Category: new york city

where to begin?

~ jamie ~ 8 Comments

with, of course, a bulleted list.

» why no posts? I set aside everything else in my life to concentrate on school. just ask kirk, the man who got our new york apartment sold in the worst recession in fifty years, found us an awesome new house in reading, pa., packed us up and moved us there, and took care of necessary renovations in the new house. i’m the luckiest boy in the world to have him by my side.

» we did indeed sell the old apartment. bittersweet, but oddly enough i very rarely miss new york. i have lots of new friends here, through school and through kirk; reading is a pretty cool town in its way; ten years in new york was really enough in the end; and we had a great buyer. who paid full price for the apartment. in cash. how’s that for being blessed?

» i still stubbornly cling to my prized cell phone number though, the one with the (212) area code. i’ll lose it in september when we redo our phones for local plans. that’s my last tie to the city, and it dies really, really hard with me.

» love the new house. it’s in east reading, a few blocks from the mount penn city line. we looked at dozens of city row homes online, visited a couple of dozen, and picked this one because it had the right combination of good bones (updated electric, good furnace, mostly plastered walls with little of the ’70s paneling that seems requisite here, backyard deck nicely finished) and low price (got a good price in new york, and could pay cash for the house here with the profit + some savings). you read that right — no mortgage. the house is three stories, four bedrooms, one bath, with a full basement. coming from a smallish one bedroom apartment, it seems like acres of space. the cats get lost.

» the house is in the city, and has an urban feel which i like, but there aren’t many businesses within walking distance. so we have a car. that’s huge. it’s a ’99 saturn, another thing that kirk accomplished. although i did negotiate the price over the phone from new york. the city has good buses, though, so hopefully i won’t have to use the car to go to work. but given the way that the city is, you have to use it for most things, like grocery shopping. i do miss the subway, and walking everywhere. a lot.

» school finished up yesterday. i’m now a fully qualified medical office assistant. i can run the front office, process insurance claims, touch type at 45 wpm, administer parental meds (that’s shots in the ass, arm and other places for the laymen), draw blood, and other fun things. not bad for 18 weeks of training. into 18 weeks, they pack most of what most schools do in two years. that’s why i’ve been indisposed. i’ll bet i’ve gone through 2000 note cards studying for tests that came every day. but i got straight a’s, with some a pluses worked in. not bad for an old guy. i have an internship at the reading hospital beginning june 29. hopefully it will lead to a job.

» my complaints about pennsylvania? not many. i like the food, the people are mainly nice, and things are certainly cheaper. incredibly stupid liquor laws, though. at one point last night, i was going to title this post “pennsylvania is the stupidest mother fucking state on the planet”. we’re throwing a graduation party tonight, and i went out last night to buy beer. which, i learn, can only be purchased from “beer stores”. which apparently all close at 8:00. and you can get six-packs from some restaurants, but you pay an arm and a leg. and all wine and spirits are sold only in state-run stores, ensuring that the wine selection truly blows chunks. completely asinine. when we are re-employed, i’m taking a trip to pj’s in inwood and stocking up.

that should do it for now.

any questions? post them in the comments.

it’s official

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

barack obama elected president.

and to celebrate, i got job-eliminated. that’s the polite term for laid off. it was a huge layoff at my company, so i had plenty of, well, company. so i’ll be putting president-elect obama’s economy rebuilding skills to a personal test.

it should be more traumatic than it is, but in truth, i’m looking forward to new challenges. nine years is a long time to work anywhere — seven years was my previous record. kirk’s been working in reading (his hometown) anyway, doing theater and corporate training gigs with his friend larry, so it’s a natural time to move on.

which is what i’m doing. moving to reading, pa, and selling the apartment:

$199K for a nicely updated prewar 1 bedroom, ½ block from the 1 train (via secret tunnel!) on a secluded bluff overlooking Van Cortlandt Park, 40 minutes to midtown.

i’m exploring going back to school. if i do, it’ll be in the health-care field. if not, back to the world of work, hopefully with new and fresh responsibilities and challenges.

how’s that for change you can believe in?

target’s “bullseye bodega”

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on my daily walk at lunchtime (to clear out the cobwebs, get some fresh air, etc.) i passed a new storefront at 57th and 6th in manhattan.

turns out that target has rented four storefronts to sell their designer goods from friday through sunday. they look brilliant, as you’d expect from target. it’s kind of like the simpsons movie rebranding of 7-11 stores, only better. 3 days, and then it’s gone.

on the heels of mizrahi in rock center, and the target boat on chelsea piers, this is yet another fun way to have a target experience in manhattan. without, of course, actually having a target in manhattan.

