simmons: "the notion is if you're going to welcome me with open arms you also have to welcome me with open legs."
gross: "that's a really obnoxious thing to say."
simmons: "no, it's not. why should i say something behind your back that i can't tell you to your face?"
at one point, gross asked simmons about his "studded codpiece."
simmons: "it holds my manhood, otherwise it would be too much for you to take. you'd have to put the book down and confront life."
- gene simmons on fresh air with teri gross, courtesy of danieltaub.com (to put in my two cents, i don't think teri gross is boring, but that photo! get thee to a stylist!)
27 august 2002
i started this entry on the 27th, but now it's the 28th and i don't remember anything important happening to me yesterday (today). the closest record store to the office was sam goody in the skanky manhattan mall, so i made a special trip there to get the just-released coldplay album. remember when albums came out and you hadn't already heard every track in mp3s? it was still exciting, though, and the sequence gets it right, with "amsterdam"'s long buildup and huge payoff perfectly ending the album. after work i rode the ole stationary bike and then indulged a rare craving for steak. the waitress started off frosty and ended sweet and bubbly, even giving us free chardonnay and cote du rhone glasses. and then a walk around a few blocks, scoping out apartment buildings, discussing the pros and cons of avenue c.
25 august 2002
sometimes you have no desire to leave the house until 1:30am and then you're glad you live in a happening neighborhood where you can roll out and into dancing bacchanalia in five minutes flat. and then run into two good friends—one ivy league lit prof just back from alaska at the door and one college buddy dancing and romancing in the back. we shook it in front of the dj sharee booth for a few minutes (hopefully looking nothing like uma thurman post-screwdriver in hysterical blindness tonight) and a clubkid gave us passes to opaline around the corner. we went and stood around puzzled. i think i said, i don't know what's going on here; it was all liminalish and neither here nor there and some straights and some gays and some busted drag queens and then i realized what it was really like was the club in queer as folk that every schlocky episode ends in, and then i knew i had to get out of there, fast.
my whole body ached in the morning—what is it about staying up late that makes your body hurt the morning after? lately only the gym makes me feel better, which is a good thing i guess. oh, and buying things. happiness is a vintage purple lacoste for a few bucks that i don't have to wait to arrive via ebay.
24 august 2002
i woke up this morning at 8 with a guy scaling the tree outside my window. covered myself up quickly and then the buzzsawing sounds started. went to the farmer's market and i always get too much stuff there, so that my arms are worn out by the time i get home, but hopefully it builds up my puny forearms just a little bit more. now the neighborhood is woken up and it looks like half of nyu has arrived to their dorms in the east village with their parents and don't forget, their fucking foosball tables. someone's moving into my building but i don't see them, just the moving guys and hear something crash in the hallway. the tree trimmers are still doing their thing—looks like they're taking old branches off. i make free-range brown eggs scrambled with scallions and this awesome smoked cheddar from the market, puree a ripe, sweet smelling cantaloupe into a glass, brew some coffee, and slice a yellow heirloom. mmm mmm good. surf a little bit: nytimes, isthatso?, moviefone. it's 11:50. can i make it to the noon showing of xxx? yes, but i missed some of the opening, but i also missed all the preview and commercials which almost makes it worth it. last week after seeing blue crush i wanted to be a slacker surfer boy, now i wanna be a secret agent. i still feel losery/illusory seeing a movie by myself on a weekend night, but when you go during the day, everyone is seeing them by themselves, and none of them laugh at the wrong time or applaud after the good guy wins the fight, which is all good.
and then
i find
just the right thing
23 august 2002
it's technically the 23rd, but at 3am
"there's so many things i could say, but i just can't get them together."
- dj shadow, "letter from home," the private press
in camera lucida, his classic work on photography, roland barthes discusses an element he calls the "punctum," the detail that pierces the frozen surface of the photograph to provoke an unexpected emotional response . . . the punctum itself can never be the subject of the photograph—by definition, it's superfluous, excessive, supplementary. the punctum sees barthes at his most maddeningly abstruse; it's not a concept you can necessarily use as part of an efficient interpretive strategy. as an arrow for your theoretical quiver, it seems bound to go wide of the mark every time.
and yet. something about the concept seems particularly apt when discussing music—especially sampled music, which is so rich with layers, connotations, and untimely debris.
it carries a surprising emotional weight; in leaving unsaid more than it makes clear, the woman's tale conveys a powerful suggestion of mystery. the sense of history is strong: the woman's voice identifies her as, most likely, african american, and her skeletal tale of family and migration speaks quietly to the history of african americans in the bay area during the post-war years—a vital and under-explored pre-history to hip-hop. but the punctum that rends it all—and this is what i like to believe shadow heard as well—is the weird twinge to the woman's voice, caught somewhere between joy and grief. when she says, "there's so many things i could say, but i just can't get them together," you can hear her voice breaking with an overwhelming love.
- philip sherburne, music review, neumu
22 august 2002
when you're pedaling for twenty minutes and don't want to gawk at the guys beside you, you need something good to read. i was rifling through the stacks of maxim and creatinemuscle & fitnessanabolics, and the manager saw, so he offered me a spanking fresh issue of american cheerleader. i thanked him and switched it for martha stewart living while he wasn't looking. let 'em wonder.
20 august 2002
as a work offsite, i went kayaking on the open sea, er, hudson river, today (the right job can give you a semblance of a energetic, interesting life to onlookers). the instructors assured us that the water was safe, but we saw a totally obliviated pigeon and several latex gloves that made us cynical new york bastards think otherwise. the kayaking was fun, though—beautiful, sunny but not too hot weather (that gave me a healthy glow that's rapidly becoming sunburn), and if you didn't focus on it too much the water felt great. now i'm sitting in my landlocked third-floor apartment and it feels like it's swaying—or is that because i'm hearing the wavy ending of in limbo?
19 august 2002
i procrastinated on a presentation all last week, and so today i ended up at the office at 7:30am to finish it. i don't remember anything about the trip this morning—usually i at least remember something i saw on the walk out of the subway stairs or on the platform, but not today. that cranberries song would've been playing in the movie version.
three (strong) coffees and urinal excursions apiece later, i was, naturally, smashing. and then my boss's boss comped me a free day for working hard, which was cool.
after four hours of meetings and then a regular day at the cubicle, i should know that two coronas is too many. but two coronas i nursed, with my buddy emerson (back from the ole conservatoire dayz) at barracuda. we caught up on jobs, apartment hunting, recent breakups (both of us), grad school musings, and all that. it was nice, and the bar cooperated for once by being not too crowded and not too smoky. then i staggered into a cab and now i'm going to sleep sleep sleep.