ever. I would argue that it’s not Brooklyn, but the whole of New York City that’s over because it can’t stop talking about itself as if it was the only place that mattered. But I digress.

And besides, that’s not the only reason why The New York Times is wrong. Some group of urban planners named Park Slope one of the ten best neighborhoods in the country (take that Williamsburg!) It turns out though that they’ve decided that Park Slope officially ends at 17th Street, meaning I missed it by four blocks. But that’s ok, I’ll enjoy being slightly on the outside looking in, afterall, paying to live in a “named” neighborhood is so over.
(Above: an artist’s rendition of Park Slope)

Show a lot of things in a Little Time...MONTAGE!

This is the "montage-o-rama" of the bike tour I did a few weeks ago. (Even Rocky had a montage)

Nine-Eleven

The world has a nostalgia problem, short-term nostalgia problem. At first I thought maybe it was a problem exclusive to my generation. After all, how else do you explain the reemergence of leggings, Transformers, Strawberry Shortcake, etc? But every generation has this problem, there are countless baby boomers that can’t let go of the psychedelic music of their hey-day, and hell, all those old people will still tell you war stories if you’ll listen. (Of course it’s interesting the differences in the things that the generations nostalgiasize, but that’s a different topic.)

I have realized recently though that it’s not just a matter of generational nostalgia for glory days past. The collective culture is in love with looking back (but not too far back and not to critically). I don’t have the real answer as to why this is, but I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that we’ve run out of new ideas. This has been the case with music and movies for years, the amount of sequels, re-makes, and covers or re-appropriation of other media into new forms (the movie based on the play, based on the book) just keeps growing.

Recently though we seem to have a sick nostalgia for tragedy, and not with any good purpose either because the tragedies that we nostalgiasize are either pop culture-y ones, or are simply regurgitations.

The 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love
Really? This is a thing that deserves three floors of the Whitney Museum and countless magazine features? A bunch white people took a lot of drugs, had a lot of sex, and gave the figurative finger to the “man.” Forty years ago. Jesus. What about the civil rights struggles and riots, or what about what’s happening now?

The 10th Anniversary of the Death of Princess Diana
I never really got why anyone in England, much less in America cared about Princess Diana when she was alive. But holding huge memorials 10-years after her and her rich boyfriend died? But she was such a good person! Kind-of. Yes, she did good things, but that was part of her job. Mostly she looked pretty and wore fancy dresses, and lived a very, very, very opulent life from the money of the people of her country (including of course the working poor, since the royal family are paid with tax money).
There are thousands of people living and dead that have made vastly more significant contributions to the lives of oppressed people, yet they get no spotlight. Princess Diana was the Angelina Jolie of 1997, a celebrity who wasn’t 100% self absorbed and therefore was a god.

The 6th Anniversary of 9/11
Yes, 9/11 was a tragedy. And yes it certainly changed ‘merica. It was a scary mess, and losing someone in such a senseless way is probably something that you don’t get over ever, no matter how many years pass. So as a nation and as individuals, sure we should “Never Forget.” Just like we remember the Alamo and Pearl Harbor, right?
The problem is I think we aren’t remembering it in the right way. Throwing a pity party year after year and naming things “freedom” while there’s still a huge hole in the ground and more people have died in the mess of a war that we started in the name of 9/11 than died that day, isn’t honoring anyone, least of all the people they are memorializing.
And in all this looking back, still very few bother to ask why it happened to begin with. In 40 years will the historic memory of 9/11 be a bunch of tacky American flag kitsch and shit called “freedom” instead of the real ways that our greed fucked up the world? Probably.

We can’t look forward, we can’t look at the present, and we don’t know what to look at when we look back.

(Photo: probably one of the only good things that MTV has produced in the last decade, from a series of ads about AIDS, hunger and poverty that we banned)

Great Lakes, Not so Great Times

When I noticed a few months ago that BP was acting like its initials stood for “Beyond Petroleum” instead of “British Petroleum” I was pretty sure it was just a green bandwagon jumping publicity stunt.

Yep.

From Environment Michigan:

“BP talks a lot about being 'Beyond Petroleum,' but their plan for increasing dumping ammonia and toxic sludge into Lake Michigan from their oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana shows they're certainly not beyond polluting our Great Lakes. Even after mounting public pressure, including over 55,000 petition signatures urging them to stop their toxic dumping plans from Environment Michigan supporters and our sister organizations around the region, BP still intends to go forward with their refinery project, even if it means more pollution for Lake Michigan. They have not committed to a plan that would ensure that no additional pollution would be dumped in the lake.”