(although, to be precise, the target store in marble hill at 225th st. is technically in manhattan. but you’d be hard pressed to convince a manhattanite that anywhere not on the island of manhattan is, in fact, manhattan.)

this way, they get the buzz and the benefit of branding their store chain in close proximity to the advertising and marketing center of the universe.

over, and over, and over again.

unsolicited recommendation: antennasdirect.com

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

we (well, mostly me, because i’m the cheap one in the family) decided when we moved to riverdale to not get cable tv. we’d turned it off before moving from inwood, and had not missed it. a couple of months ago, we had a brief flirtation with getting basic cable tv channels (just broadcast channels), but then i thought, why pay for that when it comes over the air for free?

or so i thought. free is relative. the catch to this was finding an indoor antenna that would pick up the signals. it has to be indoor, because i don’t want to mess with getting my building to allow me to put an antenna on the roof. an outdoor antenna would get me signals with no problem, but that’s way too much trouble and expense.

time is money, and antennas aren’t free, and i spent a lot of time and money trying to find the right antenna. we live in riverdale, in the bronx, about 14 miles from the empire state building, from where the local stations broadcast their signal. and with all the tall buildings and such, it’s tricky to find the right indoor antenna. i tried the terk hdtva, and got nothing, zilch, nada, bupkus. i tried the rca ant525, and got some stations, but not others, and was constantly getting up to adjust the antenna.

i tried buying an antenna amplifier, but as i later learned, if the antenna isn’t getting a good signal, the amplifier can’t magically make it better. all it does is make your intermittent signal stronger, but still intermittent.

so then i called the folks at antennasdirect.com — their number is 877-825-5572. the very friendly, helpful, and informative agent (wish i had her name…) spent several minutes on the phone with me, asking me questions about my specific area and situation. she then recommended the clearstream 2, which she said should work for me just fine. if it didn’t, she said it would be no problem to return it, and there’s no restocking fee.

well, hot damn. the thing is amazing. i get every channel i could possibly get, at full strength (100% signal quality, nothing less than 85% signal strength), with no picture breakup or dropout. i put it by the window, on an old mike stand, and the thing is like a magnet for hdtv signals. i never have to move it ever to get a signal.

antennas direct designs their own antennas, and as far as i can tell they are doing a very good job of it. the best part is, the antenna is so good it doesn’t need an amplifier, which means that you don’t have to plug it in, like all the other ones i tried. so, it’s a green product on top of everything else.

awesome products + outstanding customer service = unsolicited recommendation.

how not to be a douchebag tourist in nyc

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

via digg, this guide to not pissing off the natives while visiting new york city, if you care about such things. ok, so the title is too provocative, and the author has waaaaay too much attitude. but for the most part, the tips are spot-on.

many people don’t care if they piss off the locals. that’s fine. just don’t expect much assistance, and do expect to get barked at, at a minimum. you know the saying, “when in rome…”? that’s good advice. kirk and i act differently in new york than we do in paris, say, or tampa. it’s good form to adapt to your surroundings, and pick up on local customs. it shows that you are sensitive about ethnocentrism. kirk and i have traveled in many cities that famously hate tourists, and we consistently have no bad experiences and are frequently mistaken for locals, or at least people don’t think we’re american. i think that’s a good thing. you may not think so. if you don’t, do me a favor.

stay home.

it’s fun to read the comments at the linked article, by the way. so many people miss the point entirely. you can tell who the travelers are, and who the new yorkers are.

etcetera

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» versions of “gypsy” i have seen/heard prior to last night:

— the rosalind russell movie version
— the bette midler tv version
— the bernadette peters broadway version
— the ethel merman broadway cast recording
— the genesius theatre version in kirk’s boyhood home of reading, pa

kirk could add:

— the tyne daly broadway version
— the betty buckley and debbie gibson version at paper mill playhouse

i don’t think he saw angela lansbury as mama rose, but he can correct me if i’m wrong.

at any rate, to say we had “gypsy” burnout would be an understatement. we really didn’t want to see it this past spring at genesius, but kirk knew people in the cast and we had season tickets, so we went and it was good. even though patti lupone was getting raves in the latest broadway incarnation, we just decided to take a pass.

