My Ear Is Sore

Everything old is new again.

2010-08-13T21:16:00.000-04:00

I'll leave this blog up because, well, why not.

But it won't likely see much activity.

Instead, this will.

I like it better there.

Maybe the last post?

2010-08-09T19:20:00.000-04:00

I have a new website in the works. It's a better lay out, it's a direct url, and it's way more customizable than this clunky interface. It's also way more photo-friendly and much faster to load in that regard. It will allow me to do a lot more and personalize things considerably and hopefully provide more interesting content to a larger range of people.

It's also not quite ready yet. Well, that's not entirely true, it's almost ready, but I am having odd DNS related issues with the host right now that need to be sorted out. It also needs more content. But it's getting there.

Exploring Camp Hero in Montauk, Long Island.

2010-08-01T12:11:00.002-04:00

So some recent message board activity got me thinking about Montauk again last week. The missus and I have gone out once a year for the last few years and just sort of goofed around, checked out the lighthouse and the beaches and stuff. I'd seen the radar tower a few times and been interested in it but it didn't really seem like you'd be able to get that close to it.

At any rate, I decided yesterday on sort of a whim that we should go check out Camp Hero. If you're not familiar with the Montauk Project and the various conspiracy theories click here. There are some pretty bizarre theories about this place and while I can't say I believe them all, I can say that the place has got a very strange vibe to it. For a huge state park such as this, it was very empty, and this was on a beautiful sunny afternoon in late July when it should have been packed with tourists and fishermen.

So yeah, we drove out there, through the stupid Hamptons with all their snobs and bad traffic, to check out the park. At first we turned down Camp Hero Rd., figuring that it had to be the main entrance. We found this:

Not very welcoming. Oops! Wrong way. So we went back down Hwy 27 a mile or so and found the actual main entrance, drove to the bluff, and parked there. From there, we started walking down the trails that go along the coast line, heading up the hill towards the radar tower.

All along the trails are signs and flyers warning you not to go off the trails due to unexploded ordnance. Not wanting to explode, we stayed on the trails. There are a lot of barbed wire fences all throughout the woods as well, which is another good reason not to go too far into them, as many of them are very low to the ground and it would not be difficult to get snagged or cut on these.

As we headed up the hill, we came across this odd little building kind of in the middle of nowhere, away from the other installations.

We walked around the building to check it out. Seemed fairly simple, just a brick structure left unattended. Obviously it had something to do with the base but who knows what. Storage maybe? Maintenance? I dunno.

See that blue door? It opened just enough that I was able to get the camera lens inside.

Kind of weird. Evidently someone named Bolt had been in there tagging stuff. It gets very dark towards the opposite side of the building and as you walk around it it's hard not to notice that it was built without any windows towards the back, though it looks like there were some on the front which were bricked up. I suspect, based on the structure, that it had a lower level but couldn't tell for sure.

OK, so back on the trail we went, heading up (west) towards the radar tower buildings. Interesting warnings painted on the road, and old boarded up buildings that look like they might have been for guards at one point back when it was in use.

The radar building itself is pretty massive. You can't get very close to it (this way, at least) and while it wouldn't be hard to get over the fence, that's not going to go over well with the patrols that are very obviously in the area. There are park ranger types periodically zipping by in trucks, which is fine and all, and then there are planes. Which is weird.

There was a plane that had two propellers, not a massive plane but one that was big enough that you could hear and see it from the ground, that kept circling the area. We must have seen that thing five times in the two hours we were there. Now, it might not be a surveillance plane, but then again it might be, so we opted to err on the side of caution and not get into any trouble.

At any rate, the radar tower in all its sun bleached glory:

We realized afterwards that you can actually drive right up to the gate, which probably would have been easier than hiking up the hill in the dirt like we did, but it was actually a really cool walk and you definitely got a feel for how thick the woods are in the area and how remote this stuff really is. You wouldn't have got that experience driving.

From there, it's a quick walk over to the battery dunn installation. It's all covered up with massive concrete slabs and bricks. There were spots where it looked like people had tried to break through but it wouldn't be easy without some sort of jackhammer or something. And I'm pretty sure that if you started jackhammering the structure you'd get into trouble. It's pretty neat though. There are a few entrances to it and if you find the little path, you can climb up on top. I was hoping when I did that there might be a secret entrance to it or something, but no dice. It does bring you up to the 'awning' though if you wanted to stand on that for some reason. Apparently some people did, based on the graffiti tags.

Right in front of the battery dunn are a few covered up vents or shafts that indicate something is probably underneath it.

This is where a lot of conspiracy theorist types speculate that the experiments took place, underground near the tower and near the battery dunn. It seems obvious that something is under there, but whether or not it has anything to do with mind control, time travel or electromagnetic fields is anyone's guess. It's probably just old tunnels and stuff and they probably don't want people going down there because it's dangerous. It's fun to think about these things though.

That plane I mentioned? I got two shots of it, taken about half an hour apart:

These were taken with a basic 55mm lens, not any sort of zoom lens. So you can see that he was staying pretty close to the ground. You do definitely get the feeling that you're being watched while you explore the grounds, though that could have been all internal paranoia on my part.

After that we headed back to the car. I knew there were other buildings around that I wanted to check out and figured out what road they were off of, so we headed in that direction. After driving around the other side of the battery dunn we came across this:

And then I noticed that there was a little trail beside that building and wondered where it went.

As you go up the trail and around the back of that building, you'll see a window. Well, the window had been pulled out by some adventurous sorts and you could, with a little bit of leg work, hop right into the building. I didn't do that. That would be illegal. But I did take pictures through the opening.

On the right hand side of the trail was another building, and you can't really tell from the road but from the back/side area where the steps are, you can see that it's been busted wide open, possibly from a fire, possibly just from decay and weather.

Now, if you were brave and/or stupid, you could easily hop right into this building as the wall is completely missing in this part of the structure. I opted not to do that, as not only would it be illegal it would also probably be pretty dangerous. There was a lot of broken glass and wood and metal down there and to get in, you'd have to hop down as much of the building is below ground level.

I did, however, take some pictures:

Getting back to that little trail/stairs thing I mentioned earlier - if you follow it past those two structures into the brush a bit, you'll come to a fence. It seems like a curious place to put a fence at first, but it is definitely a fence and we all know you shouldn't climb fences. This fence, however, had a big hole in it.

Now I would never climb through a hole in the fence. That would be dangerous and considered to be trespassing. I would also never recommend anyone do something like that, instead, I would insist that if they wanted to explore that area they simply stick the camera through the whole in the fence and hope that you get interesting pictures.

They might look something like these. Maybe you would, completely by chance, get a shot of another shaft of some sort that again indicates an underground structure of some sort.

Or maybe you'd get some shots of some more random concrete buildings surrounded by brush.

Or maybe you'd see a really creepy looking building with brush and trees in front of it and a boarded up door.

And maybe, if you started paying attention, you'd realize that you just walked into the radar tower complex area from the opposite side, the one that was fenced off with all of those big 'NO TRESPASSING' signs and all the barbed wire. You might just look up and realize how close you were to the tower, that you were more or less standing about 30ft away from it.

If that were to happen, at that point you might hear that suspicious plane again, and have a mini freak out and think you were being watched committing a criminal act. Supposing that you did do that and have that experience, you might just then run through the brush, cut your leg up, and then hop into the car where you wife, who is generally smarter about these things than you are, was waiting.

Of course, this is all hypothetical. I can't rightly say what would really happen if you went through the fence or what you'd really find.

If you drive around some more there are more interesting buildings, all sort of in one area. Here's what I think might have been a chapel or church of some sort.

Then there's another, larger building, that from what I've read online may have been a bowling alley while the base was in use. It's not much from the front but it has a weird parking lot behind it. If you drive into the parking lot (if you don't have four wheel drive it might not be a good idea because it's very rocky and it's got a lot of big holes in it) you'll see this weird entrance.

If you look closely, someone has put Audrey Hepburn stickers on it. I don't know why.

Camp Hero is weird. It would be interesting to find out if there's any truth to any of the conspiracy theories surrounding it.
Anyway, after that we left and went to get Mexican food. The end.

This blog is way out of date.

2010-07-27T23:04:00.000-04:00

Hey, have you ever wanted to see me get beaten by strange people under the Coney Island pier? What's that? You have, but only if it involes a strange woman in Islamic garb and a guy named Derek hitting me with shoes? Well then have I got the movie for you.

Click here.

I was suppose to be an extra but the 'victim' didn't show up, so I wound up getting my ass dragged across the sand while old Jewish sunbathers watched in confusion. No permits, no plot, no shooting script. Just... I dunno. It's kinda weird. haha.

I love New York In The Spring.

2010-05-30T10:07:00.000-04:00

We spent a good part of last weekend just wandering around. This was after the Agnostic Front show on Friday, which was great despite getting shut down early so that the venue could let in a a bunch of obnoxious club kids and turn the concert venue into a dance club. But whatever. They played the entire Victim In Pain album from start to finish and then played what was basically a 'greatest hits' set after that. Good stuff.

But yeah, last Saturday we just wandered around The Village, then yesterday we did more of the same. Started in Chelsea, stopped at our favorite lebian run airplane bar for beers and chips & salsa, then wandered down Greenwhich Avenue, stopping here and to check out stores or rest for a bit. Met up with Horace later at Manitoba's, scored the AC/DC Bonfire boxed set used for $5.00 and just generally goofed around all day. On the way home we did our good deed and helped a hippy lady from California and her son, who were completely and ridiculously lost and just sort of randomly riding the subway in hopes that they'd find their destination somehow, some way.

Next weekend is my birthday. Our friend Todd is coming down from Maine and we're going to see this (video contains nudity, bad language, violence and bad acting):

To say I'm excited would be an understatement. Duke's Massacre Mafia Style, his first film, is a personal favorite of mine and I've wanted to see Gone With The Pope since it was announced about ten years ago.

Spring has sprung....

2010-05-11T21:21:00.002-04:00

...and while we're in a bit of a cold snap right now NYC couldn't be better than it is in the spring, except maybe in the fall. Life is good right now. A well timed raise kicked in last month and made life better and Alison got me tickets for the Agnostic Front show in Long Island at the end of the month as an early birthday gift. I can't believe that in less than a month I officially round up to 40. Damn.

In other news, I got a new phone. It's internet enabled and capable of all sorts of neat stuff that I won't pay extra for, so really, it's a lot like my old phone but it's got a touch screen and a better camera. It took me a few days to figure it out. I'm not sure if phones are getting more complicated or I'm getting older and therefore less technologically inclined. I'm pretty sure it's the first option, but not positive. It could be a bit of both.

The Cobra Skulls show a few weeks back was excellent, though again, they played too short a set. I got to have beer with the band before hand which was cool. Very nice, down to earth guys who appreciate their fans which is always nice to see. I keep preaching about this band but really, they're the best thing to happen to left leaning punk rock in a long long time. Smart lyrics, catchy songs, and a great stage presence with loads of energy. They just got signed to Fat Wreck, so see them now and you can tell people 'I saw them when...'

It's good to have movies like Rock N Roll High School, Django, City Of The Living Dead and 36th Chamber Of Shaolin on Blu-ray.

That is all.

Spring has sprung!

2010-04-11T17:58:00.000-04:00

The weather has been fantastic lately and there's nothing like New York in the spring time. At the time of this writing I just got in from walking the dog around the block and decided, in honor of the lovely weather, to walk a bit farther than usual just because. It also gave me a chance to make sure my car was where I left it. I've stopped paying for the garage that I was parking in and have instead decided to street park. So far it's not really been a problem though somehow the plastic over my rear tail light got smashed. I can't say for sure that it didn't happen while I was parked outside of work (a much rougher neighborhood than the one we live on) or while I was on the highway, but at this point, I just accept that random crappy car related things will happen to me a few times a year. It's always been this way, so why fight it.

We went to the Gotham Girls Roller Derby season opener last night. The first match was the Buffalo league's all star team Vs. the Manhattan team, the Wall Street Traitors (such an appropriate name). Buffalo destroyed them. The second bout was the Maryland All Star team Vs. The Gotham City Roller Girls All Star team. This time NYC came out on top and mopped the floor with the visitors. At any rate, it was a fun night out despite a crappy overpriced dinner at Applebees (should have known better - never again!).

Two weeks prior we went to the Rangers game at MSG. Alison surprised me with great seats and it was fun to watch them shut out the Islanders. Lots of good old fashioned hockey fights too. This is more live sports events in the last month than in the ten years prior, but whatever. I still hate jocks!

Next weekend we make the quartler trek back to the Great White North. Gonna hang out with family and friends and hopefully have a good time. It's another quick weekend visit, though this summer, now that I have some actual vacation time, we're going to go to Huntsville for a few days and actually (hopefully) be able to relax a bit. We might even bring the dog along.

Other than that, life goes on without any major drama. Work continues to go well and I got a nice (and very welcome) raise last week that actually puts me just over what I was making at my last job. I could still probably be making more than I am but we're getting by and more importantly than anything else, I like what I do and I like who I work with. I'm thankful for that and will take that over money so long as I can get by, and I can. I see what a lot of other people are dealing with these days and am very happy with what I have in life. Sure, a bigger apartment would be nice, but that issue aside, I don't honestly have much to justifiably complain about and I don't know many people who can say that.

The Cobra Skulls come through town on 4/27 so we're going to check out that show at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. I'm looking forward seeing them headline this time as the last time I saw them they only got 20 minutes to play, which was way too short.

Marriage continues to be amazing and Django comes out on Blu-ray soon.

Life is good.

To Gettysburg and back again!

2010-02-24T14:38:00.001-05:00

Some pictures from our trip to Gettysburg from Valentines Day weekend. Lots of snow, and graves and monuments. Some steak, some beers, a ghost tour that didn't produce anything that couldn't be explained (more or less) and a nice drive around the area.

Fun.

Fire is scary. For real.

2010-02-15T10:58:00.001-05:00

So just as Alison and I were getting ready to go to Gettysburg for a romantic Valentine's Day weekend of Civil War history, ghosts, steak, beer and a lot more snow than I've seen since I left Canada, she realizes she's forgotten her wedding ring. I pull up across the street from our apartment, and holy crap, the liquor store right beside me has smoke coming out of it. It's not open yet, but smoke is pouring out of the building.

The FDNY get on the scene far faster than should be humanly possible and, once I got my car out of the way, I took the camera out (it was handy as we were going on vacation so of course I had it with me) and just started shooting.

Here are the results, uncropped, untouched. Once I have a bit of time to go through them and fix'em up I might repost some but for now, here you go:

No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn...

2010-01-30T16:55:00.000-05:00

...or Queens as it were. Alison's son was in the hospital for a few days this week, gave us all a bit of a scare when he couldn't really move his neck and stopped eating. Turns out he had a bacterial abcess in his throat and a few days in bed on an IV drip full of top quality drugs more or less cleared it up. He got out this morning and while hardly on top of the world, he's doing much better.

That made for a stressful week in a few ways. Obviously seeing a kid you care about in a hospital bed is tough in any way, but there are other layers that spring from a situation like this. Alison wound up missing three days of work this week and while her employers were gracious and understanding enough that's still always a source of stress in the back of your mind. She spent the nights at the hospital, which lead to your's truly going into bachelor mode for a while, and coming to the realization that sleeping alone when you're happily married and used to having someone there with you is... weird. I don't consider myself the co-dependent type, but this was the first time I'd ever been alone overnight in the apartment in the two plus years I've lived here and it was odd. I didn't sleep very soundly and kind of went into an odd funk because of it. Nothing serious or really all that harsh, just kind of odd, I wasn't my normal chipper self. Thankfully things are back to normal now. The late night phone calls, text messages and alarm clocks lead to some really restless nights and a rough work week (having nothing to do with my position or performance) was really taking its toll on me come Friday night where I more or less hit my grumpy peak.

Escapism is good then, right? Distractions and all that? A Swingin' Utters tribute CD comes out mid-Feb featuring new tracks the Teenage Bottlerocket, The Street Dogs (very fitting) and The Cobra Skulls. This makes me happy. As does a box that arrived from Amazon.co.uk the other day containing Blu-ray's of Suspiria (amazing sound, screwy contrast that mars an otherwise excellent presentation), Von Trier's Antichrist, and Martyrs - none of which are available domestically or in region free imprt versions making me happy with the Momitsu region free player we invested in last year. We also really enjoyed Pontypool recently, a fantastic exercise in atmosphere over style and gore by Bruce McDonald, the director best known in America for Hardcore Logo but who will always be near and dear to my heart for Highway 61, Roadkill and the short lived CBC television series, Twitch City. Those who dig their horror on the smart side and who don't require jump scares or buckets of entrails ought to enjoy this really and truly original work (go Canada go!).

Last weekend before her son took ill, Alison and I went to Chinatown to buy Shaw Brothers stuff. We grabbed Intimate Confessions of A Chinese Courtesan and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, the later to satisfy her current but well deserved Gordon Liu obsession. I also grabbed Johnnie To's latest, Vengeance, on BD. Haven't watch it yet, but I plan on getting to it soon. Some day I'll have spare time. I keep telling myself this. Now that things are a bit calmer than they were, I think she and I are going to go out for steaks. Just as soon as she wakes up from a well earned nap.

Stuff I've watched, seen and listened to.

2010-01-07T20:53:00.000-05:00

So last night I watched I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell , based on Tucker Max's book of the same. Rare is the film that makes me want to punch my screen, particularly when it's got beer, nudity and potty humor galore in it, but this one did it. The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I got and while I think I did a pretty good job of explaining why this movie was a waste of film on my DVD Talk review, a day later I'm still annoyed that I wasted an hour and forty minutes on it. It wasn't offensive (well I'm sure a lot of people would disagree, but I don't really get offended, per se), it was just stupid. I can deal with offensive if it entertains me, and I can deal with stupid if it entertains me, but this film, after the 'wow did he really just say that?' factor wears off is actually really dull. On top of that, the requisite redemption that the central character seemingly has to find at the end of movies like these is about as subtle and natural as a kick to the nuts.

