What’s The Matter With You?
A warm breeze was blowing through the East Village last night as I stumbled to the NR from Ace Bar. The city doesn’t smell like garbage… yet. It will, though, when it really heats up, when the pavement begins to soften and the air turns heavy. For now, though, the wind was a sweet, promising sign that summer’s almost here: short sleeves, long rides, cafes, picnics… and the beach.
Kevin Anthony (who produced my ‘Summer’s Gone’ Remix EP) threw a party last night in his loft on 23d Street across from the Flatiron building. Across the street, the Met Life tower — fresh out of scafolding — was gleeming white. And Kev’s joint was rockin’: he was spinning, and a friend of his, Dave (a.k.a. Bitschifter), was performing digital music through a Gameboy. And there was free booze. Kev painted his studio the color of a green apple, and got some new soundproofing and new monitors. I’m excited to get back into the studio with him. He’s good people, and does good work.
We headed down to Ace Bar (I took off my sportcoat and untucket my shirt) where Erin, Noel — who recently married her longt time punk rock boyfriend — and I proceeded to get way heavy (and maybe just a little drunk) on marriage and babies and work and truth and art and… you get the idea. It was great. I love having people in my life that I’ve known for years and years and years. There’s zero bullshit.
I started watching the Wilco doc (‘I Am Trying To Break Your Heart’) this morning — there was no way I was running, and was reminded at what an incredible lyricist Jeff Tweedy is. I mean, “I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue / I’m hiding out in the big city blinking / What was I thinking when I let go of you?” Genious. Wish it were mine.
I started to feel the creative stuff flowin’ a bit and started something — I hesitate to call it a song until it’s done — called “What’s The Matter With You?” We’ll see how it goes. It’s the second new song idea in as many days, which, after a long, dry winter, is a warm, welcome breeze all its own.
Tonight — assuming my brother’s very pregnant wife is still up for the trip — the three of us will pile into their Isuzu Trooper, point it south on the Garden State Parkway, and keep on truckin’ ’til we hit Stone Harbor, New Jersey. Sunday morning, Chris and I are competing in the Cape May Biathlon. I’m psyched. Stone Harbor means Wawa hoagies, Slurpies, and balsa wood gliders from Hoyt’s Five & Dime.
Top Five Summer Songs:
Summer Song – Buffalo Tom
American Girls – Counting Crows
Pop Song 89 – REM
Diggin’ For Fire – The Pixies
Sister Golden Hair – America
Standing On The Shoulders Of They Might Be Giants
One minute, they’re one hundred feet high and made of light. Then, just as quickly, there they were, standing just a few feet away: life-sized, all flesh, blood, and spectacles. They Might Be Giants. Right there in the East Village, just four subway stops (two local, two express) from my Hell’s Kitchen apartment. Reason number four hundred and seventy-two why I Love New York. And reason number one why I Love They Might Be Giants.
The event, of course, was the opening weekend of AJ Schnack’s documentary ‘Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns’ — a TMBG film with a Pixies’ title (love that).
Forget ‘Star Wars’ or ‘The Matrix’: bomb the queue in front of Cinema Village on East 12th and University last night, and the IQ if the East Village would drop by 25%. ‘Star Trek’ conventions would go empty. NPR would go off the air for lack of funds. Which is what’s so great about the band: you can dance to ‘em, and they’re wicked smart.
The Johns (Flansburgh and Linnell) were on hand for Q&A after the two hour love letter to one of alternative rocks’ move loveable and normal duos. Normal, that is, in context with the cultural glitterati I know and love: Mike McKeon and Harry Shearer, Frank Black, Syd Straw, Sarah Vowell, Ira Glass, McSweeney’s Dave Eggers. If ever a film was of my people, this was it. (Throw in Michael Chabon, Nick Hornsby, Michael Stipe, Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Aimee Mann, Michael Penn and Wes Anderson and I’m a pig in shit.)
And what a hoot! It was a reminder of just how foundational the band has been for DIY/CMJ rock, and for me personally: ‘Ana Ng,’ like ‘So. Central Rain,’ changed the way I heard music (both were introduced to me by my older brother, who joined me tonight at the screening). Over the years I have definately covered my fair shake of TMBG tunes: ‘Don’t Let’s Start’ was the first song Smokey Junglefrog (my college band) ever performed live. ‘Kiss Me, Son of God’ was one of our strangest. In 1994, Flansburgh was one of my first big interviews for The Saratogian (see “They Migh Be Giants: Dr. Seuss Meets Dr. Stephen J. Hawkins”). He was a peach. He was a sweety. He was game.