we were sung out, louise.

but then we saw the tonys, and she performed, and she won a tony, and boyd gaines won the tony as herbie, and laura benanti won the tony as louise, and they were all wonderful and we got chills and so forth, so we looked at each other and said “ok, get the tickets”. so we did, and got a decent deal, and went last night. house was packed — a good audience that we didn’t have to shush. amazingly, i think some of them were unfamiliar with the musical; there were lots of audible gasps when baby june took off at the end of act one.

we really enjoyed ourselves. the staging was good — there was a tattered proscenium onstage which symbolically lifted at the end, making it a “play within a play”. i especially loved the interplay between herbie and louise. the actors gave that relationship an added depth i’d never seen. june was alternately manically perky when “onstage” and bitterly cynical when “offstage” — great job. the most world-weary and ancient electra i’ve ever seen — hysterically funny.

and patti lupone was indeed a marvel. force of nature. complete presence. all the adjectives. two standing ovations — at the end of “rose’s turn” and at the end of the play.

even if you think you never want to see this warhorse (“gypsy”, not patti lupone!) on stage again, it’s worth the money.

» dinner before the show at bocca:

no silly, not the sandwich shop. the italian restaurant in gramercy. very nice experience. we had the prix fixe: for me, pomodori (fresh tomatoes, sliced onions, avocados, olive oil), trota (trout with roasted bell pepper salad and grilled potatoes), and frutta e zabaione (strawberries and bananas served with sabayon); for kirk, polpettine (veal meatballs served with melted truffle, pecorino cheese and veal jus), straccetti (pan seared oregano flavored shredded filet mignon served with roasted cherry tomatoes and wild rocket pesto), and the aforementioned frutta e zabaione. i had a glass of white, he had a glass of red. espresso after dessert (please don’t have your coffee with your dessert, says the food snob. so tacky!) we skipped the bread in deference to kirk, but it looked great from across the room.

everything was incredibly delicious because they did a great job of the one thing i love to see in restaurant food — each dish was just a few extremely high quality ingredients chosen and combined simply and well. not fussy, not cluttered, very clean yet surprisingly complex. good job.

they have a nice drinks menu as well and seem to get an after-work one-drink crowd; kirk started with a really yummy basil-infused gimlet.

total bill with tax and tip was $145 — a splurge for us but worth it.

» weekend update:

we’re going to reading for the second weekend in a row.

last weekend we went, borrowed kirk’s father’s truck and went camping at hickory run state park. we’d planned to hike a lot and be all active, but we lucked into choosing one of only eight campsites that were on the park’s babbling brook (out of 300+ campsites; what were the odds?). so we sat by said babbling brook and read, thursday through saturday. left early saturday afternoon due to impending thunderstorms and saw a production of “the women” in ephrata, pennsylvania. very fun.

this weekend, we’re taking an old steam train with kirk’s parents. it runs from somewhere to jim thorpe, pennsylvania and basically takes the whole day doing it. sounds like a relaxing time — looking forward to it.

next weekend, kirk makes the third consecutive trip to reading for sweeney todd auditions. i think my reading visit streak will end at two.

could it really be true?

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

could tomorrow be the day that hillary clinton withdraws from the race?

i’m watching this closely. as one of her constituents, i’m looking to see how she gets out of the race, and how well and strongly and effectively she supports obama. she really needs to be graceful, and supportive, and needs to do her best to ensure his election. and she needs to do it sooner as in this week and preferably tuesday/wednesday, rather than later as in after this week. if she drags this out, i’ll be very upset.

if she doesn’t withdraw well, as i’ve said before, i’ll be looking to help her opponent in her next new york primary election, for senator or governor or whatever, should she be in a race.

oh, and a little thought butterfly to float over to mr. obama. promise her help with her debts. promise to bring her campaign workers on board with your team. promise to help the elected officials who are getting primary challenges via your supporters as a result of those officials’ support for her. promise to put lots of her supporters in white house positions.

but do not promise anything to hillary herself. the clintons need to be dispatched efficiently. i say this, not because i dislike hillary, but because i’ve come to really dislike bill, and i don’t want him anywhere near washington power again. and i don’t think that she is strong enough to keep him at bay should she be in an obama administration. she chose to keep him on her team, and use him, even after his odious behavior. that’s the price she should pay for making that choice.