I hated that movie.

Thankfully, I'm still reeling from the BLISS that is Boogie Nights in full HD quality thanks to the new Blu-ray release. Alison and I watched it together (how romantic!) a week or so ago and it's a picture that holds up well. Knowing more about John Holmes rise and fall now than I did the first (and until last week only) time I'd seen it about ten years ago added to the experience, even if it's not a bio-pic rather than a loosely connected of events that may or may not have ever happened in the adult film industry of the late seventies. Seeing it in HD really brings home how well photographed it is and the sound mix in uncompressed DTS-HD really is a thing of beauty if you've got a receiver that can decode it properly. The film is still an odd mix of celebrating the sexual liberation movement, expose of the perils of the porno industry and heady character piece all rolled into one and there's not a bad performance anywhere to be found. Burt Reynolds should have won an Oscar for this one.

So what else have we done aside from watching movies? I bought some CDs. The new Agnostic Front Victim In Pain remaster is great because it's got the previously very hard to find United Blood EP on it, available for the first time since the vinyle went out of print over twenty years ago. What else did I grab... the remastered Cro-Mags Age Of Quarrel CD is really good and a couple of older Forced Reality CDs look good on my shelf. I also wound up with a few Iggy Pop 'BONK' releases, odd obscure Stooges era material that never wound up getting officially released in its day. Raw, rough and sleazy as sleazy can be its pretty good stuff.

We saw the Street Dogs in late December do a Christmas show with Stigma and Miret & The Disasters opening. We saw the Street Dogs a year or so ago in Long Island but as good as that show was, this one trumped it. We watched most of the show from the balcony, I'm too old for moshpits, especially when there are oodles of skinheads flailing around, but I did go up front a couple of times. When the Street Dogs did their encore I was on the floor and as I helped some poor drunken fool try to find something he'd dropped after getting clocked by some jackass I happened to look up just as Mike McColgan was jumping off the stage into the crowd. He more or less landed on my head. All's well that ends well, however, and it was cool to shake his hand and thank him after the show. He was out hugging everyone and hanging out with anyone who wanted to talk after the show, which was nice to see. The band is starting to get pretty big, at least by the standards of the genre, and it'd be easy for success to go to his head. It doesn't seem to have, he still seems down to earth and approachable and just a nice, normal guy. They played a few new tracks at the show and it sounds like they're going back to the faster, harder sound of the earlier first two albums, which isn't a bad thing even if I personally really like the more Pogues-ish and Clash influences that have popped up in the newer stuff.

Christmas and New Years were pretty mellow and uneventful and I'm glad the Holiday related chaos if over, even if we did have a really good trip to Canada this time around. Alison was a trooper and didn't complain as we trudged through Toronto on a cold day to take Patrick & Brenden record shopping. They had a blast and it was a good day for all of us. Seeing Mom, Doug, Dad and G&G Jane was great as well. As usual, it was too short, but being with driving distance has been a good thing and ensured more frequent (and affordable!) visits will be a constant.

Aside from that, there's a neat little documentary project in the fetal stages of development. It won't make me any money, but it'll be interesting to work on if it happens. I should know more in the next three weeks. I'll be shooting it, editing it, and directing it. I'm not entirely sure if it'll be a short or closer to feature length but the beauty of doing it all digitally and all myself is that even if it'll be rough around the edges, it won't cost me much, aside from time and maybe a few tanks of gas. If it comes to fruition, it could wind up being a real treat for exploitation and trash movie fans, particularly those with an affection for the Times Square scene of the late sixties through the early eighties - the pre-Disnification of NYC's sleazy soul. More details as I can make them available. For now, it's a very, very likely project but it's not firm. Until it is, I will say no more.

And in the same vein as my last post...

2009-12-08T21:26:00.000-05:00

...I got a ticket in the mail yesterday for $50.00. It seems I ran a red light in Brooklyn a month ago and photo radar busted me. I don't remember doing it and try to drive responsibly, but the pictures don't lie, and they included the pictures with the ticket, which was quite kind of them.

So yeah, over the last two weeks.... almost $300 in window repairs, $45 for parking on the wrong side of the damn street and $50 for running a red light. Guess that quick trip to GA we were hoping to take at the end of the month is off, because after those expenses, various birthday gifts for wife, mother and son, and then Christas gifts... I'm plum out of money until January. I've got enough to make it all work, which I'm thankful for, as many don't, but yeah, the extra I was planning to use for the trip is now depleted.

There'll be other trips, and timing wise it's a horrible time at work for me to be away as we're in the middle of massive projects that I'm quite involved in, but it's still a bummer.

The good news is, the money I set aside for this weekend's commando run to the great white north is still intact. I'm looking forward to that, even if it'll be hectic and rushed and a lot of driving.

This last weekend we went and saw Toxic Avenger: The Musical in honor of Alison's birthday on Sat. and this is one of those cases where you can believe the hype - it's one of the funniest live theater productions I've ever seen and very much in the spirit of the movie that inspired it. We had a blast with that. The next night we went and saw the 4th Annual Twisted Sister Twisted Christmas on Broadway show, which despite starting two hours later than it was supposed to, was equally impressive and loads of fun.

That's about it for now.

Sometimes I do unintelligent things.

2009-12-03T22:18:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday I was sure that it was Wednesday, so I parked on the East side of the street. But it wasn't Wednesday, it was Tuesday, so I got a $45 parking ticket. When I saw the ticket, I paid it online immediately even though I had sixty days to do it. Because of that, without thinking, I put my checking account into overdraft and got hit with a $30 charge.

Last week I went into a Kosher pizza joint around the corner from my office and got confused when I asked for a slice of pepperoni and got glared at. A few days prior to that and I forgot my mother's birthday. Sort of. I got her a gift, but forgot to call her or send it to her. I blame last week's window breaking incident for distracting me but I still felt bad.

Yesterday instead of using the ramp at work to slide a box from the mezzanine level to the ground level in our warehouse I decided to carry it, forgetting that the stairs are narrow. I hit the wall with the box, my hand in between the two, and now have a nice pair of bloody and potentially scarred fingers to show for it.

On the bright side I have a glass of red wine and a Klaus Kinski movie going on right now. My wife kicks ass and despite my periodic scurmishes with stupidity, I like life. So it's not all bad, but yeah, this was kind of a week of odd little mental boners on my part.

You get the good with the bad....

2009-11-25T19:27:00.000-05:00

Last weekend we went and saw the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular. Now, I'm not normally one for Christmas Spectaculars, but Alison's mom wanted to take us and I'd never been to Radio City before and thought that it was a very nice gesture of her to offer, so we all took the train into the city to check it out. The building was beautiful despite the blatant corporate sponsorship (Capital One, do you really need that many logos all over the place?). The show? I was able to enjoy it on a techincal level. The Rockettes, aside from being a bunch of well put together gals, perform with such amazing synchronicity that they're almost like robots. To have to wear those incredibly fake smiles plastered across your face for ninety minutes straight while kicking your legs over your head a few hundred times can't be easy. You've got to respect the training and coordination that goes into putting something like that on - it wasn't necessarily something I need to see again but I'm glad I went once to experience a bit of New York's history and tradition. And after that the mom-in-law took us out for delicious hamburgers, so it was a win in.

So after work last night I found that some kind soul had not only dumped a bag of dirtclods and rocks on the hood of my car, but they'd also had the good sense to toss a big block of wood through the rear panel window of my car while I was in the office. This rear panel of glass is curved and tinted and is also the most expensive piece of glass on the car. I had it fixed today for the princely sum of $277.22 after taxes. Bastard vandals. There was nothing in the car to take, someone just did it for the sake of doing it.

I made up for that last night by going to see the Pixies at the Hammersmith Ballroom in Manhattan. Gorgeous venue, great show, wonderful sound. I'd never seen them live before and watching them it was like having a wave of sound push you. It was almost surreal.

A few low quality camera phone pictures...

Aside from paying for broken cars and checking out overpriced 90s college rock bands (who played the entire Doolittle album from start to finish along with all of the b-sides before mixing it up with a bunch of other material for the two encores), not much else is new. Married life is still good. Tolch is coming this weekend to visit and we're going to have an early birthday party for Alison. The weekend after I'm taking her to the Twisted Sister Christmas show again, then the week after that we're heading back to Canada for a quick visit. The weekend after that we have the Street Dogs/Stigma/Roger Miret show. And then before you know it, it's Christmas. This'll be a busy month coming up for sure, but tonight I think I'm just going to eat Chinese food in my underwear and hang out with my wife and watch movies. There's something to be said for turning off your brain every once in a while.

Gambling, Punk Rock, Stoner Rap... and marriage!

2009-10-29T21:10:00.000-04:00

So the marriage certificate arrived the other day. Alison and I are officially husband and wife. It'll take a while to get used to the ring, but it feels good. It feels right. More real, I guess, more official. We'd always said we didn't need to get married and that it wouldn't change things, but it definitely has, and all for the better. Life just feels more solid right now and I know we've done the right thing. I couldn't be happier, really. Sure, life can still be complicated and yeah my back is sore from working in the warehouse today and okay, fine, my credit card bills could be lower than they are but these are minor things, things I can't really be bothered to fret over. Not to say I intend to shirk responsibility in these matters, only to say that money's only money and my back will be fine after a good night's sleep.

But yeah, the wedding was perfect in pretty much every way. I've talked about it elsewhere and don't know that I need to repeat myself at this point but it went off even better than I think either of us imagined. Noland did a really great job on the ceremony, treating it all with the right amount of respect but never coming across as stuff or dulll, while Mr. Miller's guitar playing was entirely appropriate and beautiful in its own goofy way. Alison looked stunningly beautiful and she continues to remind me daily how lucky I am to have her. I'd have liked to have seen more family there from my side, but not everyone can afford to travel and some of those who can afford it just can't do it. Period. So obviously there are no hard feelings there, even if there is a tinge of sadness about it.

So after the wedding she and I went to Atlantic City to see Social Distortion. This was my seventh time seeing them, having been a fan since I was twelve or thirteen, and it was the best show I'd seen in quite some time from them. Mike Ness seems content to play in a rock and roll band now rather than a punk band, and while the merch booth was expensive and far too extensive, at least they didn't play Antifashion and make hypocrites of themselves. Mike's not getting any younger and at this point in the game I can't begrudge him making some money off of the name so long as he keeps putting out good music and putting on good shows and so far he has. Which is good, cause tattoos don't come off all that easily.

The morning after we decided to gamble $20 each and at the first slot I played I left with $965.50, at which point I decided to call it quits for the day. We had a nice dinner and wandered around and under the boardwalk, saw some sights, encountered a weird guy drinking Busch light and watched idiotic surfers catch mediocre waves in really cold temperatures. AC was neat. It's like Coney Island and Vegas rolled in to one. Just be careful where you go, cause parts of it are obviously tough.

A few days after the wedding Teenage Bottlerocket came into town with The Cobra Skulls supporting. It was an early show, I got there just as the Cobra Skulls were going on. Alison, sadly, missed them. They were great. High enegry, agreeable left leaning political rants, great guitar riffs and just a really solid bounciness to them. I talked to the guitar player and the vocalist briefly after the show simply because I wanted to tell them how much I appreciated their music lately. I also felt really old, the only guy over thirty pogoing up front in a see of teenagers. But whatever. Teenage Bottlerocket came on next and we opted to sit at the bar and watch from afar not because it was a rough crowd but because we were tired. They put on a solid show too, and ignored my hollaring at them to 'PLAY A LILLINGTONS SONG!' They did do a cover of Poison's 'Talk Dirty To Me' that was pretty funny, so I guess that counts for something.

Last week I won tickets from a radio station webstite to the Cypress Hill show in Times Square. I still get a kick out of them even if I'm not into weed and their glory days are behind them. We're going to go check it out, cause why not, it's free. If we're bombared with second hand smoke or don't like the environment we can always leave and not have to worry about having wasted money. I think it'll be fun.

Other than that, Halloween is on Sat. and Jackson Heights always has a good Halloween parade where all the kids dress up and cruise up and down the ave. our apt. building is on. It was fun last year and it'll probably be fun this year too, even if it is supposed to rain.

Three weeks and counting...

2009-09-30T09:17:00.000-04:00

...till we're gonna done get hitched. Yee-haw.

We got the license the other day (I braved the Queens county clerk's office with a nasty cold). We're working on the vows. We've got some music selected (Dictators and Pogues, of course) and we've got the deposit down on the cake. The money is in place more or less and this is actually shaping up to be a pretty kick ass shindig if I do say so myself.

Weddings are generally boring and stuffy. Ours is going to be fun. Why shouldn't it be? Shouldn't it be a celebration? To Hell with pomp and circumstance, ours is going to be a party.

On a completely unrelated note, see this movie:

Observe And Report

And the new Teenage Bottlerocket album is really good. Can't wait to see them play with the Cobra Skulls in Brooklyn on 10/23.

Some recent additions to the collection...

2009-09-13T14:09:00.000-04:00

Check it out, Alison got me this for my birthday a few months back. It's an original video release poster for the one and only Rock N Roll Nightmare, a movie which not only a personal favorite but kind of a notch in my belt in that I helped out on the DVD and after doing so got to meet Thor a few times, even getting to get on stage with him where he wrapped a mic stand around my neck. How cool is this?

Despite the fact that we have no wall space nor money for proper framing, Alison and I continue to acquire all manner of great, oddball, old movie posters. Some day, when we win the lottery or some wealthy distant relative leaves us enough money to buy a house and build a proper movie room we'll get all this stuff on display, until then, they sit in storage, seen only on the internet of all places. Kinda sad when you think about it, I'm of the belief that a lot of this stuff should be on display like a sort of trash film museum, but what can you do.

Without further ado... this arrived last week. A surprise gift from a girlfriend/fiance who continues to win at being awesome. Aside from the fact that it's folded, this guy, an original U.S. theatrical one sheet, is in pretty much perfect condition and it pleases me to no end that I own this.

Turning thirty four had its plus points, one of which was receiving this Japanese theatrical poster for the 80s 'teens vs. commie bastards' classic, Red Dawn. If you don't like this movie I don't want to know you.

Toyboy gave this to Alison as just a sort of random gift for no apparant reason. I've never seen it and don't know if it's ever actually even received an English friendly video release and obviously never caught it during its theatrical run as it was made before I was born. Regardless, it's signed by Jess Franco and Lina Romay, which instantly makes it awesome. I love the artwork and the fact that the three people in that painting look nothing like Lina Romay, Robert Foster or Eva Palmer. I like the pseudo-classy art deco style used here. It's not in great shape, but matted and framed I bet it would look really good.

We picked up this European beauty at the recent Fangoria show in NYC held back in June. Jess Franco's Barbed Wire Dolls, one of my bride-to-be's personal favorites, which makes her an awesome choice for a wife above and beyond her more obvious qualities. It's looking like a Spanish piece to me, givne that it uses the Spanish title, but who knows. Either way, it's in very nice shape and it's a tough one to find, especially in this sort of condition.

The fact that for whatever eason this blog likes to crop the pictures annoys me. But I don't feel like reuploading thing. Sorry.

Poor Rusty, Neglected Blog.

2009-08-27T15:38:00.000-04:00

I've been busy. It's a busy time right now, so yeah. But man, I haven't written anything in a while.

Wedding plans are going along really nicely. We've got the venue selected for the reception and the deposit put down on it. I think it's going to be the right spot. It's nice enough to work, but not in the least bit highbrow or pretentious. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to get to from Coney Island, but we'll figure that out. There should be enough cars there that it won't be a problem. If not, if people split cab fare it shouldn't be a big deal. We've also scored Social Distortion tickets for that night, meaning after the reception we're hoping in the Honda and driving to Atlantic City for the night to see one of our favorite bands play. It's definitely a cool coincidence that they're playing there that night!

So yeah, invites have gone out, RSVP's are coming in, and it's all coming up faster than I think either of us realized, but that's not a bad thing at all. It'll be nice to have it all taken care of.

In none wedding news, the Street Dogs are coming back and the opening acts are Vinnie Stigma followed by Roger Miret And The Disasters, so it's almost like seeing the SD's with Agnostic Front. Almost. Hopefully they'll team up and do a few AF classics. I'm sure the crowd would appreciate it. We took the train into Manhattan to get tickets at the box office rather than pay Live Nation's $9 rape fee. A $9 surcharge on a $16 ticket is insane. So we made a day out of the trip into Manhattan last weekend. Wandered around the village, hit a record store and got the new Cobra Skulls album, and snagged a copy of the new 2-disc special edition of Stunt Rock at Kim's a week early. These are important things to take care of. Then we feasted on frozen boozy treats and chicken wings before hitting the Fat Black Pussycat for a pint and heading back to the realitive coolness of our apartment. The heat wave has been kicking this city's ass for two weeks straight now. Hopefully the impending hurricance that's supposed to batter the east coast on Sat. breaks some of the humidity. I'd be grateful for the rain if it did that.

Alison's new job seems to be off to a really good start. She seems to like it there and I get the impression that this school will treat her better than the last one. She deserves it as she works really hard and actually cares about her job. You can't say that about a lot of teachers, at least not from my jaded educational experience, so on a personal level I think it's important to take care of the ones that do. The fact that she was let go from her last position based solely on the fact that she made more than other teachers (and had the qualifications to back that up, mind you) was a bit of a middle finger to her. Seeing her land a better paying position with more opportunity and in what looks to be a better and more professional environment makes me happy. Perfect timing too, as she started last week.

