an evening at carnegie hall

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

kirk and i had tickets to the new york pops 23rd annual gala last night. there was a playbill discount email, and liza minnelli was performing and elaine stritch was hosting, and so i walked up to the box office the next day and got a pair of inexpensive tickets.

glad we did. it was sold out and people were begging for tickets. as well they should have been–it was a great show.

marvin hamlisch was the guest conductor–he did a credible job, and was generally genial, witty, and entertaining. i wonder if he’s auditioning for the job now that skitch henderson is dead. i’m not in the loop on that one–he may already have the job.

anyway, elaine strich was her strich-y best. she sang two numbers, the second of which was the best performance of the evening. i don’t know the name of the song–perhaps kirk will be kind enough to post a comment (hint hint)–but she can deliver a lyric with better phrasing to convey emotion than anyone else alive, for my money.

liza sang “i love a piano”, as the theme was piano stuff what with the evening being a tribute to skitch henderson who was a real piano guy. she wasn’t in the best voice but with liza it really doesn’t matter, as she too can deliver with style that overcomes it.

i also liked bob lappin, who leads the palm beach pops. he led the new york pops orchestra in some well-chosen numbers and really made them sound good. when i retire to palm beach, i may have to buy a ticket.

the gala honoree was ahmet ertegun of atlantic records, so we got to hear two of his recording artists perform with the pops, which was a real treat in both cases. the first was a young scottish guy named paolo nutini–i’m going to have to buy a song or two on itunes. he had a very expressive voice–the crowd really loved him. and the other was kid rock, of all people.

now you’d think that kid rock at the pops would be oil and water, and he self-disparagingly said as much at the beginning of his performance, but he was fantastic. he sang one of his songs, and then sang “rock and roll” by led zeppelin.

and he was the only performer to get a curtain call. how about that.

now i have to gripe a bit. evidently the pops has some kind of program to give tickets to kids who sit in the balcony, and it exposes them to art and all. and the balcony above us was full of kids.

and they were perfectly behaved. they were quiet as church mice when the concert pianist played and when the pops played their pop, and they were appropriately energetic when, say, darlene love sang “da do ron ron”. good to see it.

so what am i griping about?

well, the old biddies in front of me, who, quite the opposite of the kids, sat like stone through kid rock, and paolo nutini, and darlene love and all, but couldn’t keep their fat mouths shut during, for example, the cole porter medley. in loud voices, they discussed whether or not they had seen “de-lovely” and whether or not they liked it, until i nicely asked them to stfu.

kirk thinks that’s true in general, and i’m inclined to agree with him. i think old people tend to be more clueless about appropriate public behavior than young people. you can disagree, but i don’t care.

when kirk and i get our finances more in order, we’re going to get season tickets to the pops or something similar.

we had a great time.

update: paolo nutini’s site has free downloads of his music, but they are pc only. bad form, paolo nutini.

small town city

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new york is a small town.

in fact, it’s probably more of a small town than the small town you live in.

because you walk everywhere in new york, there’s more opportunity to get to know people, and see people you know. and because there are few large megastores (although this is slowly changing), a lot of your shopping tends to take place at small independently-owned mom-and-pop type stores. this leads inevitably to your knowing these people as well.

do you know the cashier’s name at wal-mart? don’t lie to me. most times you don’t. and i know you too well. if you have a wal-mart or the equivalent available, you shop there. kirk and i have a target within walking (15 minutes) distance, but the vast majority of our shopping is still done at small stores. when you don’t have a car and have to physically carry everything you purchase, it makes a big difference in your shopping habits. no going to the grocery store or the box store or the wal-mart super center and filling up the car with crap to last you weeks.

you have to be judicious.

so, out of necessity, you make lots of frequent shopping trips. pick up a few things after work every day. and when you make a purchase of a large, heavy item, you have to factor in the price of the taxi to get it home, which admittedly makes internet shopping for big things very attractive. but oddly, most times we buy large heavy things locally. and most times, we make lots of little trips to dick’s hardware, not home depot. we go to c-town, not kroger’s or publix. we go to grandpa’s pizza, not pizza hut.

all of this is to explain that all these frequent shopping trips to the same places makes you friendly with a lot of people. some you know their names, some you don’t. but you still know them, and they know you. going to macy’s to get my razor fixed today reminded me of that.

i have a norelco razor that’s at least 10 years old, probably more. i’ve forgotten how old it is, but i’ve had it a long time. and every year i take it to macy’s and get the blades replaced and the razor cleaned and lubed and whatnot, and it costs me about $40. every few years i have to get the rechargeable batteries replaced, and this trip i had to get that done too, so it was another $30. so with tax, $80-ish. still cheaper than a new norelco razor, which i have no idea if it would work well or last a long time.

and $40 a year is less money than people spend on disposable razors and all the accompanying accoutrements and the like, so i think it’s $40 well spent.

and every year, i spend it with james on the top floor of macy’s, in the razor department. he’s an older gentleman who remembers what it means to give good customer service, and gives it, and remembers you too, or at least does a good job of acting like he remembers you, which is in effect the same thing anyway.