In tonights Q&A, both were game. On downloading music: “I don’t think a college kid wants to pay $.99 for anything” (Flansburgh). On whether or not they’d make music if they had no audience, “Yes, it would just be … quieter” (Linnell). On whether touring is more difficult as a parent, “Can I give you a one word answer for that? That word is ‘Uh’” (Linnell).
And so, tonight, I found myself moved. Inspired. Standing on the shoulders of giants — it left me warm.
The gray skies and ever-present threat of rain not withstanding, it was an excellent day in New York. The kind of day that had me saying ‘This town rules’ at least more than once. What could have promted such supurlatives, you ask? Even as the clouds swollowed entire skyscrapers whole? Simple …
A slow start. Toast, coffee, and Beth Orton. A stop into Tiffanys. Kenneth Cole. Bloomingdale’s. H&M. Cinnamon raisin cookies. More coffee. A documentary (‘Spellbound,’ more on that in a sec) in an arthouse on the East Side (very Woodie Allen). Twizzlers. Garlic and broccoli pizza at Patsy’s.
Simple, right?
‘Spellbound’ comes highly recommended. It’s the first non-festival film I’ve attended where the audience actually applauded afterwards. Right here! In bitter, cynical, unimpressed New York Fucking City! The film is that good.
You know the premise: we follow eight very different teenagers through the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. The filmmakers develop tremendous empathy in just 95 minutes. And the film raises a number of issues with a very light touch: the nature of competition, parenting, Amrican opportunity, ambition. Meanwhile, it’s hilarious! Laugh-out-loud funny. Five stars. Go see it. Have a cinnamon raisin cookie. And have a nice day.
Friday night. New York City is locked in fog and drizzle. I am alone. I’m on my fourth Grolsch. I single-handedly polished off a bag of Happy Herbert’s Low Sodium Oat Bran Pretzals. The microwaved just beeped: “Your Lean Cuisine Lemon Pepper Chicken is done, rock star.” Friday night. New York City … My life.
Not to complain. I’m healthy. I have Monday off. The Las are on the stereo. I have two tickets to “Gigantic” for Sunday night. Johns Flansbergh and Linnel will be there. As will my brother and I. Still … it’s light outside, and I’m approaching bombed.
Oh well. I have friends, nay, neighbors, in the blogosphere. Caterina. Helen Jane. Greg. Lockhart Steele. We all have big, big plans. If we could only get out from underneath these computers…
I know, I know, I’m always late to the party. Or I don’t go at all. Or I’m not even invited. Whatever. I was late to puberty. I was a late to REM, David Gray, Pete Yorn, and Queens of the Stone Age. I was late to blogging. And now I’m probably waaaay late to genious internet artist Sam Brown. But… wow!
I’ve been surfing the blogosphere alot of late, and came across Sam’s work somehow, and wow! So smart! So simple! So colorful! The good news is, he sells his work in book and t-shirt form. The bad news is, he doesn’t seem to be interested in doing album art (“I get that request at least 10 times a week,” he says). Can you imagine if he illustrated my forthcoming ‘JFK/LAX’ CD? Wow.
Anyway. I’m excited. And as soon as possible, I’m gonna’ buy a signed print and frame it. Meanwhile, things to do this weekend:
Write a song
See “Spellbound” and/or “Gigantic”
Buy new running shoes
Run 3 miles, ride 15 miles, run 3 miles (in one fell swoop: the Cape May Biathlon is next weekend)
Get a baby gift for my soon-to-be-born niece/nephew
Yesterday was an especially beautiful day in New York City. I was, of course, stuck inside, working. But I did get out before sunset, and rode up the Hudson River Park. The river was smooth and silver, like mercury. The path was clogged with really slow, really clueless dog walkers and rollerbladers and other riders without helmets (dumb). But this is New York. There are 8 million people here. One has to expect a fair quantity of idiots.
Anyway, I finally got the chance to open up a little and get some speed riding downtown along Riverside Drive. I was flying downhill at dusk (the darkest time of day, especially in sunglasses) as I approached a bus at a red light. Riverside’s two lanes — one each way — with parked cars on either side. It was a tight fit — probably a foor of clearence between my handlebars — but I went for it. As I began to thread the needle, the light changed, and the bus started moving. A sI pulled through I hollared “Wohoo!” and laughed for, like, two blocks, primarily at my own stupidity. And because I got away with it.