Other than that, I'm looking into hopefully heading back to Canada first weekend in October for my step brothers wedding. We'll have to see if the money is there as I'd need to fly to make it happen but it looks like it'll probably happen. It's both awesome and confusing that he and I are getting married so close to one another, but it's not like we planned it this way. Next weekend my mother and sister descend upon our pad for a night for Alison's wedding shower. Sandra's never been to NYC before and while it's a quick 'arrive Sat. and leave Sun' trip, I'm hopeful that Sat. night at least we'll be able to show her around a bit.

Oh, and the other day all the shelves fell off of the walls in my office. This is what I came into work and saw...

Hooray for pubs!

2009-07-21T20:50:00.000-04:00

So last weekend after driving all over Queens and Brooklyn I think we found the right spot for the wedding reception. It'll require driving from the wedding spot but car pooling is a very realistic option right now so that's not that big a deal. The price is right (hey, we're funding this ourselves!) but more importantly the atmosphere is pretty much exactly what we're looking for. On top of that, they have good food and good beer. Two very important criteria if you ask me.

So yeah, wedding plans are going pretty smoothly. Everything is falling into place on schedule and kinda-sorta-close-enough on budget as well. Life is good.

We spent Sat. hanging out with Horace as kind of a belated birthday celebration for me. He let me raid a stash of old heavy metal CDs and DVDs he was getting rid of so I'm now the proud owner of the Japanese import versions of Manowar's Warriors of the World album (it's got a bonus track and nicer packaging) and Motley Crue's Too Fast For Love (it was an important part of my youth) among a ton of other stuff. From his place we went to the village for some DVD shopping and BBQ. Good times and the perfect weather for strolling around the lower part of Manhattan.

Aside from that, we had a good trip back to Canada earlier this month. It was great to see everyone as always and we found an alternate route that shaved a good hour off of the trip due to traffic flow. Hooray for that.

Oh and I chopped off all my hair. It was getting too hot so I took the clippers to it.

That's all for now.

Random Rock Reportings

2009-06-23T20:14:00.001-04:00

The new Rancid album came out. These guys have been at it a while now and despite some odd diversions into ska a la The Clash in their later years, have stayed pretty true to their roots though with vocalist Tim Armstrong's Operation Ivy past, maybe he's staying true to his roots too. This new album is good, but what really impressed me is the packaging. For $11.99 I got the CD, a second CD including a surprisingly good acoustic version of many of the songs off of the album, and a DVD packaged inside a nice slipcase with a poster and some goofy collectible guitar picks. Maybe illegal downloads are a good thing after all in that at least they inspire the record companies to give those of us who do still buy records more bang for our buck.

I also picked up the remastered History of Melodie Nelson album from the man himself, Serge Gainsbourg. My Gainsbourg obsession has been growing at a pretty rapid pace over the years as I start to make the (some would say obvious) connections between his stuff and artists I hold near and dear like Pulp, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, and the like. The remastering job is fantastic. The production really shines through and you really get a chance to hear how layered this recording is. The liner's translate the lyrics into English from their native French and the saucy cover art featuring a topless Jane Birkin cuddling a big teddy bear is still inspiring. And I mean that in the literal sense, not at all in the 'hey a naked lady' kinda way, though it is remarkable that Gainsbourg got with her and with Bardot within the span of a couple of years. Just goes to show that 'cool' trumps 'handsome' any day of the week.

A co-worker loaned me some of the Neil Young Archives discs, Live At Massey Hall and Live At The Filmore. Both sound great, it's amazing that old live recordings like this can have such clarity decades later. I've been a Neil Young fan since early highschool (as a kid my dad had a copy of Harvest on vinyl when I was a kid that I couldn't get into until early 90s - better late than never) and while I'll admit his voice, like Dylan's or Springsteen's, is an acquired taste, he is in my opinion one of Canada's greatest living songwriters. He's still got a potency to his work that makes him more than just another aging hippy and like Cash in his later years and Kristofferson in his current phase, his music still means something to those of us willing to pay attention to the lyrics. His last two albums haven't wowed me the way his earlier stuff does, but they've got their merits and Living With War makes some good points in the same way that Cash's Heavenly Minded did. I also find that the older and greyer I get, the more I look like him, which is kind of weird.

Tomorrow night we're going to see Hank III play in Brooklyn. I haven't been to a live show in, wow, almost seven months so it's high time I got get my rock on, or in this case, my honky tonk on. There's some good shows coming up, too many in a sense: Agnostic Front, Jarvis Cocker, Naked Raygun, Motorhead with Rev. Horton Heat, Scott Biram, among others. I'd love to go to them all and really take advantage of the music scene here - but it's a matter of time and money and right now we've got a wedding to pay for - obviously that takes priority but I am going to see if we can scrounge together $20 for Scott because he delivers one of the best live shows around right now.

Look, ma, I'm on TV!

2009-06-12T19:35:00.000-04:00

Well, sort of.

If you go here and watch the video I pop up for a quick second. This is a promo piece for Ratline, a movie made by our friends over at Wicked Pixel Cinema, St. Louis' finest group o' gorehounds and some of the nicest and most talented people you could hope to meet in the indy cinema scene. I'm in this promo video for about as long as I'm probably going to be in the finished movie - about two seconds - but it's kinda fun to see me giggling with a big fake bloody wound in my head.

So what else is new? Well the wedding plans are off to a kick ass start. We've got the contracts inked for just about the coolest venue we could possibly find for the ceremony and its even paid for up front. The bands arrived not too long ago and look even better in person than I figured they would. Things are falling into place nicely and while it's a bit of stress on the old pocket book, we'll find the money to pull it off.

Last weekend we had some friends - Matt, Todd and Paul - show up for the weekend. While Alison was battling the worst case of food poisoning I've ever seen anyone ever get (a night in the hospital hanging out with the IV drip did do her a world of good, thankfully) but was still gracious enough to let boys be boys even though I wish she could have been there for some of the stupidity. I was a karaoke superstar on my birthday night, spent at King Yum (a fun tioki joint not at all unlike The Alibi in Portland) - the old ladies love it when you bust out the Neil Diamond. Saturday we just went pub crawling and record shopping in the lower part of Manhattan but it was a good time drinking good beer and eating good food with good friends. Sunday we hit up the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors show where we got the stinkeye from Tom Savini for heckling Dario Argento, met some of the members of Gwar, and where I got freaked out seeing David Hess hug my fiance. David's a nice enough guy in person, but still, he's Krug, and Krug is a creep. Sometimes it's hard to seperate the art from the artist, you know? Alison actually knows David so it's not like he was just being weird, he was hugging a friend so it's all good... but still... he's Krug.... eek!

We had to leave early to get various people back to the airport but a friend was kind enough to stand in line and get Argento's signature on my Anchor Bay boxed set which is pretty neat. We also picked up a sweet one sheet for Barbed Wire Dolls. Speaking of one-sheets, I don't have any spare wall space but I'm going to find some for the Rock N Roll Nightmare art that Alison found for me. I've never actually seen a Rock N Roll Nightmare poster before, except for some jpegs online, so it's awesome to finally own it, especially considering how important that slice of classic Canadian cinema is to me.

So yeah, life is good. I got a solid raise at work to the point where, while I'm not rich, I'm at least able to survive off of what I make now and more importantly, I really enjoy what I'm doing and like the people I work for. It's a nice change after my last gig, which wasn't quite what I had hoped it would be when I took the position. Live and learn I guess.

Hank III is swinging through NYC in two weeks or so and we've got tickets for that and this weekend is the Austism Walk down at the seaport in Manhattan. Lots going on and not nearly enough time to rest, but I'll sleep when I'm dead. Right now I'm happy just being happy and loving life.

One of the best things about living in this city...

2009-05-04T20:06:00.003-04:00

...is heading down into the subway and seeing this:

...which, in case you can't tell from the crappy low-res cell phone picture, is a picture of a midget Michael Jackson impersonator moonwalking through the Times Square subway station. It warms me right down to the cockles of my heart to know that midget Michael Jackson impersonators will moonwalk through the one of the busiest subway stations in the city without even a need for musical accompaniment.

Truly awesome.

Two more super cool one-sheets...

2009-04-30T19:42:00.000-04:00

I snagged these cheap on eBay last week, because, you know, I've got tons of wall space to display them on.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA

I love this movie and I especially love this poster because it's a complete misrepresentation of the movie. It's also funny how Kris Kristofferson is top billed, even though he's only in the movie for 5 mintues and he plays a rapist. This poster is so over the top it's kinda brilliant.

THE BIG RACKET

Quite possibly the finest film Enzo Castellari ever made, this is my favorite euro-crime movie out of the countless titles I've seen. The fact that Blue Underground quoted me on the cover of the North American DVD release is a nice bonus too.

Both of these beauties are Turkish. I've no idea what AZRAIL translates to in English, but you can see 'Il Grande Racket' at the bottom, which isn't hard to translate at all.

Movie posters are cool. Especially crazy Turkish ones.

2009-04-28T21:19:00.000-04:00

So as of Saturday afternoon, a week prior to our official 2 year anniversary, Alison and I are officially engaged. We went out to Montauk for the day and I popped the question on a pretty rocky beach that is, technically, the eastern most point in the state. More importantly, it's pretty and it has a neat light house and this early in the year it isn't completely swamped with tourists.

We haven't set a date yet, and we've got some creative budgeting to do to make it happen as we'll be fronting the bill for this ourselves, but that's okay. It'll come together at some point. All we know at this point is that we want to do it in Coney Island because it's kind of 'our spot' even if it is becoming yuppified in the worst sort of way.

After beach combing for a bit we did some shopping. I picked up the newly remastered 2 disc release of the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head, DVDs of One Armed Swordsman, My Young Auntie, and Poor Pretty Eddie and the Blu-ray release of Hellraiser. Nothing says romance like Jewish hip-hop, kung fu and Clive Barker but this is my way and Alison not only accepts my quirks but compliments them somehow. It's the fact that we can find this kick ass mix of sweet and romantic and culturally rad and interesting that makes our relationship strong, even during tougher times, of which we've thankfully only had a few (and none of which were direct results of either one of us - so there!).

We spent the night in Riverhead, a nice enought town that I now know has an aquarium - next time we're going to visit. We had a nice dinner and a couple of drinks at a decent Irish pub/grub joint on Main St. called Digger O'Dells that's definitely worth checking out if you make it to the area before retiring to the room to watch TV and zonk out. I attempted to have a nice relaxing swim but this plan was thwarted by the most obnoxious group of pre-teen screaming girls you've ever met in your life. Apparantly, according to the 'parent' who was chapheroning, it's ok to jump in the pool six inches from a complete stranger if you're on vacation, and if that stranger gets irrate, he's being a jerk. I'm comfortable in that role and I hope those brats drown, or at least wake up with water in their ears.

Getting back on topic, so yeah, we're engaged and it feels good. It feels right, too, both in terms of timing and logistics as well as solidity and true love. I really can't think of anything to complain about right now. Not anything that matters at least. Life is really good, and that's a wonderful feeling.

Hooray for poop!

2009-04-21T20:31:00.000-04:00

And the winner of the 'Best Anniversary Gift Ever' goes to....

2009-04-18T17:08:00.000-04:00

...Alison. Cause not only did she get me this, but she gave it to me early.

We also got this little beauty a whole ago too, it's pretty rad.

I need more wall space and more money for frames.

Hooray for the Zoo!

2009-04-11T18:19:00.000-04:00

I was going to write about the roller derby, but it's been too long now and the time has past. Let it suffice to say that the roller derby is fun. If the idea of girls zipping around in a circle smacking one another around sounds appealing to you, check it out. It's also ridiculously competitve and a lot of fun to watch not only for the skaters (some of whom don't look so good in spandex, but who am I to talk) but for the sport of it all.

At any rate, the zoo! I've wanted to go to the Bronx Zoo since I moved here over a year ago and the other day I got the chance. It's a pretty big place and apparantly I only saw about a third of it, but what I saw, I dug. It's as much a big giant park as it is anything else, it's really nicely kept and has some pretty interesting examples of quirky old architecture in and among the monkeys and lions and tigers. I took my camera and managed to snap a few decent shots, my favorite being the picture of the toad. I'm not sure why I like it so much, but I do. He just looks refreshingly grumpy.

In other news, I started a new job last week. The commute sucks and the pay could be better but the people are very nice and treat me with respect, which goes a long way in the long run. It's actually a fairly fun place to work. I'm doing office and logistics work for them, meaning that I deal with Chinese factories and customs companies and fun things like that. My direct supervisor, the owner's son, is about the nicest guy you could meet with a good sense of humor who is into Van Damme movies, so we get along just fine. I think I'll stick with it for a while. Even if I'm not getting rich, I'm getting by and we all know there's a lot more to happiness than money.

At any rate, here's some random pictures of some of the Bronx Zoo's coolest inhabitants, and a goofy duck who for some random reason was hanging out a bit removed from the lake on top of a rotting log just doing his own thing.

New Scott H. Biram stuff!

2009-04-03T09:11:00.000-04:00

His new alubm, Something's Wrong/Lost Forever comes out May 19th, on Bloodshot again.

You can check out an acoustic version of one of the lead tracks here. A fair bit more relaxed than some of his rowdier numbers but I like it.

Off to a job interview in Brooklyn. I need to write about the roller derby we went to last weekend once I get a bit more free time.

Rock Report! The Swingin' Utters & The Street Dogs!

2009-03-13T09:18:00.000-04:00

So despite the fact that I'm trying to be frugal, I decided that there was no way we were going to miss the Swingin' Utters playing with The Street Dogs out in Long Island last night. The cover was $17.00 a head and for that you got give bands. We opted to skip out on the first two, well not so much opted as got stuck in traffic and missed them, but we caught the last half of a four piece from Chicago called Shot Baker. I'd never heard them before but for some reason the named sounded really familiar. I'm still not sure why that is. Regardless, they were decent enough, if a bit on the generic side.

After about 10 minutes of their set, they were done and the Swingin' Utters came on next. I saw them open for Naked Raygun back in Portland a few years ago and they were fantastic. They were a little more subdued this time (by the end of the PDX show the singer was soaked in the beer that the audience had thrown at the stage and he was bleeding all over the place from a shot he took in the nose) but they sounded great. They played a lot of earlier tracks, though I was hoping they'd do some of the Filthy Thieving Bastards material, the more Pogues-ish sort of celt/punk/trad side project that they're all involved in. It wasn't that kind of night, however, and they delivered a pretty blistering 45 minute set, with frontman Johnny 'Peebucks' Bonnell pacing back and forth across the stage like a man possessed.

A few pictures...

One thing they said to the crowed before they went off stage was how appreciative they were of 'a new band starting to get big like the Street Dogs taking an old band like us on the road with them.' It's true. The Swingin' Utters have been around a long time, over twenty-years at this point, and they've never really gotten the recognition that they deserved for influencing the whole street punk scene that labels like Hellcat Records are really pushing right now. It's also cool to note that despite the 'mainstream' success of Me First And The Gimmes Gimmes that Spike Slawson is still playing with them.

The Street Dogs were up next, the evenings headliner. I expected them to be good but figured The Swingin' Utters would be the best band of the night. I was wrong. The Utters were great but The Street Dogs were amazing and it was cool to hear Mike McColgan mention that without The Swingin' Utters there really would be no Street Dogs to speak of. CJ Ramone was in the audience, I probably wouldn't have recognized him if he hadn't been called out from the stage, as he was just standing near the men's room in the dark wearing a baseball cap and a green jacket, not the black leather jacket/ripped jeans uniform of the band he took his last name from. It was cool to see some of the old guard out to support the younger guys.

At any rate, The Street Dogs were, as I said, fantastic. McColgan has such a sincerity and honesty to his singing and the lyrics are pretty inspiring even when the songs are a little on the sad side (Final Transmission, about a young man killed in the Iraq War, makes me tear up a bit and further question the futility of it all... but I digress). He had the crowd all riled up by the end, with pretty much every person in the audience singing along at one point or another. I'm too old to bother with mosh pits and other nonsense but I did go up front a few times (it was funny to see the 'pit' of teenagers get out of the way right quickly - they were all really, really tiny for some reason. Must be something in the water out in Long Island) to pump my fist and sing along. He's a pretty fearless frontman, standing on the barricade and letting the audience hold on to him for balance with the mic extended all the way out as far as his arms could reach into the crowd. You can tell these guys love their audience and they absolutely gave 110%. There was so much positive energy on the stage that it was hard not to get swept up in it just a bit.

I was hoping we might get Bar Room Hero or Skinhead on the MBTA for the encore but I can't blame him for wanting to distance himself from the Dropkick Murphy's a bit. Not only are the Street Dogs a very different band than the DM's are, but they're also not as good at this point. Regardless, they played for just over an hour and covered Black Flag's Rise Above for the encore - amazingly enough, I think they played it faster than Black Flag ever did.

All in all it was a great show. It's reassuring to know that there are still bands out there who appreciate their fans and don't try to rip them off. The cover charge was reasonble, T-Shirts were $12 - $15 which is a very fair price, and the CDs were $10 which is cheaper than the record stores. I had all the Swingin' Utters and Street Dogs albums already but I picked up a shirt from each band to show support. The tour is still going for a few more weeks now, and you really won't find a better deal on the road right now. Just a great night of solid working class punk rock. No condescension, no BS, just raw, well played and refreshingly sincere music.

Things That Made Me Happy This Week.

