Handbill Handout

This is the first paragraph of today’s post. Normally I would put something here that either establishes the premise or is a complete non sequitur. However, I don’t have anything to write about today so pretend this is blank. Go ahead. Pretend it’s BLANK! STOP READING! I’M SERIOUS! There, now that we got rid of that literal crowd, we can continue. Continue with today’s topic. What is today’s topic, you’re wondering, and why did you get rid of the literal crowd given that you (I) have few readers to begin with. You should be focused on maximizing the amount of people that read this. Why? Why? Because….well there is no reason, other than ego I suppose. So maybe I shouldn’t bother with maximizing my audience. I don’t serve ads so I’m not making money from this anyway. Oh, and at this point I should really be beginning to discuss the first main point of the story or essay or whatever it is I’m writing here but instead I’m distracted by an internal discussion. However let me as...

Today is my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Or rather today is the 60th anniversary of the day they got married, because legally I think they are no longer married since they are both dead. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure once you’re dead you’re single though I don’t know who came up with that rule. I mean sure, it makes sense when one partner is gone and the other is still here, but when you’re both dead are you both still single? And if you aren’t, is your “new anniversary” the death of the second partner assuming you both didn’t die on the same day? Bah, it’s all too complicated. For the purposes of this essay, let’s just assume that my parents, though dead, are still married, and that their anniversary is today, though that’s only based on hearsay since I wasn’t present at the occasion. Really all I have is their word for it. Which I hope was correct, seeing as how we have what they said was their wedding date on their headstone and boy howdy would I be embarrassed if we w...

I just finished the best book I have read in a long, long time. "The Unfortunates" by B.S. Johnson. I won't bore you with my review here, if you're interested check out a professional review instead . Today's coffee cup from the coffee cart proudly advertises Kava House, 1445 Lake Drive, East Town, Grand Rapids. "That's One Big Cup Of Mud". Looks like they're still in business; there's a review on Yelp from a couple weeks back calling Kava House "The best coffee in Grand Rapids". Guess if I ever find myself in Grand Rapids I should check it out. The bottom of the cup reveals that it was manufactured by Sweetheart in Chicago, Illinois but unlike the Canadian cup I wrote about last week there's no contact information. Stand behind your product, I say. I wonder how the hell this cup made its way to a NYC cart? There's no sensible explanation like there was for the Second Cup cup. There's no discernible seasonal theme on to...

I was streaming Bob Mould’s 1989 album “Workbook” this morning while working preparing, in a way, to see him perform most of the record along with a chunk of his new record at Joe’s Pub next week. Songs that have been leaked/previewed from Bob’s new record has gotten mixed to negative reviews on a fan e-mail list that I’ve subscribed to since 1996. Then again, the same could be said for every record he’s put out the entire time I’ve been on said mailing list. A friend of mine who is only a year or two older than I am insists, absolutely insists that the best era for rock music was in the last 1960’s to mid 1970’s and that no truly great records have been made since then. I don’t think it’s the artists. I think it’s us. It occurred to me that while there is still a whole lot of music that I enjoy, even for me it’s been seven years since a record really blew me away emotionally. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved a lot of records that have come out since then, I’ve seen some great shows...

I begin this post with yet another warning: there is a lot of abstracted, pretentious twaddle in the following. If you’re not up to dealing with it, I suggest you click out now and come back in a day or two when I might have some more humorous observations about drunks or something. Last Saturday I, along with the Mrs. and a friend of ours from Chicago had the full 20 course tour at Alinea . I wanted to write a review of the experience. Then I realized there is no point. More qualified people than I have written extensively about the place. Go on and google it and find out for yourself. Anything I would add would be redundant, superfluous, and frankly boring since I am terrible at writing about food. Instead of a review, this is a reaction to the experience. But first, we need to discuss the nature of art. (I heard that groan. Go click on this if you don’t want to hear about it). I am not an academic. I am not an art critic, food critic or any kind of critic. I am, however, a...

“A what?” “A ranker. A top 10 or 20 list” “You’re bereft of ideas” “I know” “You’ ve only been doing this for what, nine, ten months and you already don’t know what to do with it.” “Pretty much. And I just did the Facebook thing, so that’ll eat up my online time.” “How’s Facebook going to teach you how to write? How are you ever going to learn anything there?” “It isn ’t, but maybe I’ll learn how to raise Llamas for fun and profit. I hear they have farming courses there. If I can learn how to make money farming, I can quit the rat race and do something fulfilling so I won’t have to inflict myself on the unsuspecting internet anymore” “You moron, those are VIRTUAL farms. There’s nothing to be learned there.” “Oh. So why the hell am I doing it?” “A lot of your friends and family are there. If you communicate via that site you don’t have to call anyone in your family and when you’re at the curling club nobody has to talk to you and you can just watch the hockey games because th...

According to the New York Times, you can "accidentally" view the Waterfalls from the Staten Island ferry. Here are some accidental pictures taken by the Mrs. last Sunday from the Whitehall terminal and the ferry. I like the Waterfalls. An argument can be made against public art and frankly I will often make it (I think once you let the Government Man write a check for art you let him have a say in the output which is almost always a bad thing), but if it's going to exist it might as well be either interesting or nice to look at. I suppose it shouldn't rankle me so that the Times refers to the Ferry only as a place to "accidentally" view the falls. After all, as the paper of record they need to take the most conventional view of the world which is often the least helpful when it comes to art. A lot of great art is, arguably accidental. It may how light or sound is captured in a given moment or it may be purely a serendipitous juxtaposition of circumstances...

Last night I went to see The Eels. Eels are actually Mark Everett and a rotating cast of other musicians depending on how Mark (also known as E) wants to present his music on any given tour. They’ve been a rock band with a turntablist, an “orchestra” with a full horn section, a string quartet, a four piece rock band and a 3 piece punk band in prior incarnations. This tour, Eels are a duo consisting of E and “The Chet”, who is a “multi-instrumentalist” as they like to say. Between the two of them there’s guitar, drums, saw, and a few different keyboard instruments. E’s songs are happy little ditties about mental illness, suicide, serial killers, freaks and birds. So you can see how he has universal appeal and are as surprised as I am that he’s only had one big radio hit in the US and that was 12 years ago. How was the show? Fantastic, of course. But this isn’t a concert review post, no sir. Because there’s another part to E’s story that is not on your average “Rock Star” resu...