and, mr. obama, you will lose more votes than you will gain if, before they actually vote for you, people know she’ll be in your administration.

walkscore.com

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

walkscore.com — great idea for a google maps mashup site. you type in your address, and it gives an overall ranking of your living quarters on a scale from 1 to 100, in terms of walking distance to types of businesses.

here’s my walk score:


love it. i guess my distance from a movie theater drags my score down.

goodbye florent

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

great photo essay in the times about florent, the groundbreaking restaurant in the meatpacking district, narrated by the man himself.

it’s going away, like mchales, cbgb’s, le madeleine, and any other of the long list of victims of gentrification and skyrocketing rents. much of what makes the city “new york” are these individual places, and each time we lose one we’re a step closer to being cleveland. i’ve been to florent a few times, and always enjoyed myself and had a great meal. the man, a true pioneer among restauranteurs, deserves better.

think about that the next time you hit a starbucks. and i’m sure cleveland is a wonderful place.

but it ain’t new york. at least not yet.

unsolicited recommendation: salvatores of soho

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

had dinner at salvatores of soho on friday night. the name’s a bit misleading — the restaurant isn’t in soho. it’s in riverdale. maybe salvatore is from soho, and he came to riverdale to open a restaurant. not sure.

anyway.

they have excellent basic red-sauce italian food. great pizza. a well-planned menu with lots of variety. and they deliver it all. we’ve been a few times before, for basic stuff. so far, a solid neighborhood option, but perhaps not worthy of an unsolicited recommendation.

but we splurged a bit on friday night, taking a chance on some more expensive entree specials. three things shoved them over the edge, to the point where i’m flogging them on my blog:

» amazing specials. on friday i had a whole grilled bronzino with a rosemary sauce. i’d never had this mediterranean fish before, but man was it good. i like a fish roasted whole, head and skin on and bones in, because it keeps the fish moist and delicious like no other cooking method, if done correctly. and this was the best whole grilled fish i’d had in ages. it rivalled anything i’ve ever had at uncle nick’s on 9th avenue in midtown manhattan, which is mecca for a grilled fish. kirk had a broiled steak with mushroom sauce, which was equally as wonderful.

» great staff. welcoming, professional, prompt, every single person genuinely concerned with my total experience. they all enjoy what they are doing, and it shows.

» byob. they don’t have a liquor license, so you look at the menu, grab a bottle of wine from down the street, bring it back, and they serve it with no corkage fee.

total bill with tip was $50, which is about as much as you could possibly spend here. it’s a mixed crowd — half of the tables are families eating meals and bringing wine, like us, and the other half are tables of college students splitting pizzas. two could eat well and comfortably here for $20. but any money you spend here is well spent, and everything on the menu is an incredibly good value for the money, even the more expensive entrees. they definitely have kitchen staff that knows what they are doing.

we’ll be back.

a lot.

for the specials.

unsolicited recommendation: orsay on 75th & lex

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had dinner last night at orsay, in new york city on 75th st. and lexington avenue.

i’m usually not one to venture onto the upper east side of manhattan. the transportation is awkward if you live on the west side, which we do. the extreme upper west side. but last night, kirk chose this restaurant to celebrate his raise and new title at work.

so i schlepped.

and i’m glad i did. the a la carte menu looked great, especially the blanquette de veau, and a beef cheek special. but they had a prix fixe “surprise”, which intrigued. for $38, you got a surprise appetizer, a surprise entree, and a surprise dessert. you could tell them “fish or meat” for the entree, and of course let them know if you had allergies and whatnot. but other than that, you were flying blind. we went for it, and asked for wine pairings to accompany.

the appetizer was a chicken terrine, wrapped in smoky bacon and studded with vegetables — i remember mushrooms and carrots. accompanying the terrine was a frisée salad with small potatoes and bacon. both were wonderful, both separately and together. the wine was a chablis — i remember it being very buttery, though not sure of the name. i was very proud of myself for figuring out the wine tasted buttery; i usually can’t tell these things and when the sommelier gave us that assessment unprompted, i was amazed.

the entrée was a pork porterhouse with a dipping sauce that had tiny julienned cornichons, and frites. that’s french fries, to you and me. the porterhouse was incredible — it had been brined well and cooked to perfection, with a crispy exterior while still tender inside. and the fries were sensational, as only fries cooked twice and perfectly can be. the perfect combination of salt, heat, and grease. yummy. the wine was a great merlot.