2009-02-24T21:28:00.000-05:00

So while the news is all doom and gloom and 'we're all poor blah blah blah blah blah,' I figured I would accentuate the positive and (hopefully) eliminate the negative.

Here are things that have made me happy in the last week:

-Today I had a really good job interview. Even if it doesn't land me a position, it's still a really good job interview, the kind where (gasp!) you actually enjoy talking to the people you could be potentially working for. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this one.

-The love of a good woman. Alison has been a complete rock for me during this strange transitional phase I'm going through. Her love and support means the world to me and the fact that she not only puts up with my odd infatuations and eccentricities but somehow manages to encourage them says to me that I've found the right gal. Also, she's really pretty. And a good cook.

-Call of Duty 3: When you don't have a job, the most productive thing you can probably do with your time is travel back to the 1940s and shoot Nazi's in hopes of helping out the French. At one point, you fight with some mighty Canadian soldiers, and that makes me happy.... even if the game isn't nearly as VIOLENT as I'd hoped it would be. Could be that I'm just insane, however...

-The French Connection is on Blu-ray. We watched it the other night and while Friedkin has made some changes to the coloring in the film, it's otherwise a great package. I forgot how much I loved this movie. Hackman and Scheider are great in it and it remains as tense and exciting as it ever was. Some great footage of NYC in the early 70s caps it all off nicely.

If only I could get Bridgeport IPA served on tap in this neck of the woods....

Job Interview A-Go-Go

2009-02-21T18:12:00.000-05:00

So last week I had an interview, then a different phone interview and then a second different phone interview. Monday I have to go to Brooklyn for an in person interview, then Tuesday to Manhattan for a seperate in person interview (for a job I actually really, really want and am really, really qualified for - keep your fingers crossed).

We'll see how it goes. This week I just more or less hung out, wrote, and played video games. Call of Duty 3 is pretty good.

Hooray!

2009-02-16T17:24:00.000-05:00

Anyone wanting to see a couple of pictures from my soon to be starmaking appearance in Wicked Pixel Cinema's RATLINE can click here for a set report I wrote this morning. I've got other pictures I can post later, but for now that's it, the WP guys are being fairly tight lipped about things until the movie is done and distribution is locked and I can't say I blame them.

In other news, Valentine's Day was good fun. We went with some friends to see the Friday The 13th remake, which was one of the ugliest movies (in terms of cinematography) I've seen in some time. I didn't care for it very much, and generally all I need to be happy with a movie is boobs and blood and this one had them in spades. Maybe I'm getting picky in my old age. After the movie we went for BBQ. So seeing as we didn't get any alone time on V-day itself, I'm taking Alison out for dinner tonight. Outback here we come!

Wanna know what she got me? Check it out...

Ten discs of musical history all lovingly packaged in a great hardbound case with a big fat full color book detailing Hank's life and work. Great, great stuff. There's a reason this collection won two Grammy awards. Generally the Grammy's are a bit of a joke but this time they were spot on in their choice for best retrospective collection. It's a fantastic set and an amazing Valentines Day gift. I'm stoked!

What else is new... oh, as of today I am gainfully unemployed and genuinely pretty happy about that. The last position just wasn't working out though I was able to leave on very good terms thankfully. The economy sucks right now but there are other jobs out there and I'm confident that I'll find one that suits me better than the last one soon enough. My spirits are high, my resume is polished and I'm even trying to remain clean shaven for interviews (ok, maybe that last part is a lie). In the interim, as I look, I can get caught up on some reading, more writing, and a few other side projects I haven't had time for yet. Oh, and I can finally practice on that bass I got for Christmas.

Life is good. Really, really good.

Lux Interior Has Left Us.

2009-02-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

Known to those who 'didn't get it' as Erick Lee Purkhiser and born 10/21/46, the man we all know (or at least those of us who 'do get it' know) as Lux Interior passed away this morning from a pre-existing heart condition.

It's probably a miracle he lasted as long as he did but that doesn't numb the sting. Those who know me well know well my dedication to The Cramps. I've almost gotten into fist fights defending their merits and would gladly take a punch or two even now that I'm into my 30s should someone trash talk the titans of trash (there's some irony there, you figure it out). They were one of those few bands that spoke to me, and if that's a black spot on my record, so be it, I really don't care.

Anyone who had the privelage, and I use that term literally, knows that Lux was THE best front man to have ever walked the face of the earth. Whether he wore a leather cat suit, a mini skirt, a funeral suit or nothing at all (his natural hair color was not black) the man had presence and a voice that could rock your ass into the ground and leave it there for dead. The one two punch of his sleazy, swampy vocals and the fuzzed out guitar sludge of his wife, one Poison Ivy, taught this boy at the age of 20 what real rock and roll was all about one cold and substance abused night in Toronto, first year of college. Later that night Jim Zubkavich would get his ass kicked by security, Mark Tolch would let Lux wipe his groin sweat off with his mesh shirt (long story) and I'd sing a duet with Lux to their cover of Hasil Adkins (RIP) SHE SAID. A moment I will NEVER forget. What did she say, Lux? No one ever did answer my question.

I saw them three more times after that. Once more in Toronto and then twice in Portland (once on my birthday where I got into a fight with a dirty hippy... and won). And now I have to content myself with the fact that I got to see them four times and won't get a fifth. This hits me hard. Some people are supposed to be immortal, untouchable if you will. Lux was one of them. And now he's gone, victim to a heart condition, not even something as 'rock n roll' as choking on your own vomit or OD'ing. Not that that would have made him more impressive - the man did what he did better than anyone - but c'mon.... he was tough. A heart condition?

I prefer to think he got killed by a trio of tough talking race car driving big busted women, or maybe a chef bent on paying cannibalistic tribute to his Egytian gods, or better yet, he simply wandered into a swamp somewhere and sunk to the bottom. Any of those would be more appropriate than a f*cking heart condition.

At any rate, I have to go to work in the morning. This has hit me harder than it should have. Alison is asleep while I'm sitting here, drinking (what else?) red wine straight out of the bottle and watching the Cramps play a show in NYC from 1981. I'll sleep when I'm tired. Right now I'm paying tribute to the man whose music introduced me to the films of Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Marilyn Chambers (I still wanna know what's behind the green door, Lux!) and how made me realize just what a treasure bikini girls with machine guns really are.

R.I.P., Lux. You really were the hottest thing from the north to come out of the south and there are definitely some of us who will always remember you.

I haven't been hit this hard by a 'celebrity' passing since Johnny died.

Hot Sauce, Blossom, and 3-D Sex Comedies.

2009-01-25T19:53:00.000-05:00

Wanna know what I was up to this weekend? Sure you do. I put together a blog post containing Ian Miller's fantastic interview with the stars of 90s sitcom Blossom. I know you wanna hear it. So go here and do just that. It's way more fun than it ever should have been. Kudos to you, Evil Ian.

I also went to the Fed Ex depot (which is situated besides a crazy creepy massive old Jewish cemetery in the southern part of Queens) and picked up some packages. I got Being There with Peter Sellers on Blu-ray and the Shout! Factory release of the awesome The Stewardesses In 3-D. Hard to believe this classic drive-in sex comedy is celebrating its 40th anniversary but it is. It's older than I am. That said, it's a fun movei that proves to be even more enjoyable in 3-D for reasons of a primarily anatomical nature. Zoom!

I cooked dinner for Alison and I tonight. Nothing fancy, just some corn, some fries, and some grilled ham steaks. A friend of ours, Mr. Chuck Hell, makes his own hot sauce and when he was in NYC last year visiting he gave us some. I cautiously put some on my ham tonight, figuring it would burn like the Dickens but was relieved to find out that it was time to slather it on there. Yeah, it makes you sweat, but the sauce complimented the smokey grilled ham perfectly - so much so in fact that I was tempted to go get more ham to cook up. Yum. I'm hungry just thinking about it.

Aside from that, it was a nice mellow weekend of movie watching and Strongbow. I took in Super Soul Brother, Death Promise and rewatched both Singapore Sling and Juon because Alison had never seen them. They both hold up well for different reasons. King Kong on Blu-ray is a nice treat as well. Stunning transfer.

Take this job and shove it!

2009-01-22T20:41:00.001-05:00

That's what I said last week. Well, not in so many words, but I resigned from my current position. It wasn't working out and while they wanted me to stay on and tried to talk me out of it, I'd made up my mind. The pros were not outweighing the cons by any stretch at all and I simply couldn't travel like they wanted me to.

So soon, I'll possibly be unemployed during the nastiest recession to hit the country in half a century or more. A scary prospect. That said, I've had two phone interviews with a company that said they want to bring me in for a third interview. That could shape into something and is promising, at least. I can't put all my eggs in that one basket though, so until something is firm, I keep applying.

We'll see how it goes.

Wanted Man In Oregon...

2009-01-15T19:33:00.000-05:00

So despite the fact that I have proof that I paid the state of Oregon the $71 I owed them for the 2007 tax year in Feb. of 2008, long before it was due, they've served me with a warrant. Over $71. And they've sent me paperwork saying they're going to garnish my US Bank checking account - which has been closed for over a year.

You know, I miss my friends back there dearly, and I miss the delicious beer and the record stores and all that rad stuff, I can't help feeling that the state, on a governmental level at least, has really got its head up its own ass.

At least I can tell people that I'm on the run from the law now. If nothing else, it makes for a good story.

Lamenting The Demise Of The Local Record Store

2009-01-09T21:35:00.000-05:00

So a few recent trips back to Canada really hammered home for me the fact that, at least in the Niagara region, virtually all of the local record stores that I shopped at as a kid are gone. Not moved, but gone. Not just the independant stores like the late, great Poptones on Queen St. in Niagara Falls or the awesome, if snobby, Station To Station which was just off of St. Paul St. in St. Catharines but even most of the 'chain' stores like Sunrise and Sam The Record Man are gone. Sam's hurt a lot, as when Alison and I went to Toronto, the big building with the neon spinning records was still there but it was empty, gutted, and the neon had long since stopped brightening up the Young St. strip.

NYC's still got some indy stores in the East Village and the two Virgin Megastores, but rumors abound that the Virgin locations will be closing up shop this year and who knows how long the indy joints will last, what with the Village becoming a playground for the rich much like the rest of Manhattan.

While hanging out with my friend Mark in Canada, I'd hoped to find the new Hanson Brothers. In fact, I took Alison all over Toronto looking for it prior. Neither trip did the trick, I wound up having to get it online. And that's fine, I got it for half of what I would have paid for it at a brick and mortar store, but it really does take a lot of the fun out of it.

Music junkies know that half the enjoyment comes from the thrill of the hunt or from finding who-knows-what in a used bin in some dingy, stinky dirty store. Online is too easy. I held off on buying that record online until I was sure I wasn't going to find it locally. I had fun looking for it and picked up some other odd titles while zipping around Southwestern Ontario, Toronto, Hamilton, and NYC in search of the disc. But it's sad that I never actually found it, and instead, found that so many record stores were just gone. Living in Portland, I was sheltered from that. That city was, at least when I moved away last year, a veritble MECCA for record shopping - but that city is the exception and not the rule.

Back to the Great White North!

2008-12-28T11:36:00.000-05:00

So after enjoying a nice, relaxing Christmas with Alison's family on the 25th and taking a few days to recover (which meant enjoying a bottle of Dogfishead 120 IPA and eating a lot of bacon while watching Pineapple Express and Superbad on Blu-ray), tomorrow I head back to Canada to catch up with some friends and family who I didn't get to see a few weeks back. These are the benefits of your office closing down between Christmas and New Years, you can do these things. Jet Blue had a decent price so I'll be flying out of JFK tomorrow afternoon and coming back on 12/31 to spend New Years Eve with my gal, which is as it should be.

If you're looking for something to do over the Holidays, why not watch Battle Wizard? It's seasonal fun for the whole fighting monkey loving family!

Anyone reading this from NYC, hit Kim's on St. Mark's before they close the store at the end of the month. There are deals to be had if you don't mind looking around a bit and while a lot of the good stuff is gone already, it's not so picked over that it isn't worth checking out. Between the soon to be closed location and the new one at 1st Ave. and 8th St. I dropped a good chunk of change but I found a bunch of out of print Something Weird Video titles (hooray for Chesty Morgan and Mexican wrestlers!) and Anchor Bay Hammer Horror titles for less than $10 a pop. Money well spent.

An Early Canadian Christmas Trip

2008-12-17T17:15:00.000-05:00

So last week Alison and I braved the snowstorm that beat the living snot out of the Northeast part of this country called America to travel across the border to visit my family. We drove as far as we could in the nasty weather on Thursday night and grabbed a hotel room in the small town of Johnston, NY, not too far north of Albany. At 6am the alarm went off and it was time to hit the road again and we drove straight through to make an appointment I'd scheduled at 11am on Friday.

With that out of the way, we finished a quick bit of Christmas shopping before heading to my mother's place and then moving on to my dad's, Swiss Chalet for dinner, and then my grandparents' apartment. Friday was busy, but it was great to see everyone on that side of the family again.

Saturday morning we went for breakfast with mom and my stepdad and then drove up to Toronto to see my mother's side of the family after checking out my Grandmother's swanky new digs in Niagara Falls. We all crammed into my uncle and aunt's house and enjoyed a nice dinner. Once that was over, Alison and I went to Young and Dundas downtown. I hadn't been there in over eight years and was amazed at how much like Times Square it has become. We drove down Queen West only to find that almost everything had closed at 8pm before heading up Bathhurst and parking near Honest Ed's. We peeked inside Suspect Video, I was relieved to see it was still there as it played a huge part in my movie watching habits while I lived in Toronto, and then spent a good hour combing the CD bins at Sonic Boom before hitting the hotel in Yorkville. We ordered some BBQ from a place that delivered, watched TV, and crashed.

During all of this, I accumulated some pretty rad Canadian content in the form of:

The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein DVD Collection Vol. 2
The Hanson Brothers - Sudden Death CD
Stompin' Tom - The Ballad Of Stompin' Tom CD
Stompin' Tom - Bud The Spud CD
Stompin' Tom - Kic' Along With Stompin' Tom CD
The Gruesomes - Live From Hell CD
The Forgotten Rebels - In Love With The System CD
Thor - Keep The Dogs Away 30th Anniversary Edition CD

I was disappointed to see that no one was stalking the new Hanson Brothers 2-CD set called It's A Living, but I'll snag it online sooner rather than later.

Sunday we woke up and drove back to Niagara Falls to visit with my sister, her husband, and their two super cool kids but once noon hit, it was time to drive back to NY. We made it back late Sunday night and as rushed as the trip was and as exhausted as I was from it, I'm glad we did it.

My education finally pays off.

2008-12-09T19:01:00.000-05:00

Made over a decade after graduating....
Made after spending $1500 on A/V hardware...
Edited in about 20 minutes....

The Amazing Super RadDog Sitting Video! (notes: the background music has some naughty words in it. Blame Prince, not me).

My first short film. I bet my parents are so proud right now they're shedding tears of joy.

Twisted Sister's Twisted Christmas Spectacular!

2008-12-06T12:20:00.000-05:00

So in honor of Alison's birthday yesterday, we went and saw Twisted Sister at the Nokia Theater in Times Square for thier 'Twisted Christmas' spectacular, which is a fun sort of metal goofy holiday thing that they've been doing for a few years now.

I'll admit, I wasn't sure about this and I splurged on the VIP tickets for her sake and was a bit skeptical about whether or not this show would deliver or not. Before the show we eat some tasty Indian food and I was also worried that I might poop my pants later in the evening. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

At any rate, we got to the venue and didn't really care about the opening acts so we sat at a table and people watched. I drank some beers and we saw a dude who look a bit like Mark Tolch wearing a Manowar shirt on top of another Manowar shirt. He would periodically switch them throughout the night. I thought that was pretty metal and for once felt out-Manowared. Now I have something to aspire to.

After people watching, we wandered into the auditorium where Eddie Trunk was on stage getting people stoked to see the band. Mick Foley was also wandering around, which was pretty rad. Once Trunk was done, the lights went down and the music started up. Once the curtain went down and the lights came back up, the band came out, one at a time... everyone except Dee. A few seconds later, Mini-Kiss came out carrying Dee on a sled of some sort, he was dressed like Santa.

The stage was pretty rad. It had a machine up top where good Santa dolls would go in and 'metal' Santa dolls would come out. On the left there was a thing that looked like the pod from The Fly and periodically people would pop out of it, but more on that in a bit. The stage hands were all dressed like elves and would throw inflatable balls shaped like Christmas ornaments into the crowd throughout the show.

The Santa suit came off and the band went back and forth between doing heavy metal Christmas tracks and older actual Twisted Sister tracks. Remember that Fly pod I mentioned earlier? Well it opened up and Lita Ford came out dressed in red pleather cat suit thing. I don't know how she fit into it. I was hoping she'd sing a Lita Ford song or two, or maybe bust out a Runaways tune but no. She and Dee did a duet to I'll Be Home For Christmas though, and that was kinda cool. Once Lita was done, Mick Foley came out on stage and asked everyone what they wanted for Christmas. Eddie wanted some wine and a smoke, AJ wanted to be tall, The Animals wanted a twelve car garage, some tools and a tank to drive around NYC, and I forget what Jay Jay French wanted, something about not having to use lipator, which I think is cholesterol medication. Dee wasn't sure what he wanted... he thought about it for a minute, and then, surprising nobody but pleasing everyone, he screamed out, I WANNA ROCK! at which point, they played that song. Which made perfect sense. They finished up and then came out for the expected encore where they did the whole twelve days of Christmas thing before closing with We're Not Gonna Take it, at which point Lita Ford and Mini-Kiss came back out again.