and james is just one in a long line of people i know in new york, and see on a regular basis, and interact with, and it’s because i live in a small town.

it’s a small town because i got my ass out of a car, and started walking around and interacting with people. ian mckellen was on the hbo bill maher show recently, and he made this exact point, and everyone was generally dismissive of him.

but he’s exactly right. people spend their lives in their automotive bubble-of-unreality, and people become less human to them, and their interactions with others become more and more strained.

and if you are saying “well, i live too far from everything and have to drive,” my response to you is that you have made a conscious decision to put yourself in that position, and you have options.

and if you are then saying, “well, i can’t afford to live in a large city like new york that is dense and walkable and has public transportation options”, my response to you is that you could damn well afford it if you weren’t paying so much for that car of yours. i’ve lived both lifestyles. you can’t fool me.

at the very least, i think you should park your car and walk as much as you can, and stop going to wal-mart and start going to neighborhood stores even if it costs you a bit more, and start cultivating regularly scheduled inconsequential interactions with regular people on a regular basis.

i think you should endeavor to make where you live a small town, no matter where you live.

a small town much like new york city.

the 9/11 memorial

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this post will probably piss off at least 13 of the 14 readers i have. but it’s what i think, and so be it.

i ran across this quote from the uk guardian on salon today. it’s from an older story about the terrorists bombings at the atocha train station in madrid, and how the spanish government chose to memorialize the victims:

“The Atocha memorial lacks any hint of artistic grandeur. Yet its very banality is also somehow appropriate — for this war will be won or lost not in some grand showdown but in a trillion tiny everyday encounters, like those of commuters pouring off a suburban train.”

as the salon article notes, “there’s a simple and discreet memorial to the bombing victims.”

i completely agree with this sentiment. every time i take the subway in the morning, it’s a thumb in the eye of both the terrorists who want me to be afraid to take it, and the u.s. government with their completely ineffective fearmongering “war on terror”.

so why then are we spending a billion dollars on a memorial to the 9/11 victims? or even $500 million, for that matter?

build a nice secure train station at the world trade center site, and put up a simple and discreet memorial in it.

and take the difference between the cost of that and the billion dollars, and do something constructive with it.

when the freedom tower is built and is full of occupants, that’ll be the most effective memorial anyone could wish for.

american idol? feh.

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i’m getting bored with idol.

three or four weeks ago, it seemed that this was the best crop of talent ever. i was geniunely looking forward to the weeding out process.

but the song selection has sucked, for the most part. and not a single idol has progressed past the point where they started. each remaining idol sings just like they did when they started.

no growth.

and i haven’t been blown away by a single performance in weeks. when i say blown away, i’m talking at the level of fantasia singing “summertime”, which was for me the high water mark of idol performances. no one is even close to that this year.

hell, no one has even approached the level established by clay aiken when he sang “solitaire”. and that’s saying something, because i am not now nor have i ever been a claymate, and i laughed my ass off at his attempt to be a sincere neil sedaka. that performance though, in retrospect, seems toweringly godlike in comparison to what i’m suffering through now.

although i must admit i do find clay’s video chat escapades quite amusing.

so we are left with taylor, who i like quite a lot but needs to get serious and stop goofing around with crap like “play that funky music”. taylor, you need more tom waits and more ray charles, not more wild cherry.

and chris, who i have never liked. i like his voice but his phrasing drives me bonkers. and stylistically he just rips off so many people, and brings nothing original of his own to bear. it gripes me that no one calls him on this–so many of his performances have been rip-offs of lesser known versions of songs (red hot chili peppers, live, and the list goes on from there).

and catherine, who always sounds slightly off-key or pitchy to me, and is sometimes tolerable and once in a while pretty good. but then she stops singing and opens her mouth to talk and i just can’t stand her. i did like her second song on tuesday, though–the one with the drums.

and elliot, who please please please needs to stop looking at the camera in that amish-boy-just-off-the-farm way. he has zero charisma, or less than zero. if i close my eyes i love him. if i open them i’m aghast.

so i guess i’m left rooting for taylor, but only by default.

the final weeks? elliot goes next, then catherine, then taylor wins the taylor vs. chris showdown to be the next american idol.

but i have a feeling that people are really fickle this time, and a really crappy week or a brilliant week by anyone, but especially by taylor or chris, could dramatically change the balance.

oh by the way, here’s a great place to get caught up on your yiddish, if you don’t know what feh means.

apple adds ads

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apple has started to advertise the mac.

it’s about time.

if you haven’t seen them yet, head on over to the link above. they are marvelously done, with the slight exception of the “better” ad, which is not my favorite.

the rest of them, though, have a perfect tone. there’s a geeky guy (john hodgman from the daily show) who plays the part of the pc, and a younger, hipper guy (justin long, from ed and dodgeball, among others) who plays the part of the mac.