Other notes:
A youngish woman I didn’t recognize approached the front door of my brother’s apartment building just as I did Saturday night. I buzzed 5C and asked her, “Are you going upstairs to the party?” She stiffened, blushed, and answered, “Um, yeah.” I introduced myself, and asked her how she knew my brother Christofer and she said, “Oh! I’m going to 5D for a bachelorette party — I thought you were the talent!”
I saw ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ on Sunday morning (the best time to snag the perfect seat). It’s overly-verbose, overly-cliche (‘I love you too damn much!’), over-acted, and breaks every law the previous film established for itself, but I still liked it. I don’t have very high standards for my ten bucks, apparently. And Cornell West makes a cameo, so how bad can it be? Corporatemofo.com has an interesting reading of the film.
Overheard en route to work this morning: “Do you think birds actually understand what they’re saying?”
I saw five National Guardsmen guarding the Columbus Circle station tonight with their fingers poised on the triggers of their M16s. Eek, orange.
Finally, after five years of running New York Road Runner events, I’ve made the race photos section of the website. Phew.
Queens Half Marathon ’03
The AOL Time Warner Center glistens in the morning sun above me here on the corner of Columbus and 59th. Perched on the edge of my well-stuffed, well-used chair, I watch dog walkers and families in their weekend best scurry by through the floor to ceiling windows at the front. The City is waking. Still, two Starbucks viente milds into this Sunday morning, I can scarcely keep my eyes open.
I ran the two articles on blogging), and traipsed into Starbucks where I’d hoped to recover. Alas, the recovery is fleeting.
I know, I sound pathetic. I do hurt. But what I haven’t mentioned, and what surely hasn’t helped my sinuses, was last night’s rooftop party. My brother and his most-pregnant wife Jennifer had a bunch of friends over, including most of my faves: soon-to-be-former Brooklynites Jeff and Kristan (who I realized I’ve known for 10 years!); bike-buddy, Rosey Media frontman, and BWD supporter John Rosenblatt; my cousin Brian; comedian extraordinaire Mark Mukschler; an always jovial Pat Valez; young Jonathan Goldner (of Goldner’s Movie Corner), and many many more.
It was cool and clear on the roof of their Upper West Side apartment, the kind of late-spring evening that reminds one just how reclusive they’ve been all winter. Everyone asked how I felt about soon being an uncle (“Uncle Benjamin,” I insisted, “Not Uncle Ben”), to which I hadn’t much to say (excited? anxious?). We drank beer, laughed, and made plans for more morning rides, afternoons in the park, and nights out.
Outside the window now, a little boy runs by smiling, his arms extended in front of him like Superman. Above him, the sun climbs into the clear blue sky. Inside, I am growing quicker: less pain, less asleep. I extend my arms, and fly into this Sunday morning. Now, I know what’s happening.
No Eclipse
Outside my window, in the skies over Manhattan, the full moon is passing through the Earth’s shadow. But alas, the city is awash in clouds. There will be no eclipse here tonight.
Still, something major is afoot. I’m not sure what yet, or how it’s going to manifest. But strange and wonderful things have been happening. I’ve been going out a lot, which is strange and wonderful on its own. And I made a cool new friend the other night at the least likely of venues: the UTA party at Light. She’s an agent in L.A. who executive produced (and won an Emmy) the brilliant PBS documentary ‘American High.’ She offered me some terrific life and work advises last night over a few Grey Goose and tonics at the Hudson. We talked a lot about screenplay as a concrete form into which one pours one’s emotions and experience. And we discussed the tension between practical realities (MTV) and more risky intangiable (read: singing/songwriting or screenwriting/directing). There are so many chumps in every room, it’s always surprising, and gratifying, to meet the good ones.
Then, I get this completely unsolicited email from a writer at the Wall Street Journal. “i stumbled across the link to your site on flyertalk.com,” he wrote. “[i] dove in, and am now trying to figure it out – you’re a mileage junkie who’s also a professional musician? i have the sense you’d make a good source somehow (i’m always on the lookout for real people with unique perspectives to quote in stories), not to mention an
interesting lunch companion…” Which was nice.
I replied:
Indeed, the mileage junkie+singer/songwriter combo is even more complicated than that. more comprehensively, i am:
the director of production for mtvnews.com
a performing and recording singer/songwriter
an aspiring filmmaker
a triathlete/marathoner
a writer of journalism, fiction, and screenplays
who flies to l.a. for business every 8 weeks or so
all of which keeps me busy, challneged, and happy.
Question is, what am I gonna’ do?