All in all, it was one of the most fun shows I've seen in ages. I had my doubts, but they were definitely put to rest about 2 minutes into the show. These guys may be getting on in years but they still deliver live and Dee's still got amazing energy up on stage. They sounded great, really tight and super heavy and they had the crowd eating it up. What a killer show.

But the night was not over!

After the show, cause we had the fancy VIP tickets, we got to go backstage and do a meet and greet with the band. They were all pretty friendly and Dee made me do one of those 'respect knuckle punch' things when he noticed I had a Warriors t-shirt on. He also wished Alison a happy birthday. We also got rad Christmas cards from the band, that they signed, which was kinda funny. After that Mark Mendoza yelled at everyone and told them to get out of the room, so we went home. Alison fell asleep on the subway. When we got home we drank Snapple and I ate a Twix bar.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T19:01:00.000-05:00

It's Thanksgiving! Here's what I'm thankful for this year:

-Family, friends, and people I can trust.
-A job, even though it drives me nuts, that allows me to pay my bills and leave a little bit left over.
-A car that's paid for and that is a reliable mode of transporation.
-My writing gigs and the interesting side projects that they've opened up for me over the last year.
-Living somewhere interesting despite insansity that NYC brings with it.
-Good health.
-Brooklyn Lager (cause I can't get Bridgeport IPA here and everyone needs a vice).
-A girlfriend who I love beyond words and who loves me just as much in return and who, for the first time ever, really and truly understands why I am the way I am and why I do the things I do and not only accepts me despite those qualities but genuinely appreciates them and encourages them allowing me to finally feel comfortable in my own skin.
-Genuine happiness.

The years not over, but it's been an eventful one and a good one so far. Here's hoping the trend continues.

Mystery Vacation Round Up!

2008-11-20T15:03:00.000-05:00

So last Friday we drove to Salem and hung out there for the morning. It was a neat town with a weird creepy history to it. It's also a bit of a tourist trap. The old burial ground is eerie enough to be interesting and wandering around there in the fall rain added a certain atmosphere and ambience to the whole weird vibe that was there to begin with. I'm glad I went and got to check the place out for myself, particularly because that wasn't our final destination, simply a neat stopping point along the way.

Saturday afternoon, after Salem-ing ourselves out, we got back into the Adventure-Mobile and drove further north to New Hampshire, stopping in the White Mountains area in a small town called North Conway, which lead to my making many a Conway Twitty joke. Alison loves Conway Twitty jokes. She just can't get enough of them. At any rate, she got us a room at this rad hotel that was more or less attached to an outlet mall (which was odd but also rather convenient as there were bargains on Judas Priest CDs and Midnight Movie DVDs to be had!). We had a huge room with a jacuzzi in it and the staff there were all really nice. The first night we were there we met up with some friends who had driven up from Maine to have dinner with us. We wound up at a local steakhouse for a really nice meal before heading back to the hotel bar and befriending a waiter named Bamtu from South Africa who decided that rather than bring me the bourbon and lemonade I'd ordered he'd bring me a bourbon and ginger ale - that tasted weird. It was promptly replaced. Anyway, good times.

Sunday morning we woke up and checked out the town for an hour or so before getting on this neat old train that wound its way up through the mountains before stopping at a cider house on the way back. A great way to kill two hours and enjoy some gorgeous scenery, it was well worth the price of the ticket and I got some neat pictures and some good footage. We drove around the mountains for a while that after noon and then did a bit of shopping before heading back to the hotel for dinner. Our waiter? Good ol' South African Bamtu again.

That night I also went swimming outside. There was a heated outdoor pool that I took advantage of - had the place to myself - and it was neat swimming around in nice, warm water while snow fell around me. Monday morning we took our time driving home bringing an all to prompt ending to one of the most relaxing weekends of my life. I think I want to move up there, it was so pretty and peaceful but not so far removed from civilization that it was dull. It reminded me of a cross between Oregon and the Muskoka region in Ontario.

At any rate, a few random pictures...

Recent Excitement!

2008-11-12T18:28:00.000-05:00

So with the election out of the way, what else is there to talk about? Financial turmoil is no fun. Howzabout what I've been up to? So last weekend I got together with a pair of friends who work for a DVD company and recorded a pair of commentaries in a slightly drunken state for two c-list films, The Killer Likes Candy and Run Like Hell (the later of which was directed by Eric 'Slain Wayne' Brummer and stars Robert Z'dar but appears on neither of their filmographies on the imdb - it's just that good!). The commentaries rarely stayed on topic but they were fun to participate in. Hopefully the finished product is marginally entertaining to listen to, at least in a 'hey listen to those kinda sloshed dudes talking about bad movies' kind of way.

I also bought an HD camcorder. Best Buy had 18 months, 0 interest on them last weekend and because Alison and I are going away on a 'mystery vacation' this weekend it made sense to buy one. The downside is that in order to edit anything, I need more ram and maybe a faster processor. Blah. The camera is a neat toy though and I'm looking forward to playing with it. Earlier this week I recorded our dog sitting on the floor. I used some editing software to loop Prince's 'Pussy Control' over top of it and the results are pretty amazing in a 'wow look at that potentially kinda sloshed guy making stupid home movies' kind of way. We'll see how things go once the ram we ordered from Dell shows up.

Today on the way home I got on the F train at the 35th St. stop I always leave from. I walked in to the train and notice a scruff looking man, possibly of Jewish origin, reading the paper. Hmmm... says I, he looks familiar. It was Handsome Dick Manitoba from the Dictators, sitting there reading the paper. I thanked him for the Dictators contributions to rock n roll and he told me that he was going to mention 'Ian from Queens' on his Sirius radio show tonight. Rad if he does, if not, still rad to run into a member of one of the city's greatest bands on the subway.

Friday night we leave for Salem, MA. Creepy! Should be neat though. We spend the night there and Saturday we head to... wherever it is we're heading to. Alison won't tell me. I guess I'll find out soon enough. Mystery vacation.... neat!

Get Out And Vote.... Because I Can't.

2008-11-04T21:41:00.001-05:00

If I were an American citizen (and I'm seriously toying with the idea because there ARE very definitely reasons I want to stay in this country even if I gripe a lot) I'd have voted today. We all know this has been an odd election. The influence of the media, from late night comedy shows to the internet, has been insane as has the back and forth between the two major parties. Right now it looks like Obama is going to take it and I'm happy about that. While in many ways I see him as a 'lesser of two evils' candidate and in other ways I actually think John McCain seems like a genuinely decent guy (unlike the current Asshole In Chief) I do want to see the Democrats take this one, much like I did in 2004.

The results aren't in and until they are, it's anyone's game (as Gore and Kerry found out the hard way) but things look good for Obama. Hopefully those pesky Neo-Nazi's will stay out of the way and let what's left of democracy happen. Scary that stuff like that still happens in America, that someone can be made a target for assassination based purely on skin color. That said, in a free country you can't force people to think logically and by the very nature of the beast I suppose you have to accept the ignorent as well as the intelligent.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to change I can believe in. Always a sucker for a good slogan (speaking of good Slogan's check out the French film Slogan starring the late, great Serge Gainsberg out now on DVD from our friends at Cult Epics - it's pretty rad) I think it's time that Washington started to care again. The last eight years... it hasn't felt that way. Having been in DC just last week for work I was reminded how great a city it is. It's a beautiful town with a rich history and a lot of good people living in it who really do want to do the good thing. It's also the epicenter of political corruption. A mixed bag to be sure, but I was there on the company dime and the food was good, so whatever.

Back from the Lou!

2008-10-27T20:37:00.000-04:00

So Alison and I got back from St. Louis last night. We left Friday around 9pm and got a first class upgrade on the way there, which was pretty rad. I do enjoy free beers. We went straight to the hotel courtesy of this odd Polish cab driver who claimed that he was good personal friends of former NYC mayor, Ed Koch. This guy also claimed to have played hockey at the University of St. Petersberg in Russia at one point. I'm not sure how truthful his stories were, but they passed the time on the way to the hotel.

We crashed pretty hard upon arrival. We stayed at the Wyndam Mayfair, a neat old hotel built in 1925. It was a bit old fashioned but nice. Saturday our friend Jeremy came to pick us up after we played around at the newly constructed Lumiere Casino in downtown St. Louis. From there we had lunch at a place called Show-Me's, which was basically a low-rent version of Hooters. Surprsingly, they had Widmer beers on tap.

From there, it was off to the set. Once everyone was there I had some make up effects applied to my head. Then I stood around for a few hours. Once everyone else was ready, we did three takes of the opening scene of the movie. I play a corpse, but I do it well apparantly. It was interesting to see it all happen - the effects work (no CGI, all old school), the acting, the camerawork and all that stuff. It was also cold. And a long night. Alison was a good sport about it all and everyone was really friendly though and that made all the difference in the world.

Sunday was play day. Jeremy came and picked us up again and after lunch and beers at a great pub called Growler's, which much to my delight carried Bridgeport IPA, we went rollerskating at Rock Roll O Rena which doens't look like it's been touched since 1973. I'm terrible at rollerskating but I only fell one and I didn't hurt myself. It probably looked odd though as it was almost all kids there and they skated circles around me.

From there, back to the airport is where we went only to find out that our flight was delayed and that we might not make our connection in Chicago. Thankfully, our travel mojo was working well and we wound up on a direct to LGA which got us in a half an hour before we were supposed to have been there in the first place. All's well that ends well, right?

It was a great trip overall, if a bit exhausting. St. Louis is an alright town despite the fact that it is second only to Detroit in terms of crime rate. There's more culture there than you'd expect and some neat areas of town to bum around in that compensate nicely for the north and eastern parts of the city that look like they were bombed and left for dead. I was amazed to hear how cheap real estate there is and with how blue the skies were. After six years in Oregon and now living in NYC, I'm not so used to the blue open skies that they have in that area.

At any rate, good times. It was over too quickly, but we'll be back.

Escapism Rules.

2008-10-16T21:25:00.000-04:00

Ok, so last weekend my mother was here. Overall, it was a great visit, really. We all had a blast and it was simply awesome to see her again and know she's doing well, and I know for a fact she felt the same way - she was a little worried about her first born living in NYC, etc., etc. and she I think it did her some good to see how and where I live first hand to realize that I honestly do have my feet grounded. Alison, ever the good sport, and I took her from Battery Park all the way up to Central Park with plenty of stops along the way and then surprised her with an early birthday present (1oth row orchestra seats for The 39 Steps which was fantastic and amazingly funny in the best Python-esque sort of way imaginable) her first day here. I think she was overwhelmed but had a great time. Day two was a trip to Staten Island before a 'meeting of the moms' where Ali's mom came over and the four of us all had dinner. Her third and final day saw an off season trip to Coney because she wanted to see it before it is torn down (any day now.... The Warriors would be pissed and rightly so!).

As such, I'm still tired. It was three days of non-stop 'stuff' and while I was happy to do it and look forward to doing it again, it reminded me that I'm getting old. Couple that with more work related bullshit than I care for and it's been a long week. Add to that the completely unexpected death of a former co-worker from my last job and you can understand how I'm tired, and so I've opted to find solace in the finer things in life.

This week, what has occupied me?

-Shaw Brothers Kung Fu - definitely see Kiss Of Death if you dig Kill Bill style revenge films done right and House of Traps is fun if you like guys in bad outfits running around in houses filled with... traps.

-Deception - Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor star in this very mediocre and predictable film that features more naked ladies than you'd expect. That said, naked ladies can help but not save a film that lays all its cards on the table from the on set. If you have half a brain, you'll see the twist coming.

-Pieces - Juan Piquer's trash classic got a 2-disc release from Grindhouse Releasing. Just get it. It's awesome. And bloody. And it has a rad Bruce Lee dude in it.

The Jesus And Mary Chain: The Power of Negative Thinking - four discs of JAMC's demos, outtakes, covers and b-sides. I'm of the belief that feedback actually helps purge the bad stuff from your head when life beats up on you and this set definitely does the trick. It's worth getting just to hear their fuzzed out and dirty sounding wall of sound cover of Prince's Alphabet Street. Awesome stuff.

These things, coupled with a nice bottle of mid-priced Aussie merlot, are a good combination. That said, the next couple of months have a lot to look forward to. St. Louis/movie work is the weekend after this one and Alison is taking me on a secret vacation to an undisclosed location the second weeke in November. I've got the seed for a screenplay or story of some sort brewing in my brain and in December I'm hoping to take off to the great white north for a few days to see the whole fam damily. Life is good over all, really. I've little to complain about, but the little there is, I'll take full advantage of.

Without further ado, some odd pictures Alison took of me at the Coney Island aquarium earlier this week...

More politics...

2008-10-06T17:45:00.000-04:00

I don't normally want to tell people how to vote, but watch the video here....

I Want A Bail Out...

2008-10-02T20:31:00.000-04:00

So if the government bails out Wall Street, are they going to bail us out? Us Joe Six Packs (or, in my case, Joe Twelve Pack, because I am that much more manlier than most everyone else - or I drink too much beer - you decide) screw up financially all the time - where's our golden parachute?

It infuriates me that the government would bail out an economy that has been brutally sodomized by greedy bankers and brokers at the expense of the American (or legally naturalized) tax payer.

What about health care? $700 billion dollars would help a lot of sick people get better. Let the greedy pricks on Wall Street tread water for a couple of years. Let the housing market tank. Let the economy recover naturally even if it takes some time. By voting in the bail out the government is essentially 'faking it' (interpret that comparison as you will) while the Democrats fling crap at the Republicans and the Republicans fling crap at the Democrats and the blame game goes on and on and on.

Bush urges the House and the Senate to pass the bill - but does he care or is he simply using a bucket to bail out the sinking ship that will likely be his political legacy so late in his undeniably assinine Presidential career?

It pisses me off that big business wins again while unemployment rates skyrocket (the highest in seven years as of today), small businesses fail, and hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in this country can't afford to see a doctor. The two party system in this country continues to fail and I sincerely believe that the founding fathers would be horribly, horribly embarassed by all of this, as everyone who has played a part in the economic downfall of the former superpower that was the United States of America should be.

It might sound ungrateful for an immigrant such as myself to bitch about things like this, but if I didn't truly care about the direction the country is taking I wouldn't be here in the first place. At least in Canada I could go to the hospital without having to sell an organ on the blackmarket to fund it. America is awesome in so many ways and it is such a truly great country on so many levels that it just adds insult to injury to see this happen....

Shipping Up To Boston...

2008-09-17T11:00:00.000-04:00

I'm sailor peg
And I've lost my leg
A climbing up the topsails
I've lost my leg
I'm shipping up to Boston
Shipping off to Boston
Shipping out to Boston
To find my wooden leg

Hopefully I won't ever have a wooden leg but I am heading to Boston in half an hour for a company event. I'm back tomorrow evening. It's still really weird to me to be away from home and away from Alison, even if it is only for a single night. I'm sappy that way I guess. I mean, there are worse places to go and the reason I'm heading there is to oversee a company dinner at a very nice restaurant with a good group of people. Free food, free booze, and a nice hotel to crash at. Years ago this would have really appealed to me. I'm mellowing in my old age, as to be honest, I'd rather be at home watching TV with my girl.

In other complete unrelated news, we're heading to St. Louis in late Oct. to pitch in on a movie that I invested in. I'm apparantly going to have a brief cameo role and am also supposedly going to be a murder victim in the film! haha.

My mom's coming out to visit second weekend in October - that'll be fun. It's only for a couple of nights but I've already booked some fun activities to keep us all busy while she's here. It'll be good to see her again.

Other than that, just keeping on keeping on. This weekend some of us local yocals are planning to hit up a tiki bar in Brooklyn called the Zombie Hut. I'll bring my camera.

A lot has changed in the last 7 years...

2008-09-11T14:10:00.003-04:00

I was on another NYC boat cruise last night, unaware really of the date, and once we got to the south end of the island we saw this...

If that skyline doesn't look familiar, blame my lame camera phone, but those lights are shining out of where the World Trade Center towers used to be. They literally pierced the clouds, it was amazing. It just kinda hammered home how much has changed for so many people since September 11, 2001.

2008-08-27T17:32:00.001-04:00

A few random pictures from my hike in Boulder, Co. last week. I was there for work but we had enough time that some of us were able to manage a 7 mile hike to a height of 8800ft above sea level. It was weird, the altitude winds you pretty quickly, but once we got to the top it was well worth it. Plenty of drinking water and some energy/protein snacks helped keep us all moving. In all there were about twelve us in the group. The other sixty or so people went on the beginner or intermediate hikes, and probably felt much better after wards. Then again, we got this view and they didn't...

One of the coolest things about getting to the top of the peak was the random stuff that we were able to see. This lone squirrel was just going to town at the top of the tree that you can see in the first picture. I was able to zoom in on him a bit. What a cute little squirrel. Hooray!

As you come down the hill, you get a nice view of the mighty city of Boulder. I believe that was were Mork and Mindy was filmed, but don't hold that against it. It's a nice place, even if it is ripe with dirty hippies. Seriously. I saw guys dancing to the Grateful Dead while playing frisbee in the park and just about wanted to puke. Or at least steal their frisbee. That said, if you don't mind exlporing the city a bit you can find a couple of good record stores and score Jerry Reed LPs for your girlfriend at a fair price. If that's your thing.

Another thing to be aware of is that Boulder is definitely bear country! They make no qualms about letting you know this when you come into the park and warn you not to approach the bears. We didn't see any (I was hoping to see a mountain lion or a bear or something but we had to settle for squirrels, deer, and a frighteningly buff sixty year old dude who was doing push ups by himself at the top of the mountain) but the stickers on the garbage can prove that, yes, I was in bear country. Go me.