the way they set these up is brilliant. past apple ads have been condescending toward pc users, the very people they are trying to attract. these ads are set up so that the pc guy admits his own (or, by proxy, his computer’s own) mistakes. and the mac guy is always cute, never threatening or insulting, yet gets relatively obscure geeky points across in a humorous way.

whoda thunk that viruses, or networking, or the horrors of constant restarting, could be explained in such a humorous and cute way?

i saw the ads on tv last night for the first time, during “american idol” and “house”. i’d watched them all online before that, though.

and i would have seen them during “24” on monday night and would have been completely surprised by them, which would have been really cool. but kirk the asshat had to keep jumping up and running to do things during the commercials on “24”, which meant that i paused the show on the pvr and then hit the live button, thus missing the commercials.

kirk isn’t really an asshat. but isn’t that a great word? i’ve seen it online a few places recently. great word. so i just wanted to use it, even though it wasn’t an appropriate use.

anyway, my favorite is “network”, followed by “viruses” and “ilife”.

go watch them.

and then go find out all about why and how to switch to a mac

and then switch, dammit. it’ll be the best thing you ever did.

by the way, assuming that i actually post regularly, i’m going to start putting the entire post on the front page, rather than putting a teaser on the front page and then making you click to read the rest.

let me know what you think.

2cv at spring and broadway

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2cv on spring and broadway
citroen 2cv on spring and broadway

the citroen 2cv (or “deux chevaux”) is my favorite car of all time, although i’ve never had the privilege of driving one. just looking at it is enough to make you smile. and, appropriately enough, i saw one last night in manhattan after a great cassoulet at jardin bistro.

and, though i did not know this until i googled for the link above, billy joel drove a deux chevaux in that famous crash into the side of a long island house.

great design and celebrity cachet. what else could you want in a car?

a brilliant widget

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

stuart at 36 degrees design, the designer of the template i used to make my widget for queerspace, has made a great new widget.

in his words, with capitals intact, “The widget has two sides, the first of which is an excel spreadsheet, filled with some meaningless data, and the back side is a word document, accessed by flipping the widget with the ‘i’ in the top right corner.”

now is that brilliant or what. perfect for nefarious work avoidance.

download it here.

my my mandisa

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

on the mandisa thing, which i blogged about earlier–here’s my quick take on why she was voted out when she was.

as i see it, mandisa had two sets of hardcore fans–the ultra-religious ones who got the hints and knew she was religious, and the gay fans who loved her diva-hood.

her gay fans stuck by her when she sang a gospel song the previous week, becuase gay people in general are hyper-sensitive to bigotry and wouldn’t avoid voting for her on that basis alone. and she sang the song well. i voted for her, because i love me some gospel and she kicked butt singing the song.

her gay fans would be hypersensitive to hypocrisy as well, though. so when it came out that she was openly supportive of a known, active homophobe, her gay fans (including me) abandoned her.

and she went home. simple as that.

you could say that she went home because it was country week, and she did an abysmal job at singing the song. which she did.

but she dropped too far, too fast for it to only be a country music thing.

mandisa, darling: it’s a gay thing too.

just ask donna summer. really though, mandisa, you should have asked her before you went down the same career-wrecking road she did.

bottom line? just about everybody will tolerate a different point of view.

and just about everybody gets annoyed with hypocrisy.

mandisa, say it ain’t so

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

is american idol’s mandisa homophobic?

kirk just sent me a link to a story on the advocate’s website that outlines mandisa’s overwhelming devotion to beth moore, an anti-gay “christian” writer whose website links to ex-gay groups.

i’m not linking to ms. moore, because i’m not boosting her google rank. google her if you want.

now maybe mandisa, who i’ve voted for every single week, is not homophobic. maybe she is unaware of ms. moore’s homophobic rants, and disagrees with them.

if so, mandisa needs to clarify her views on the subject, because there’s a lot of smoke, and i don’t know if there’s a fire.

absent a clarification, though, i’m not voting for her anymore, even if she is one of my favorites. i have a feeling that a big chunk of her fan base are gay men, and she’d better get out in front of this quickly.

a really catchy tune

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

here’s a fun link: worst web design of 2005. lots of links to sites with monumentally bad design.

and i thought my site had problems.

my favorite is this one: the association of international glaucoma societies. you can even download their “glaucoma hymn”, which has to be heard to be believed.

or don’t download it, because it’s one of those annoying sites that automatically plays music in the background when you go there, so you’ll hear it anyway if you click on the link.

the “glaucoma hymn” is definitely going onto my ipod.

screwed by gates?

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

bad, bad news on this front:

microsoft windows vista will not support efi booting (intel-based macs only support booting via efi)

the new intel macs use efi to boot, and expectations were that vista would support efi to facilitate dual-booting of windows and os x. microsoft has decided to stick to their old bios scheme with 32-bit versions of vista. they may support it on the 64-bit version of vista, though they haven’t confirmed it.

the way i read this, that means that users of the new intel macs (which have a 32-bit chip) won’t be able to easily boot vista any more than they are currently able to boot xp.
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