dessert was good, but not great — a kind of ice cream cake with sliced bananas on top and chocolate sauce brushed underneath. it got better as the ice cream softened a bit. the dessert wine to accompany was of course very sweet and fruity, and i liked it quite a bit even though i’m not much for sweet wines. i remember it was from the south of france, but no more details than that.

espresso with a nice belgian chocolate finished the evening.

the service was very french — completely attentive and friendly in the way it should be. wait staff were personable, helpful, and witty but not obsequious and pushy. everyone knew their role and executed exactly as they should have. in fact, our waiter guided us away from a la carte and toward the prix fixe, even though the former would have been a bigger check for him. good thing we listened — the chef was transitioning from the winter menu to the spring menu next week, so our dishes were a sneak preview of the spring menu items. our food definitely drew attention from the many regulars sprinkled about.

in all, a great experience — all pluses and no minuses. we’ll be back.

i used my $40 dtv converter box coupon

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

kirk and i have an hdtv, but it’s an older model and doesn’t have a built-in tuner. it’s just a monitor. so without paying for cable, we’ve never been able to get a television signal. no cable, no signal, no tv. and since we dropped cable about a year ago, the only things we’ve used the tv for was netflix rentals and playing with the wii.

with the upcoming broadcast conversion from analog to digital, the government is providing $40 coupons to buy a converter box. my tv doesn’t have a tuner, so i wasn’t sure if it would work or not. what the hell, right? so i sent off for my $40 coupon, and used it to buy the converter box. total price was $60, so my net cost was $20. i bought an indoor amplified antenna as well, for $40, so total out of pocket expense was about $60, or half the price of one month of cable.

hooked it all up last night. i figured if it didn’t work, i’d take it all back. no harm, no foul.

wow.

it all works brilliantly. not only do i have television, but the converter box has widescreen capability, so the digital picture fills in the entire widescreen. it’s not true hd, but the resolution is just fine — comparable to watching a dvd, probably. and the indoor amplified antenna pulls in 21 stations. some you’ll never watch — there’s one channel that’s just a cam set up in times square, some spanish-language stuff, and what-not, but for a one-time $60 payment i can now watch the networks and other local stations. and there’s great sound coming from my stereo and a great digital picture on my hdtv.

i’m still not going to watch that much tv — i like not knowing who flunked the lie detector when asked questions about their wife, or if i’m smarter than a fifth grader, or whatever. but i can watch the news, and keep up with the election, and whatnot, and that’s a good thing.

thanks, government. you got it right this time.

confirmed: i’m supporting barack obama

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i’ve been thinking about supporting obama. i liked his book, and following his campaign i’ve liked what i’ve seen.

two things have pushed me over the edge toward full-fledged support.

the first was caroline kennedy’s endorsement yesterday.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

she doesn’t mince words. it doesn’t get much more direct, or moving, than that.

the second thing was in today’s paper, a story on gay democrats and the primaries:

In an address last week honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a black church in Atlanta, Senator Obama made waves by lecturing the audience about homophobia. “We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them,” he said during the speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King served as co-pastor with his father.

Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay lobbying group, said he thought Mr. Obama’s speech was the first time a presidential candidate had brought up gay issues in front of a nongay audience without being prompted to do so. “This is dramatically refreshing,” he said. “It’s a great day when we can look at a field of candidates and determine that we are comfortable with all of them on gay rights and move on to other issues.”

i’m not a single issue voter. but gay issues are important to me, and obama’s choice of raising of this issue in this arena shows real leadership. it shows he puts his truth ahead of his politics. it’s a telling anecdote, and that’s enough for me.

my florida friends and relatives: don’t vote for giuliani

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

it doesn’t look like he will win, and it looks like losing may knock him out of the race for president.

but, my fellow floridians, take it from a former floridian who lived in new york under giuliani for a time: you don’t want this guy as your president.

the new york times summed it up this morning:

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

if you are voting in the republican primary, and you want someone who will best defend this country from its enemies — pick anyone but this guy, who is in bed with many of our enemies for personal profit.

anyone.

please.

everyblock.com: this could get addictive

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

via gawker, i found out about this new site, everyblock.com, that aggregates information about your neighborhood from various sources.

right now, it’s only new york, chicago, and san francisco, but i could see this scaling up into national coverage.