Here's a peek at the peak. It was a good hike and man did I feel it the next day but it was definitely worth it. Why bother going all the way to a hippy town like Boulder if you're not at least going to get outside for a bit and see what makes it interesting in the first place? Sure there's a shopping strip and a lot of neat bars to hit but you can get that and more in NYC (and believe it or not, you'll spend a lot less doing it). You don't get big ass mountains in NYC though. We had them in Portland, and that was pretty rad, but work didn't fly me to Portland (yet - it's on the books for August of 2009 so Portlanders mark your calender now as Alison and I want to plan a vacation around it).

On the way up and the way down you see some neat rocks and outcrops, formed by the movement of glaciers thousands of years ago. At least that's what the guide said. The guide was cool. He was in his sixties and his calves were like the size of my chest. He was in super rad shape and kept telling us about how when he was in college everyone would smoke weed on the front lawn of the campus.

So yeah, here's me. On a mountain. Looking rugged and in dire need of a haircut and sporting a couple of nice pimples. Since I got home, the pimples went away but I still have to get that haircut, lest I wind up smoking weed on the front lawn of a campus and developing freakishly large leg muscles.

Casa Bonita!

2008-08-19T20:11:00.000-04:00

So since Friday I've been in Colorado for work. I flew into Denver and checked in at the hotel (after a SEVEN HOUR DELAY coming out of LGA because a bird hit and dented the plane I was supposed to get on causing a bunch of last minute repairs). My good friend Matt, who lives in the area, came to pick me up and we went to Casa Bonita (made famous by South Park!) for bad Mexican food and rad photo ops.

Here's the proof.... three floors of caves, mariachi bands, arcade games, and all around tackiness.

Weekend Update!

2008-08-10T20:53:00.000-04:00

So last week I went to Chicago for a few days for work. Most of the time I've spent so far in Chicago has been around the airport, this time I was actually based downtown for three days. I didn't have a ton of time to explore but I did hit up a couple of record stores (I bought some awesome soundtracks at Dusty Groove) and wander around a little bit. The architecture there is interesting and we ate at some fantastic restaurants. Tomorrow I leave for Boston for a day, then Friday I head to Colorado for a week after which I won't have much travel for a while. Here's a couple of goofy pictures of me in action at a company dinner, both before and during.

In other picture related news, I've been into photographing random old theaters and stuff around the city. NYC has such a great history in that area and it changes so quickly that it's entirely possible that an old theater that's there one week could be torn down the next. The closet one to Alison and I's apartment is The Eagle. This is an old art deco style theater that was a porno movie house for a long time. A couple of years ago it was bought and changed into a Bollywood theater catering to the large Indian population that live ten or so blocks from our pad. As you can see, it's not in the best of shape and has a nice seedy vibe to it. Plenty of 'grindhouse' appeal going on in a city that was once famous for that and which is now fairly sanitized in that regard.

On a semi-related note, I dug the way that this shot turned out. This is the entrance to a smut shop in Manhattan, down in the village. The lights play off of the entrance way nicely and gives it a strange sort of happy, colorful look to it. A neat combination of chrome, colored lighting, and urban scum. Or maybe I read too much into it.

Alison and I went and saw Pineapple Express this afternoon and we both had quite a bit of fun with it. It's a little long (a common problem with Apatow's theatrical productions) but it's funny enough that you can overlook that easily enough and Seth Rogan just makes me laugh. His chemistry with James Franco carries the film but a few stand out moments (including an awesome 'death by Daewoo' scene!) help it rise above the average Hollywood comedy. It's a film I think I'd like to see again at some point.

Hooray For Lady Liberty!

2008-08-01T09:19:00.000-04:00

So last night I went on a boat cruise around Manhattan. I didn't bring my camera, just had my cell phone, but this one didn't turn out too bad considering...

Weird Pictures From Sylvan Cemetery In Staten Island

2008-07-27T16:53:00.000-04:00

So yesterday Alison and I went to Princeton Record Exchange in NJ (a pretty bad ass store) and one the way home stopped in Staten Island. There's this weird abandoned cemetery there called Sylvan Cemetery. From what I can find online, it started as a private/family burying ground and then became a public cemetery for a while. It seems to be made up primarily of the graves of two families, The Deckers and The Cannons. And one point it supposedly transferred over to a local church who, without funding, couldn't afford the upkeep and it's since fallen into abandonement and disrepair and not much has been done to it since the 1920s. Currently there is a new sign up (it wasn't there the first time we drove by it a couple of months ago) and someone has cut back some of the brush and grass around most of the graves in addition to putting down some cedar chips to create a possible parking lot? It's hard to tell. Someone's been trying to clean it up a bit at least.

Regardless, it's a very strange area and there's a simultaneously sad and eerie vibe to the whole place.

If you don't mind scrolling down about half way through the page, you can read an interesting (albeit fairly incomplete and seven years out of date) history of the cemetery and how it came to be abandoned here. There's also some interesting information about the cemetery and the surrounding area on the Forgotten NY page. Here's another article on how volunteers have started work on cleaning up the cemetery. That last article was written less than a month ago which would explain why, the last time we drove past the area, there wasn't any work done to it and why the work that has been done to it since looks so fresh. They've still got a ways to go before restoring the land to any sort of proper burial ground. I'm kind of glad I got some pictures before it is all cleaned up though. It's much stranger in its current state than it would be all spiffed up.

A few pictures...

Some of the pictures are a little washed out. It's dark in there even during the day time and I had to use a flash when I didn't really want to. A lot of the graves are really old an in terrible shape. Some of them are also very small (if you look you can see how some of them aren't much bigger than the leaves around them) and you can trip over them if you're not careful. Years of partying has resulted in some odd litter, mostly beer cans and stuff, as well as a fair amount of vandalism.

The last four... wierd how stuff like this just gets forgotten about and falls into disrepair, especially when you consider that, although SI is the most remote of the five burroughs, this is still technically part of NYC proper.

Crazy guy or brilliant Republican marketing campaign?

2008-07-24T20:16:00.001-04:00

So today I'm taking the subway to work like I always do and this strange squirrley looking guy gets on shorlty after I do. I take a seat and read Conan comics and he starts scratching at himself and making squeeky noises. Once he's finished scratching himself, he starts to rant...

"Ladies and gentlemen of the subway, I need to tell you a secret. You have to make sure that this secret does not leave this subway car, otherwise it won't be a secret anymore. OK? You all unnerstand me, right? OK... the secret is... you don't need to know shit. You don't need to know a damn thing and you'll be just fine."

I felt that this was a rather underwhelming secret considering the build up, but whatever. I went back to my comic book and my iPod.

The he gets weirder....

"Barrack Obama, all he wants to do is take old ideas and make you believe that they're new ideas. He shouldn't be president because he can't follow orders. John McCain, he should be president because he CAN follow orders. You know who didn't follow orders? Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. They didn't follow orders and because of that, we replaced them. I know who replaced them. And I know that if Barrack Obama is elected, he'll get replaced to. So vote for John McCain."

After that I think he started singing the national anthem. When I got off the subway, I went to the cart across the street to get my coffee like I always do and while I was in line I saw a real, honest-to-God bearded lady. I've seen her in the area a few times.

It was kind of a weird trip to work.

R.I.P. xBox 360....

2008-07-23T22:31:00.000-04:00

So over the weekend I got the 'red ring of death.' It wasn't bowel related, it was xBox related. My 360 gave up the ghost which presents a two fold problem.

1 - I had an extensive game library.

2 - I had an even more extensive HD-DVD library.

Seeing as HD-DVD was sent to an early grave during the first quarter of this year, I opted not to have the 360 repaired or replaced and am in the process of unloading my HD-DVDs in hopes that sooner rather than later they'll all make it over to Blu-ray.

Stupid format war. Stupid inferior Microsoft products. The damn thing was only 2 years old.

Sigh...

Too Gosh Darned Busy For My Own Good

2008-07-14T20:34:00.001-04:00

So this working for a living thing is overrated. I all of a sudden don't have as much spare time as I used to. Go figure.

A few random thoughts....

-the MTA subway amazes me in this city. Yes, it's dirty, hot, overcrowded and prone to weirdos and it's true that an old Chinese man broke wind on my leg while riding the F train last week, but really, you can go all the way around NYC for $2.00 and that's pretty rad.

-now that I'm in my thirties, I get sunburnt way too easily. Alison's son and I went swimming yesterday afternoon at her Aunt and Uncle's place (hooray for Long Island BBQ) and I woke up this morning feeling like a bag of hammered poop. If I'd have had too much to drink or done something to deserve it, that'd have been one thing but really, all I did was swim with a kid who didn't want to be in the pool by himself (can't blame him for that) and now my body feels like it's melting.

-the new Street Dogs album is excellent and the new Judas Priest is so epic it's almost too much. Notice I said almost. A two disc rock opera about Nostradamus? Not just any band can pull that off.

-there's a weird homeless dude who hangs out near the subway entrance by the office I work at. He makes his outfits out of strange things. So far I've seen him sporting suits (two piece suits, literally) made out of rags, paper towels, umbrellas, and what looked like odor eaters. I'm pretty sure he's nuts.

-did you know there are four Starbucks locations inside the midtown Macy's? For some reason, that annoys me to no end. There were Starbucks' inside the Fred Meyers in Portland and it didn't but me but for some reason this does.

-this week I made an effeminate catering director at a very prestigious Times Square hotel burst into tears on the phone when I accused him of price gouging. I felt guilty at first, but then I realized it was actually kind of funny.

That's about it. That's what's been going through my mind lately. Just random stuff. I find that I think a lot, probably too much, on the subway too and from work about random nonsensical stuff. You'd think I might find a better use of my time, but on the flip side of that coin, if I don't think about these things then, when will I think about them?

2008-06-30T21:09:00.000-04:00

So it's been a busy few weeks. Not this past weekend but the one before was interesting. On Sat. I went to a Japanese book star in Manhattan to meet Tatsuya Nakadai, which was rad. If you don't know who he is, shame on you. He was in a bunch of Kurosawa films (he first appeared in The Seven Samurai but his roll is very brief) and he's a bit of a big deal in samurai film/Japanese cinema circles. He told me though a translater 'your height intimidates me and your sideburns remind me of Toshiro Mifune.' I took that as a compliment. The next day we did the Autism Benefit Walk, which was encouraging and very positive and a fair bit of fun too. I got to see Southside Seaport, an old part of town I'd never been to before.

This past weekend Alison and I went to Chicago where we hung out with some friends at a film convention. I officially invested in a film for the first time and we got to meet George Romero. How cool is that? I also drank some beers and bought some comic books, but that's really not all that interesting. Some would say it's par for the course.

Works been going well, even if I'm still leaning which makes it seem more hectic than it really is. Other than that, things are good. I'm happy, healthy (aside from the head cold) and enjoying life a lot more than I have in ages. There's a lot of neat stuff coming to a boil right now and the second half of this year should be a pretty interesting one.

Scream for me New York City!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-06-17T19:42:00.000-04:00

So it's been a busy week. I started my new job which is going quite well so far and I actually like it which is a nice change - the money isn't bad either and they're sending me to Colorado for a week in August and, get this, probably Portland for a couple of days in the fall. I hope to make a happy hour at the Lucky Lab if/when that happens and dammit, as big as NYC is, the record shops in PDX are way, way, way better.

Thursday Eddie and I spent the afternoon exploring Brooklyn and Friday we went to Six Flags in Jersey. I hate Jersey. Really. I fear it.

At any rate, Sunday night we went to see Iron Maiden play at Madison Square Gardens. I've been listening to Iron Maiden since I was eight. That's a quarter of a century's worth of cheesy (but remarkably intelligent) lyrics, galloping guitars, and bad fashion all culminating in one night's worth of heavy metal bliss. I'd never seen them before that night and the wait was completely worth it. They only played 80s era material which was nice as although I thought that the last album was okay, the few that preceeded it weren't very good. It was basically a greatest hits tour and they played for well over two hours straight. Lots of explosions and lighting tricks and Eddie (their mascot) came out as a mummy and in his 'Somewhere In Time/Stranger In A Strange Land' guise to make trouble. I was surprised how much pyro they used in the show and just how freakin' good they sounded live. At one point, about 2/3 of the way through Powerslave ironically enough, something blew on the soundboard. The band played soccer on stage while the techs fixed it. Aside from some dink accidentily pouring a frozen daquiri on Alison (who drinks a frozen daquiri at an Iron Maiden show????) it was a seriously good time. I'd go see them again in a heartbeat.

This week it's work, work, work. This weekend we have the Autism Walk on Saturday and will probably spend the rest of the weekend slacking. I have two free passes for The Hulk so we might go see that but really I'm just looking forward to being lazy and hanging out with my gal.

Next weekend, however, it's Flashback Weekend in Chicago. I'm gonna give George Romero a high five, buy bootleg movies and potentially drink a beer or two. I'm also gonna ink some paper that will officially allow me to invest in a movie that's slated to be made later this year. But more on that later.

Happy Birthday To Me!

2008-06-09T18:19:00.000-04:00

So last week was busy, productive and fun all at the same time. I turned 33 on Thursday and Alison and her son decided to wake me up at a reasonable time in the morning and give me my gift (the Dirty Harry Collection on Blu-ray, huzzah!). When she got home from work we hit up this crazy Dominican restaurant near the airport. It was covered in thatched roof style grass and all the furniture was made out of bamboo. The interior was done up like the inside of a cave, it was pretty cool. The grill a mean steak and don't charge and unreasonable amount of money for it.

Saturday night we had a few friends over for a small party. Much beer was consumed, many hamburgers were eaten, and a fair amount of chicken, sausage, and chili-cheese dip filled people up. We yapped and argued about movies and other nonsense, enjoyed some Planet Earth in high def, and enjoyed some Thor videos. It was during the Thor video that Alison decided to bring out the Cookie Puss cake. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, click this link. This was a big deal to me because for whatever reason, I'd been obsessing over Cookie Puss lately. I remember the ads from when I was a kid. Growing up on a border town in Canada, we got no shortage of American television and the commercials were all over the Buffalo channels. I'd never actually seen a Cookie Puss before, though, let alone have someone give me one for my birthday. You can tell by the picture, I'm appropriately excited.

It was a nice night and people came out to Queens for once (instead of making us take the train into Manhattan, which is the norm). I also watched an episode of the Incredible Hulk where some jerk gave the Hulk acid by slipping some LSD into Dr. Banner's orange juice. I've been obsessing over that lately too.

In other, and likely more important, news the four job interviews I had last week bore fruit. I got an offer today that I accepted and I'm happy, excited, and relieved. I didn't want to piss away all my savings and now I don't have to. The money is good, and while there aren't any benefits yet, that will probably change soon as the company expands. The interviews went really well, and the office isn't too far at all from the DISTINGUISHED WAKAMBA LOUNGE! So if I get the craving for Spanairds, expensive booze and urine it'll only be two blocks away. So, hooray for me. I'm another year old but likely no wiser. At least I've got a job now.

Oh, and the new five disc Pogues boxed set that came out in the UK last week? Amazing and completely worth every penny.

So it looks like Obama will run for the Democrats...

2008-06-03T22:06:00.000-04:00

....good.

In other news, I have a second job interview with a rad tech company based out of Manhattan on Thursday, which is also my birthday. Party at our place on Saturday, if you're in NYC and wanna show up, shoot Alison or myself an email for directions.

Another Crane Accident In Manhattan....

2008-05-30T13:52:00.000-04:00

The city seriously needs to get this together and put in a zero tolerance policy on highrise and construction violations before more people die needlessly. If the contractor was following regulations, maybe the regulations need to be tightened. News like this makes me glad to be in Jackson Heights where it's rare to see a building over six stories tall and where cranes are uncommon. In Manhattan, which is a burrough that seems to be in a constant state of evolution, the mentality behind development seems to be that bigger is better and there are plenty of buildings, old and new, well over twenty stories.

From the AP wire...

"NEW YORK - A construction crane collapsed Friday on New York's Upper East Side, smashing into a 23-story apartment building as it fell to the ground, killing one construction worker and seriously injuring two others.

It was the second deadly crane accident in 2 1/2 months in the city, which is undergoing a building boom.

"What has happened is unacceptable and intolerable. Having said that, we do not know at the moment what happened or why," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a news conference, adding that it appears the builders followed regulations.

At a news conference, he said one of the casualties was in the cab of the crane and a second was on the street. He said he didn't know about the third person and didn't say who was killed."

You can read the rest of the article here.

Some pictures I stole from the linked article...

Hello, Birdman!

2008-05-29T15:28:00.001-04:00

This is..... Birdman! He, or she, is a brand new baby chick. At the school where Alison worked, for some reason an incubator was brought in. Long story short, eggs turned into baby chicks and much cuteness ensued. She brought one of the little guys home the other night so that her son could check him out, and Justin, being nine and all, aptly named him.... BIRDMAN.

Birdman hung out for the night in our bathtub with a warm cardboard box and a tub full of wood chips. He seemed intent to hop around a lot and enjoyed flopping in his food bowl more so than actually eating. He chirped a lot and woke me up a few times in the night, but that's ok. The cute little bugger went back to the school the next morning.

Back To The Beach!

2008-05-26T11:11:00.000-04:00

In honor of Memorial Day (ok not really, any excuse will do) we took the F Train to the end of the line yesterday and spent the afternoon at Coney Island. I'd only been there in the off season, when it's empty and creepy and kinda gloomy so it was a kick to see it alive and full of people and I'd imagine once school is out for the year it'll be pretty hectic. Regardless, we got to cross a few things off of my 'NYC TO DO' list.