Were I an avid gawker.com contributor, I would have fired off word of my Sunday triple celebrity sighting: Howard Stern on the Upper West, Jay Thomas (‘Cheers’) in Chelsea, and — clincher here — Meg Ryan in Soho. I held the door for her exiting Once Upon a Tart. She said ‘Thank you.’ Sigh. Were my wits about me, and had I not been so bombed, I might have noticed Brooke Shields at the uber-exclusive UTA party that night (I was snuck in — literally — when the bouncer wasn’t looking).
None of which really means much to me, dear reader, but demonstrates the value of getting out of one’s apartment on a Sunday. It’s been fun, though the hangover was a doozie.
It’s an exciting time. It’s gonna’ be a good summer.
I’m sitting on a dock in Tribeca, the Hudson River sloshing around below. Helicopters buzz overhead. Jets lumber slowly by en route to Laguardia. It is gray and hazy, about 65 degrees. It’s kind of a non-descript afternoon, the kind I might normally work right through without noticing, as are most of the 8 million people in New York City are doing right now. But alas, today I am not working. I am quiet. I am listening. I am watching.
This morning’s Tribeca Film Festival documentary panel held a number of pleasent surprises. For one, the reigning king of documentary, Ken Burns (‘The Civil War’), was a surprise guest. Not that the rest of the panel was shabby: Dylan, Monterey Pop, and ‘Startup.com’ documentarian and his wife Chris Hegedus were there. Full Frame Film Festival founder Nancy Buirski, Alan Raymond (‘An American Family’), and my brother’s former boss, Steve Rosenbaum, who, it ends up, produced and directed a stirring and noted doc called ‘Seven Days In September.’
The general theme of the discussion was the change — some called it a ‘revolution’ — in the documentary lanscape, specifically in technology (DV cams and FinalCut/Avid editing systems), and distribution (theatrical, IFC, Sundance, HBO, online, etc.).
Rosenbaum argued that we’re in the first 30 seconds of a whole new world for docs. “Keep your eye on things like pay-per-view, TiVo, DVD, downloads… because every one of you have a vote, every one of you has a wallet.”
He also suggested a shifting of paradigms is underway. Forget the blockbuster, he said. It doesn’t have to be about box office. As filmmaking costs comes down, and niche audiences form, new opportunities will arise.
“There will be screens in people back yards,” Pennybaker said.
The panel was generally mixed about technology and it’s ‘democratization’ of filmmaking, but completely allied on one point: the value of a good story. What makes a good story?
“It’s cliche, but I always say ‘head and heart,’” POV curator Cara Mertes said. “It needs to touch my heart, and feed my head.”
“Drama,” Raymond said.
“The most important thing is curiosity,” Pennybaker said.
And what of so-called ‘reality tv’?
“[It is] a red harring,” Burns said. “It’s all shit. Don’t even waste your breath on it.”
Again, the panel wasn’t earth-shatteringly informative, but it reinforced what I know about how to succeed with any art: persistence.
“Do it because you can’t not do it,” Mertes said.
“Find the people who are making documentaries,” Burns said. “Talk to them. I’m up here all the time talking on panels like this, teaching. Because the best thing for me to do is give it away. The people who have secrets don’t stick around very long.”
I can hear The Roots are soundschecking over my shoulder, their beats and keys echoing through the valley where the World Trade Center used to be. I used to ride my bike down here all the time and scribble notes into one of many many journals. Today I am typing on my G4. I used to babysit Rosenbaum’s son Max. Now, Max is fourteen, and Steve and his wife Pam have a 5-year-old, Maury, as well. We’ve all come so far.
The rest of the day:
‘Lustre’: Actor — and New Yorker — Victor Argo (‘Taxi Driver’) plays an aging bookie who sees the light. There were moments when I began to understand why everyone is not a filmmaker, and there were moments of true beauty.
‘The Lucky Ones’: Fame TV reporter Lorenzo sees the light. This got REALLY painful and grad studentesque at points, but I had to appreciate the filmmaker’s intentions in calling into question our culture’s celebriity worship.
In the hour and a half interem between screenings, I took a number of subways up-and-across town to Tiffanys where I did some Mother’s Day shopping. (Don’t worry, she never reads The Daily Journal.)
Finally, I was pleased and surprised in who I ran into at the festival. In addition to Steve and Pam, I saw an old co-worker (“‘Crash Site’ is my favorite song,” she said, God bless her) Sarah who was volunteering, and another former MTVer who is now in the doc acquisition business. It was cool. I gotta’ get out more.