there’s lots of great info about my neighborhood. i learned not to eat at tony and val’s pizza, at least not in the near term. i learned that we had 24 total crimes last week. i learned that some clueless yelptard trashed the riverdale garden, which we love.

this site gets priority bookmarking.

popcorn superhet receiver

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

kirk and i saw “there will be blood” recently and came out raving about the score, which was by jonny greenwood of radiohead. i thought it was the best thing about the movie, daniel day-lewis included. kirk didn’t go that far, but that’s what makes the phone book.

so when i got a ny times email about the wordless music concert featuring jonny greenwood’s composition “popcorn superhet receiver”, i immediately got tickets.

and the associated article discussed his love of messiaen, a composer that kirk and i love.

sometimes, serendipitously, all signs point to yes.

last night’s concert was a marvel. the venue, an acoustically outstanding church, was filled to overflow capacity with an atypical crowd for orchestral music — lots of groovy williamsburg types who looked to be fleeing for the “l” train afterwards. what an attentive audience, though — much more attentive than the old folks normally attending these things. absolutely rapt, and appropriately so given the well-planned program. each of the three pieces built internally to different climaxes, as did the three pieces taken as a whole.

the first was “sinking of the titanic” by gavin bryars — based on the music that the band played as the boat sank, and interspersed with tape of survivors’ interviews and ambient noise. a bit somnambulant, but relaxing and engaging.

the second was “christian zeal and activity” by john adams. a bit more active musically, and this time the interspersed tape was jimmy swaggart preaching the story of the healing of the man with the withered hand. loved this, because it took me back to that great jimmy swaggart sample in “welcome to paradise” by front 242 (hey poor! you don’t have to be poor anymore! jesus is here!) this piece was shorter quiet sections that built to quick crescendos and repeated the theme.

the last piece was “popcorn superhet receiver”. i’ll excerpt the ny times review to explain:

Mr. Greenwood has described “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” named for a shortwave radio, as a study in white noise, the electronic whoosh you hear between radio stations. But it also contrasts old and new technologies: white noise is approximated by antique instruments made of wood, horsehair and catgut.

And where pure white noise is an undifferentiated hiss, Mr. Greenwood’s score, even at its most densely atonal, has a consistently alluring shimmer and embraces everything from lush vibrato, glissandos and sudden dynamic shifts to slowly rising chromatic themes. Toward the end his clusters give way to a prismatic full-orchestra pizzicato section: imagine the scherzo of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony on steroids, or acid, or both.

what he said.

all i know is that it was, for me, far and away the most engaging and exciting piece of the evening, mr. greenwood’s celebrity-ness notwithstanding. it had the feel of someone with unlimited talent being finally let loose to express himself in a new medium, to startlingly good effect. the whole evening had a “moment in history” feel, as if you had been in the audience for steve reich’s first performance or something.

i think this greenwood kid may have a future.

update: jonny greenwood is in the scott walker documentary. another artist we’ve discovered and love. this keeps getting weirder and more coincidental.

getting caught up

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

with the holidays upon us, it’s been a while since i posted. here’s what’s been going on:

» we had a holiday/housewarming party. tremendous fun, attended by ~30 of our friends at one point or another. we had it on saturday 12/1 from 5pm until ???. the ??? turned out to be about 1:30am. old friends actually schlepped to riverdale, and given the number of manhattan-centric friends we have this was no small feat and a testament to the strength of our friendships. we also had quite a few new friends from the building. food cooked by us, some catering from the garden gourmet and mike’s deli at arthur avenue, lots of wine and spirits, duck fart shots (jack daniels, bailey’s, kahlua) courtesy of our friend suzanne, great conversation, good music, and some spirited wii competition.

» kirk and i flew to tampa to visit my mother. she’s in assisted living in sun city center, and it was a quick in-and-out short weekend, so please all my florida friends, don’t get upset that i didn’t visit you! she’s doing well, and it was good to see her, my sister, and meet my nephew’s new s.o. sherry. they just bought a house together. i know how they feel!

» kirk and i saw “the belsnickel scrooge” at genesius theatre in reading we visited kirk’s parents for the holidays this past weekend. kirk has to work the day after christmas, so we’re just staying home for the holidays this year. but we did want to visit them, and we had tickets for the aforementioned show, so two birds with one stone. the show itself was marvelous — it’s a pennsylvania dutch adaptation of “a christmas carol”, complete with the belsnickel. the belsnickel only visits bad children and beats them with a stick. talk about negative reinforcement. anyway, it was lots of fun, even for a non-pennsylvania-dutch-person.