We started with lunch at Rudy's Bar & Grill. From the looks of things, this place has been there forever. I had two hot dogs and a Coors Light (The beer of champions! It was either that or Bud...) and Alison had a sausage on a bun with a Sunkist. It was a little spendy for the amount of food that we got, but we got to eat right on the boardwalk so it was worth it. You kind of pay for the gimmick and novelty of it all, rather than the quality of the food.

From there we wandered a bit. The beach was pretty hopping and there were even a few brave souls swimming in what I'd assume would still be a fairly chilly Atlantic Ocean. We also walked by the beloved SHOOT THE FREAK attraction to see what it was all about. I was fascinated by it when I saw it closed down, but really, the freak is just a guy with a shield and some paintball gear on. A barker calls people over to pelt him with paintballs for a few dollars. There was a surprisingly big crowd for it.

We wandered over towards Deno's Wonder Wheel and Amusement park where one of the first things we saw was a strange caricature booth where the artist would draw you or, if you prefer, Hulk Hogan or possibly random African guys. A lot of old carnival attractions like 'grandma's predictions' and arm wrestling machines are still littered across the park for added camp appeal. Being as obsessed with The Warriors as I am, I pushed for us to go on the Wonder Wheel despite the fact that Alison doesn't really like ferris wheels (neither do I, for that matter). I didn't realize that there are two types of cars on this ferris wheel - stationary and swinging. We wound up in line for the swinging cars and figured, if we don't rock it, it'll be fine. No. We were way wrong on that. The colored cars on the Wonder Wheel are on an inside track and as soon as they reach a certain point on the way up, they wooosh up at about a 45-90 degree angle. This did not sit well with either one of us, especially because we were both sitting in the back, which meant no weight at all in the front. The added bonus was that the car did the same thing on the way back down, only in the opposite direction - and the ride goes all the way around twice, so we swung four times. We got off, and promptly sat down. Amazingly enough, neither of us puked so thank God for small mercies.

Stomachs slightly settled we wandered over to the Sideshow by the Seashore, one of the few active live Freak Shows that still exists in the United States. You can't take picture inside unfortunately but it's well worth the $7.50 admission and you can drink cold beer inside while you watch if that's your thing. A ringleader with a handlebar moustache and a bowler starts the show off by pounding a nail up his nostril and then inserting the action end of a power drill into the same nasal cavity. Ouch. From there we got to see a gal dance with an albino python, a sword swallower who doubles as a contortionist, some knife and fire juggling, a real live lobster boy, a woman who could conduct electricity and an impressive fire dancer. It was all good, goofy fun and interesting to watch if you're at all one of those 'how did they do that?' types like I am. I'd scene footage from this show in the American Carny documentary so it was kind of exciting to witness it first hand. At least I got these sweet pictures of the outside of the building and of the barker and midget in a Misfits shirt...

After that we perused the Coney Island Museum, which is fairly small but also only $0.99 to get in, making it by far the cheapest thing to do in the area. They do Q&A sessions in there with local historians and experts but we didn't stick around for that because there were two more important quests to complete, the first of which was the SPOOK-O-RAMA! This dorky haunted house was pretty silly but I was intrigued by the garish sign and the giant skeleton on top of the building. I'm a sucker for advertising. It was pitch black inside and all manner of dumb monsterish things pop out at you. I turned the flash on and shot some pictures. Maybe it ruins some of the magic but some of the monsters were pretty rad. On the way there we passed a strange midway attraction with a creepy bloodied clown inside. I don't know why that clown was there, I only know I hate him.

Once that was over with I had to ride the Cyclone next door at Astro Land, the big old rickety wooden roller coaster that Coney Island is famous for. Alison opted out, having done it before and because it's $8.00 for a three minute ride, but I plunked down my cash and got in line. This coaster packs a much stronger punch than you'd think and while it might be older than dirt, that does add an element of danger to it all. The coaster is obviously well maintained but you can't help but wonder if you're not going to go flying out of your seat and onto the pavement below as you hurl down the hills or around the corners. Good times! You can tell by the expression on my face in the last picture (I'm in the 2nd car) picture that my stomach is about to come flying out.

From there we wandered past a few odd sights like the Dante's Inferno ride, a strange BREAK DANCE ride that was obviously left over from the eighties and which had nothing to do with break dancing, and a fantastic arm wrestling machine with the most cliche looking goomba you've ever seen. If you look closely you can see where his face got punched in and repaired.

We got home and had some dinner and spent the evening in bed watching movies, both a little sunburnt and a lot tired from the hour plus subway journey each way and the hours of walking. It was a lot of fun though, and it's really only as expensive as you want it to be. The attractions and rides aren't cheap but you can wander the boardwalks and the parks without spending a penny if you just want to explore or people watch.

Music!

2008-05-19T18:59:00.000-04:00

So last week we went and saw Mike Ness with Jesse Dayton at the Fillmore near Union Square. Dayton, who I'd never heard before (but who apparantly played with our friends in Lisa And Her Kin at a truck stop in Portland last year unbeknownst to me) got the crowd warmed up nicely and proved himself to be a rock solid country performer. You wouldn't think that a honky tonk version of The Cars' 'Just What I Needed' would work, but it did.

Mike Ness (with the current guitar and bass players from Social Distortion) came out next and while his set was a little shorter than I'd hoped it would be, he did a fine job. He had a lot of enthusiasm and energy on stage and even played a new track. It was nice to see him bring his 'A game' to the stage as the last time I saw him play with Social Distortion back in 2006 he seemed overweight and tired and just not at all into it. Maybe getting out and playing some solo material did him some good. That said, when three of the four members of Social Distortion are touring as 'Mike Ness' what's the point of keeping Social Distortion alive? SD's newer material has slowed down enough that there's really not a big difference between it and the Ness solo stuff. I dunno. Just seems kind of pointless to me to keep two projects going when they're now so close in terms of content and contain almost the exact same band members.

Regardless, it was a good night. The crowd was fairly well behaved and while I don't like paying $7 for a Becks, at a Manhattan club that's not really outrageous.

Hooray for TKD in NYC!

2008-05-11T14:20:00.000-04:00

So last night Alison and I went for dinner with Kyle (aka The Kyle Davis, aka TKD) and his lovely lady friend Emily. For those outside of Portland, Kyle is the younger brother of my former roommate Spencer. We hung out on a pretty regular basis during my stay in Portland and got to be pals. Kyle is a good man and I was happy when he wanted to get together during his brief trip to town.

We met near Central Park at Jekyll and Hyde's but evidently it was too packed inside and full of load kids so we wandered until we found a really nice and surprisingly affordable Vietnamese joint near Times Square. Dinner and conversation were both good and we decided a night cap was in order. At my suggestion (oops) we wound up at a bar I'd passed a couple of weeks back on 8th and 38th that I thought was a Tiki Bar. Named The Distinguished Makamba Bar (we didn't know it was the scene of a former crack related police shooting but thanks to Alison's google skills we do now!). it was distinguished all right, if your definition of distinguished involves the smell of fresh urine.

There's a good Village Voice write up on the bar here but to save you a click, here's the important part:

"To their credit, the reviewers at Shecky's actually visited the DISTINGUISHED WAKAMBA LOUNGE (543 Eighth Avenue, no phone number), but they were so disturbed by what they found, they called it "right above self-lobotomy and just below swimming in sewage." What did this breezy little spot—located adjacent to a Gray's Papaya and a DVD porn palace on an admittedly sullied midtown strip—do to deserve such notoriety? Well, for one thing, the Wakamba was the site of a drug sting resulting in the murder of an innocent man: Undercover cops fatally shot 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond after allegedly (and unsuccessfully) trying to buy crack from him here. But macabre past aside, a recent trip to the Wakamba found its only crime to be overpriced bottles of Budweiser ($5). The bar was surprisingly whimsical, with nautical nets strewn about and sea creatures dangling from the ceiling, not to mention faux palm trees and touches of tiki thatch. Attentive Latina bartenders in scintillating outfits served us glasses with our brews and plates of peanuts too, to the top of which they thoughtfully applied extra salt. And while DT undercovers still seem to populate the place (witness the late-night blue-collar clientele), so do the more adventurous fashion plates who work in the garment district. "

We wandered in and grabbed a corner table flush against a mirrored tile covered wall. Alison promptly moved to the other side of the table when we realized that the corner smelled of pee. The buxom bartender came over and took our order, the conversation went something like this:

Bartender: Yes?
Kyle: Gin and tonic please.
Bartender: Si.
Emily: Vodka and Cranberry Juice please.
Bartender: Si.
Alison: Nothing for me, thanks.
Bartender: Non? Si.
Ian: Maker's Mark And Lemonade, please.
Bartender: Que?
Ian: Maker's Mark And Lemonade, please.
Bartender: Que?
Ian: Maker's Mark. It's bourbon. I'd like it with lemondae please.
Bartender: Bourbon?
Ian: Yes, bourbon.
Bartender: Bourbon? Que?
Ian: Whiskey. It's whiskey.
Bartender: Que?
Ian: I'd like a whiskey and lemonade.
Bartender: Si... uh... heeheehee. (motions with her hand that she'll be right back).

Bartender comes back with Kyle's drink and Emily's drink and looks at me at which point I point at Kyle's gin and tonic and tell her I'll have one of those, noticing that right behind the bar beside the cash register was a bottle of Maker's Mark. I figured it wasn't worth the effort.

Other interesting things about this bar besides the fantastic service and smell of fresh urine?
-Mirror tiled all over the place
-plastic palm trees
-fish nets attached to the roof containing plastic starfish and plastic crabs
-a plethora of young, nesting mosquitos in the men's room
-a very empty dance floor
-a strange wood panelled back room
-wooden sculptures of something resembling the Seattle Space Needle behind the bar

The clientele was made up of Spanish dudes and black dudes, meaning that this was either the world's most amazingly lowbrow gay bar or it was a place where local immigrant types came to ogle buxom bartenders who don't speak English. Either way it was a win-win as far as people watching went, though Alison doesn't want to go back anytime soon, something about the smell of urine not appealing to her or some such nonsense. Girls will be girls, I suppose.

For some stupid reason, I forgot my camera but we found a couple of pictures of the interior online this morning, and I've made the appropraite notations in blue text...

At any rate we walked Kyle and Emily back to the hotel and said goodbye before heading over to the Virgin Megastore to look for CDs that they apparantly don't stock. From there we went to wards the subway to go home and watch Killer Snakes (hooray for Shaw Bros. DVDs!) and in that two block radius we managed to get stuck inside an insane crowd who had gathered along the streets to watch Will Smith. It was packed. We could barely move in amongst the screaming middle aged ladies gathered there to show their appreciation for the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Alison was moving too fast and trying too hard not to kill people to notice but Will was there on the other side of the street dressed in what looked kind a like a Batman outfit sans the cape and cowl. I have no idea what he was filming but if you see a movie come out soon with a scene where Will Smith is running by the NYPD booth in the middle of Times Square, that'd probably be it.

We got home and unwound and watched TV and zoned out. It was a good day, a fun day and it was great to see Kyle and Emily, but it was also a long day.

Today I slept in. Huzzah! But to bring things full circle, Alison found this review for the Makamba this afternoon...

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"A FEW WEEKS AGO, Adrianne and I spent a sunny afternoon strolling the "dirty 30s." You know it: the length of 8th Ave. below Port Authority where the air is scented with dried semen, desperation and a dash of Wild Turkey. In a McDonald's–izing Manhattan, the 30s are refreshingly fetid. All porn and lurid neon and…Hawaiian thatch hut?

"Oh, my gosh, I'm in love!" Adrianne said, peeking into the Distinguished Wakamba Cocktail Lounge. Though seemingly built—and last cleaned—when Hawaii became a state, the Wakamba set off dive-bar bells: blue-collar men burping down Budweiser under the glow of Christmas lights. We made plans to come back and sate our mai tai jones.

In the meantime, I Googled "Wakamba." Exactly 793 citations popped up, several of which proved interesting. I discovered, for starters, that Wakamba is a Kenyan tribe. I also found out that, in March 2000, the breezy little cocktail lounge was the site of a grisly mistake.
One dark night, a 26-year-old Haitian-American named Patrick Dorismond was having a nightcap at Wakamba. The young man exited and a couple undercover cops approached him, attempting to score crack.

Dorismond, understandably, was miffed to be deemed a crack slinger. A cop started barking (seriously!), escalating tensions. Fisticuffs ensued. Several swings later, Dorismond's chest became the not-so-grateful owner of a New York Police Dept. bullet. Giuliani's goons, fresh off Amadou Diallo, were cleared of charges. Ah, Wakamba—what other pearls does your rotten oyster shell contain?

Last Tuesday, Adrianne and I plan to meet A——— and find out. A——- color-corrects layouts for a women's magazine yet remains a skuz-loving lush. He damn near cried when the Village Idiot closed. We're running 10 minutes late when my cellphone rings.

"For the love of God, this is not the bar for us," he whispers. "We. Don't. Belong. Here."

Calm down, I say. It can't possibly be that bad.

"I am finishing my beer and leaving. Now."

Hold on, I say. We'll be there in a minute.

"Hurry."

A minute later, we're at Wakamba. We peek inside. All seems placid. An American-flag-shaped light abuts a jaunty nautical life preserver. A crew-cut man wearing a khaki Polo shirt guards the door. A———is sitting alone, sucking back a Beck's. He quick-foots it outside.

What's wrong? I ask.

"Where should I begin?"

The beer.

"Okay, so I sit down at a table. Gloria Gaynor is on the jukebox. A waitress—a short-shorts-wearing Latina who looks like a Hooters reject—takes my order. I ask, 'What's happy hour?' 'Qué?' she replies. 'Happy hour?' 'Qué?' I was hoping for something tiki-esque—like a piña colada, you know, to go with the theme."

He pauses to light a cigarette.

"No piña coladas. The place is under Dominican ownership. And the cheapest beer is a five-dollar bottle."

"Anyway, I order a Beck's and a bum beside me passes out. A few minutes later, he wakes up and—"I Will Survive" is still playing—starts wildly swinging and punching. The doorman kicks him out. Then a couple actors go to the bathroom—together…"

Okay, okay, I say. Let's just go inside and gather your things.

Now, I'm a man who savors cockroach-friendly establishments like Holland Bar, Holiday Cocktail Lounge and Mars Bar. But as Crew Cut opens the door, ushering us into a world where Nelly's "Hot in Here" coats the eardrums of slit-eyed Marlboro Red smokers, I realize "tiki" is a four-letter word.

It's not so much the music, bums, threadbare thatch, neighboring dildo salesmen or remedial-Spanish beer-ordering requirement: These factors, separately, make for fabulous atmosphere. Combined, however, they create a powder-keg of unpredictability. And I like my unpredictability, well, predictable. Such as when Stefan, Holiday Cocktail's craggy bartender, sings World War II fight songs. Ha-ha unpredictable; not, Why is that man in the stained Dickies work jacket staring at my soft, fleshy bits? Is that a knife in his pants? He's certainly not happy to see me unpredictable.

We do an about-face and, for the first time in eons, A——— leaves beer in his bottle.

Seeking refuge, we grab draft Bud at Bellevue—9th Ave.'s porn-loving metal dive. A bartendress with curly raven hair and gold hula-hoop earrings takes our order.

"So, what's the story?" she asks.

We tell her.

"Ooh, that place is super ghetto. Get-toe. What were you thinking?" she asks.

When we have no answer, she teaches us a valuable dirty-30s lesson:

"Listen up: You don't go to 8th Ave. to get a drink—you go there to get a whore."

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Ahhh..... The Makamba. You truly are a magical place.

Do the Montauk rock!

2008-05-05T21:40:00.000-04:00

So it was our one year anniversary this weekend and we decided to get out of town. After sleeping (well, I slept in, Alison got up at a normal hour) we decided to take Northern Blvd. until it turned into 25E all the way out to the eastern side of Long Island, and from there hop over to Montauk. We stopped at a crazy Chinese food buffet on the way and took the scenic route. Once we were there, it was 5:30ish and stuff was closed but it sure was a pretty drive and a pretty destination. We wandered around on the beach a bit then drove back to Queens where we had a mediocre dinner at some Boulder themed steak house that was more or less like Outback except not as good. It was okay, but not great.

Regardless, it was a really nice day just driving around and talking and hanging out and seeing sights. It was nice to get out of the city a bit and see a part of the state I'd never been to before and hang out with the best girl ever while I was doing it.

Interestingly enough, according to a book I read there's a military base out that way where the US goverment conducted time travel experiments during the Second World War. Not sure how much stock I put into that local folk lore, but it's interesting to think about and there are plenty of military installations in that area including some massive radar stations.

Life is good. What a happy year for me in hindsight, really.

A few random pictures...

Strange Graves From Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

2008-04-26T17:28:00.001-04:00

It may be kind of morbid but there's something neat about old cemetery sites and one of the oldest in this area is located in Sleepy Hollow, right beside the bridge where the Headless Horseman supposedly rode. The Old Dutch Church and burial ground mentioned in the story are still there and Washington Irving, who wrote the story that went on to inspire countless movies and retellings, is buried there along with other local notables such as Andrew Carnegie and Norman Rockefeller. The cemetery spans 82 acres (I'd guess based on the map that we covered about 10 in about 90 minutes' time) and is still very much in use, but some of the graves date back as far as the 1600s. Eddie and I took a walk around there yesterday, it was quiet. There was no one else around (save for a lone coyote and a lot of loud birds!) and it's a pretty eerie location but it's also pretty fascinating.

Aside from the cemetery and some headless horseman related pubs and shops, there's really not much else in Sleepy Hollow. Located roughly twenty miles outside of Manhattan it feels like its much further out. You can't see or here the city at all but you do get a pretty fantastic view of the Hudson River and the oddly titled Tapanzee Bridge.