» the apartment is pretty much finished. kirk did the last bit of painting (mainly window frames, and the bathroom). someday soon we’ll have the tub refinished, and at some point we’ll just redo the whole bathroom, but the big projects are done. let the myriad small projects commence.

» we saw kiki and herb at carnegie hall. last time they were there, we had tickets and forgot to go. not this time. it was a good show, with old classics and new material. nothing’s ever going to touch small intimate joe’s pub shows with kiki climbing over the tables, but it was thrilling to see them on that stage nonetheless. saw old friends as well — our friend jared, the show’s producer; and john cameron mitchell. saw alan cumming as well — what a cutie.

» we saw the radio city christmas show. it’s the 75th anniversary, and they’ve beefed up the show considerably. it’s a rockettes-fest — they are everywhere in the show, much more than normally. lots of new numbers, all good, along with the classics you want to see. and they are selling fantastic souvenir martini glasses with rockettes’ legs instead of the stem. we see the show every year, but this year was special. if you have any inclination to go, it’s a must-see year.

» we sent out our annual holiday cards. this was my year to send them, and i wanted to ratchet down a bit due to last year’s “kirk and jamie sing holiday songs” extravaganza, which was great fun but very time-consuming. it was a simple but elegant card printed on silver paper. if you didn’t get a card for some reason, and you think i would have sent you one, let me know. and if your cd is not playing correctly, let us know. we’ve had some reports of cd-burnout (i think the ones you burn yourself don’t last as long), and we’re happy to replace your old copy.

that’s the major stuff. happy holidays, everyone.

entertainment on strike

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

the world of entertainment is on strike. and how is it affecting me?

not much, i have to say. at least not directly.

first there’s the writer’s strike in hollywood. i guess that if you were a big tv watcher, you’d be upset about this. no new episodes of csi or lost or letterman or whatever, and all. but, having given up television (no cable tv, and our tv doesn’t have a tuner, so no over-the-air broadcasts either), i could care less. if the strike goes on long enough it could eventually affect the movies, and i’d care marginally more about that, but there are enough movies on netflix to last a lifetime. if they stopped making new movies tomorrow, i’d still never get to watch all the movies i’d like to see.

second strike is the stagehands on broadway. we don’t go to as many shows as we used to, so this doesn’t directly affect me in that sense. however, it definitely affects the economy of new york city, so in that sense i’m at least indirectly affected. but again, there are plenty of live entertainment options in new york — some broadway shows, off-broadway, off-off broadway, concerts, cabarets, and so on.

in general i support the concept of unions — we wouldn’t have much in the way of benefits and rights as workers if they hadn’t fought for them. and there are many jobs that i wouldn’t take unless there was a union to represent me. and when i taught school, i always belonged to the union — even though i agreed that they promoted and tolerated incompetence, i still saw the overall value in membership.

i think the writers have a valid point. everything’s going online, and if something they wrote is rebroadcast on the internet or sold via itunes, there should be some payment for that. of course, if the strike continues, there may not be much of an audience left for their product, given people’s limited and continually fracturing attention span. but they have a point, and they should press for a solution if they think the risk is worth it.

i don’t think it helps their image, though, to have big stars on the picket lines, and jay leno bringing them donuts, and so on. i’ll bet the vast majority of striking writers are middle class folks with middle class incomes, and all those big stars do is leave casual observers with the impression that all writers are wealthy people looking for even more wealth.

the broadway stagehands seem to me to have less of a point. i’ll be the first to admit that i’m not fully informed, but from what i can gather, one of their main demands is to retain the right to tell producers how many union members each show must hire.

i’m guessing that most people would think that an unreasonable demand. i know i do.

i’d love to have the contractual right to tell my company that they had to employ a set number of my co-workers. who wouldn’t? but that’s not reasonable. and while i’m sure greedy producers drive up the cost of broadway tickets, having to hire union employees regardless of actual need isn’t helping either.

for the sake of the economies of new york and los angeles, i hope both strikes are settled soon.

personally, though, i don’t care much either way.

update: with the broadway strike, what’s at issue is controlling how many workers are present at the load-in for the show (when all the sets, etc., are brought into the theater). i have less of a problem with that — i dont think the producers should be telling the union how many people that takes.