The cemetery is the most interesting part, though, and a big part of the town's history. A few random pictures that don't really need much of an explanation...

Some Weird Pictures From Flushing Meadows Park

2008-04-20T16:56:00.000-04:00

Today I got a weird bug to go take pictures of Harry Houdini's gravesite. He's buried about six miles from where we live in a cemetery on Cypress Hills Street. We found the cemetery on Mapquest, grabbed the camera, and drove across Queens only to find that the entire cemetery was closed for Passover. Doh! After that we decided to go get some Chinese food for lunch and while I knew I could go back to the cemetery in a day or two and explore (it looked sooo cool and sooo creepy and old and weird from the side of the road!) I was kinda bummed because I really just wanted an excuse to play with my camera.

On the way home, Alison pointed out Flushing Meadows Park and we decided, hey, we're here, why not. I'd read about the park in a book, about how the Worlds Fair was held there in 1964 and how some of the materials that were built for the fair were still there so these seemed like something neat (and free!) to check out and kill some time with. After dealing with some stupid parking problems (there were two Red Bull cars blocking the entrance to the parking lot for some reason) we got out of the car and wandered towards the 'Unisphere' which was built as a symbol of peace by the United States Steel Corporation. It's made entirely of stainless steel and according to the information posted in front of it, it stands 140 feet high, 120 feet across, and weighs 700,000 pounds.

It's pretty impressive and if you stand undernearth it and look up, it can be a little dizzying....

Nearby the 'Unisphere' is the 'New York State Pavilion.' This strange building once housed exhibits but now stands more or less vacant. It's fenced off, you can't get inside as it's probably dangerous, but you can walk around it. From one gate you can see a map of New York State. This was supposedly built by Texaco and I couldn't get up high enough to poke my camera in to take a picture.

Here's what you see as you approach it....

...and once you get there, what you see looking up. Notice all the empty sockets that look to have once held hundreds, if not thousands, of light bulbs.

Laying dormant, rust and time have eaten away at things. Most of the doors, which are bolted or locked shut (we tried them) are rusted pretty badly and would be easy to get past with a little work.... but that's illegal, so we decided against that.

The entire structure is covered in weeds and vines and ivy. It crawls all up the towers and around the walls.

You can see where the city has put some prevenative measures into place to keep people from hopping the wall and getting inside. Barbed wire is visible along the pipes that jut out. Had this not been there, it'd have been fairly simple to climb in.

The whole structure is circular and very odd. It's all made entirely of concerete and steel and with all the rust and weather stains on it, it has a creepy post-apocalyptic look to it. You have to wonder why the city has just left it there unmaintained.

Elevators that I can only assume took mid-sixties fair-goers up to an observation deck of some sort are still there. When the win hits the cables, which are all in place if very rusty, they make an eerie high pitched 'ping' sound. The glass is all broken and the doors look like they're going to fall off.When you come around the other side and back towards the 'Unisphere' and the Queens Museum of Art which stands beside it, you can look back and get a neat view of the structure through the trees. A month from now it'll be completely hidden behind the leaves from this angle.

The Queens Museum of Art is a strange building too. It's got the active art museum inside but it also houses a skating rink that is still used. Despite the fact that it is still very much in use, it too is worn down and strange looking.

Even the sign for the skating rink is strange. It was probably cute when it was painted decades ago, but now it seems sort of sad, covered in rust and dirt.

Interestingly enough, here's what the pavilion and the 'Unisphere' looked like back when they were new and technologically relevent...

Get Your GEEK ON at the New York City Comic Con!

2008-04-19T14:35:00.000-04:00

So the big New York City Comic Con started yesterday and being the nerd that I am I bought an advance ticket for admission on Friday, figuring that Saturday would be a madhouse and that Sunday, seeing as it was 'kids get in free day,' would be just as insane and potentially quite irritating. Doors opened at 3pm to the general public, though it opened at noon to industry pros and press. I probably could have got a press pass and thought about asking for one but laziness got the best of me so I shelled out my $30 (ouch!) to get in. The Jacob Javitts Convention Center in Manhattan is pretty huge and so they were well equipped to deal with the crowds. The line to get in was all the way around the entry area and pretty intimidating but it moved fast and the staff were actually friendly and helpful, which was a pleasant surprise.

I worked my way into the buidling and poked around the various vendors. One of the first things that I noticed, that I was positively stoked to see, was that there are some Warriors toys coming out this summer. There were finished 'final product' figures on display...

There's no way I can't own all five of those! I'm seriously considering getting a keen little shelf put up right under my poster and making a little shrine to the glory of Walter Hill and Cyrus! These look to be a big improvement over the Warriors line that came out from Mezco a few years ago. They were kinda cartoonish and didn't really capture the vibe of the characters.

A few other equally interesting toys that will be in stores this summer caught my eye. Everyone needs their own Joey Ramone figure. I've no idea if Joey would have been down with this idea were he still with us but it's cool to see that at least since his passing he's getting the attention he should have had all along.

And who wouldn't want a Gordon Liu figure? Anyone whose see The 36th Chamber of Shaolin knows that it's one of the best and most influential martial arts films of all time and this little articulated Shaolin Monk looks like he's ready to kick all kinds of ass with his three sectioned staff. Gotta love the Shaw Brothers logo behind him in the display case. The same company is doing a whole line of Shaw Brothers figures, including a few of the Venoms.

While I'm too young to remember Captain Action when he was new and nifty, I did used to own a few of the DC silver age comics from the sixties before I sold off the bulk of my collection. Well, Captain Action is back in comic book form from Moonstone Comics. Publisher Ed Catto and his wife were on hand to talk to anyone and everyone about all things Action and had to be some of the friendliest people on the convention floor. Ed showed some very obvious and very genuine affection and enthusiasm for the project (look how happy he is in his Captain Action hat!) though I dunno if I'd want my wife wandering around a comic convention with 'looking for action' written across her hooters. That's just me though. The cool thing about this project is that Moonstone actually has Murphey Anderson working on a cover. He was the artist who worked on the original series for DC. NEAT! Paul Gulacy, best known for Marvel's Master Of Kung Fu, is also doing a cover for them. They've got some cool artists tapped for this and if the preview issue I snagged from them is anything to go by, the interiors by Mark Sparacio should also look pretty sweet.

Hey wow, it's Hellboy creator Mike Mignola! I was so stoked to meet him that I couldn't even be bothered to take the headphones out of my ears. That was kinda rude in hindsight but at least I turned the iPod off so I could actually hear him. Mike was a nice guy, signing anything for anyone at no charge and taking the time talk to fans about Hellboy II which comes out this year. The director and star, Guillermo Del Toro and Ron Perlman respectively, were also somewhere at the con but I couldn't find them and I don't think they were appearing until Saturday, otherwise I'd have bugged them to sign my Hellboy DVD (which Mike did quite happily).

Dark Horse Comics had a pretty big presence at the convention and they were one of the first booths you saw when you came into the main room. They were handing out sneak peeks and free shopping bags and had a bunch of artsits on hand to sign stuff. I was hoping my friend Philip who works for them as an editor was going to be there, but no dice, he was stuck in Portland for the weekend.

More toys! NECA is releasing this sweet Jason Vorhees figure this summer. Not sure what it's going to cost but there's a lot of detail in it - this picture doesn't really do it justice, it looks completely cool up close.

Speaking of completely cool, then there's this 'Stuntman Mike' figure! Kurt Russell was the best part of Tarantino's half of Grindhouse and this figure, complete with sunglasses and cigarette, could probably kick your ass in real life.

And what would a comic convention be without various nerds dressed up in random costumes? Check out this guy who kinda-sorta looks like Indiana Jones chocking a Nazi! There's even a Sean Connery looking guy peeking out from behind Indy.

I dunno what was up with this happy lass. She's got some sort of fat, black Wonder Woman gig going on and has donuts hanging off of her utlity belt. Or maybe they're bagels. I can't really tell for sure. Either way, bonus points for dedication.

This guy was standing behind me in line and kept calling everyone 'sucka' - it was pretty funny. If you already look like Mr. T you might as well accentuate it with some gold chains and some camo clothing.

There were also a couple of fat guys wandering around in what I assume were 300 inspired outfits, I guess they were Spartans or something. King Leonardis must have been very proud to see these out of shape couch potatoes representing him in public. TONIGHT.... WE FEAST ON BIG MACS IN HELL!

And because everything in the world from Abba to Monty Python to Mel Brooks and John Waters films is being turned into a Broadway show these days, get ready for Toxic Avenger The Musical! Ermmm......okay. Sure. Why not.

And then there were the Star Wars guys. It seems that every convention has a group of local folks who come out of the woodwork every few months at events like these simply to parade around in Star Wars costumes. Many people, like the dapper gent in the middle, like to pose with these Star Wars people. Notice the FearNET booth in the background, and the distinct absence of 'Jewish Horror Guy' extraordinaire Lawrence P. Raffel, who, being the 'Jewish Horror Guy' and all, was back in Philly celebrating Passover, making this the first non-Portland convention I've gone to in years that didn't feature a Lawrence P. Raffel spotting!

More Star Wars guys... any time someone wandered by with a camera these cool dudes would start striking poses. Intimidating, aren't they?

What on Earth is this guy? He's some sort of Jedi-Pirate-Cthulu warrior and he needs to shut up and go away.
I think out of all the Star Wars people I saw at the con, the Jedi Ninja was my favorite. He too was wandering around striking poses for people like myself who were silly enough to have cameras in their hands.
Located conveniently right next to the men's room was the New York City Jedi's table, where you could watch various Star Wars people give lightsaber demonstrations while enjoying the various beanbag chairs that had been set up for your comfort.

Situated near the Jedis was this happy guy, working away at a massive drawing of Captain America done completely in chalk. If I'd have had my Nikon instead of my Samsun camera, I'd have taken some better, close up shots as the amount of detail that this guy managed to work into a chalk drawing was pretty impressive. Equally impressive was the fact that he could concentrate at all with the Star Wars people battling one another just a few feet away.

I dunno what was up with this guy. He had Weird Al hair and a very French looking moustache and was dressed in some sort of Reneissance Space Wizard outfit. He sold swords at one of the vendor tables.

Proving that, yes, the world really is going to Hell in a handbasket is this! A Johnny Wadd comic! Officially licensed from Arrow Films by newcomer Terminal Press is the first four color adventure featuring the worlds most enormously endowed detecitve. They've also got the rights to Debbie Does Dallas, Deep Throat and The Devil In Miss Jones and according to the gal behind the booth plan on making comic books for all of these properties. That Johnny Wadd poster is pretty cool though... I couldn't resist buying the Debbie Does Dallas comic. It's pretty odd and has nothing to do with the movie at all. Instead, it focuses on a cheerleader's efforts to fight zombies and Mechwarrior/Transformer style robots in the future.

Everyone loves giant statues of the Incredible Hulk. Don't they? Maybe it's just me. Either way, this statue was rad.
Tired of the Jedis and sore from lugging around a bag full of graphic novels (I picked up a few choice reads for 50-70% off - go me!) I decided to head out and make my way back home but not before talking to the legendary Jim Steranko. Jim doesn't want his picture taken, which I completely respected, but he was kind enough to sign a sketchbook I bought from him and talk trash about Marvel Comics (he's not to keen on them, and with good reason, he wasn't treated particularly fairly by them). Jim's an amazing talent and one of the most influential comic book artists in the history of the medium. While I was glad to have the chance to meet and briefly talk to him, at the same time it was a little sad to see that there was no one else in line to meet him - the same goes for Carmin Infantino who was sitting right beside him. These guys are legends!

At any rate, here's the main entrance/exit to the con, that gives you an idea of the scope and the size of the event. While the vendors seemed geared towards more mainstream product and Golden/Silver age books (as opposed to the more esoteric fare I tend to enjoy) it was still a fun event. Really though, at this point, you have to wonder why it's called a comic convention anymore. There were video game booths, role playing booths, DVD and film booths, anime booths, and toy booths aplenty, taking up as much (if not a little more) space than the comic related material.

Overall it was a pretty fun way to kill an afternoon. It sucked that the tickets to meet Stan Lee were all given out before I could even get into the convention (I was told they all went to industry people rather than paying customers and fans - which is LAME) but aside from that this was a well run show with plenty of interesting panels to see if you were so inclined (I was not). The artists on hand were generally friendly and happy to sign whatever you wanted, most were doing sketches for $20 or so, which is a fair price. The nerd factor was pretty high but no more so than any other movie/comic/whatever convention I've attended and at least this show was actually friendly, as opposed to Chiller which just has an aire of hostility to it for some reason.

Return To The Motherland

2008-04-14T18:53:00.000-04:00

So this weekend we went back to Niagara Falls to visit my family. I picked Alison up at 2pm, then we got her son from school at 2:30 and hit the highway about 3pm. It was fine until we got to the Bronx where traffic hit a standstill. Once that cleared up, it rained. All the way there. We got into Niagara Falls at 11pm and I sleopt like crap that night.

We woke up the next morning and took Alison's kid to Fort George. I always loved the place as a kid and he's a bit of a history fanatic so we figured he'd get a kick out of it. He did... even if the redcoats spooked him a little bit (he ran from them yelling 'AHHHH BRITISH SOLIDERS!' when we first arrived. We got to take in a musket demonstration and check out almost all of the buildings. From there we hit a souvenier store that featured an anatomically correct moose statue and some Mounties outside. Photo ops were required. A quick trip to Wendy's and then the mall and we were at my mother's place mid-afternoon where we hung out until 9pm or so. It was great to see everyone again and to check out my brand new nephew. I also drank some wine and hung out with some dogs. Good times, those dogs. After that we hit the glow in the dark miniature golf course on Clifton Hill before going to bed around midnight.

Sunday we met my dad and then later my grandparents for coffee and lunch respectively. It was nice to see they're all doing well and everyone seemed in good spirits and good health, which always makes me happy. After lunch we hit the road. Got to the Fort Erie/Buffalo border around 3pm and parked the car across the street from the apt. around 9:30, making for a much shorter trip than the one we took on Friday night.

All in all it was a good trip. I would have liked to have seen Patrick and Brenden but that didn't happen due to, shall we say, scheduling conflicts. That said, it was still (and always is) worth the drive. Next time we'll hopefully have a little more time to spend. Hopefully this week will be nice and lazy. Last week was stressful and chaotic and kinda ugly, so a few days with nothing to do sound really good right now.

A few shots from the trip, in random order and sans descriptions....

Charlton Heston.... Rest In Peace!

2008-04-07T19:41:00.000-04:00

So Charlton Heston passed away the other night. I know in his later years he became a bit of a lightning rod for controversy, what with his rather obsessive NRA campaigns and his thoughts on gun control (or more specifically, why there shouldn't be any) and I know he wasn't the most politically correct man of the last century. That said, he was pretty boss in his own right and you've got to respect the guy for, no pun intended, sticking to his guns (okay I lied, that was on purpose) right until the end.

While a lot of folks will remember him as a bit of a fascist, I prefer to remember him as Robert Neville. I like my Heston clad in an ascot and sipping J&B or maybe some Cutty Sark while playing chess with a bust of Ceaser stopping only to deal with atomic vampires or to seduce a sweet young soul sister. The success of I Am Legend will probably only help to bury Heston's memory but The Omega Man, as dated and (now) corny as it seems holds its own as a pretty bad-ass film. Even more than Planet of the Apes or The Ten Commandments or Soylent Green, The Omega Man is, to me, the definitive Heston picture. If it doens't represent who he really was it at least represents who I want to think he really was and I only hope that I'm in my late forties (like he was when he made the picture) that I'm cool enough to drive around in a convertible, talk to myself, and take down the bad buys with a machine gun without so much as a second thought.

Rest in peace, Omega Man. You might have been a little crazy, but you were definitely one of a kind and you will be missed.

Michael Gross in HD!

2008-04-02T16:43:00.000-04:00

So today Alison and I went to swap out the old digital cable box for a new HD TV cable box, something we've been meaning to do since January. It took all of five minutes and now we've got the HD-TV action rockin' which is pretty neat even if a lot of the channels cost extra. Still, there are enough channels already included in our package that I'm kinda geeking out of over it. The first thing I watched? Tremors II on the HD-Net channel. That's right, Michael Gross and giant worms in 1080i (no 1080p for broadcast HD...yet).

It looks good. Not as good as an HD-DVD or a Blu-ray disc but it does look pretty sharp despite more obvious mpeg compression. X-Men III is on right now and it looks better than the standard definition DVD does.

In other completely unrelated and fairly insignificant news, the job hunt has been fruitful this week. I've had a few genuine nibbles and have an interview set up for Friday afternoon that could be interesting. We'll see how that goes. While I'd rather someone pay me to write about trashy movies from home than commute into Manhattan on the subway, it could certainly be a lot worse and at least the office is right on a main line that comes into our area of Queens. The idea of another office job doesn't thrill me, but the money would be good as would the benefits, the hours, and the paid vacation time. The headhunters I have talked to recently have either flaked out of just flat out stopped responding to emails or phone calls so I figure I'm better off finding something on my own than depending on someone who doesn't really know me, or what I can do, save for what's on my resume. I make a much better impression in person than I do on paper anyway, what with my sexy sideburns and imposing height.

Oh yeah, the website. We decided last week to take the forum down on DVD Maniacs so that we could clean up some corrupt files and get it ready for the vBulletin upgrade and launch it with the new main site at the same time. Well, the main site is 99.9% ready, we just have to fix a couple of typos and links. We haven't (and won't for some time) have all the archived reviews ported over - that's going to take months - but the functionality is there and the news and review posting templates work really, really well. So it was all looking great until our programmer said that there were too many corrupt files in the SQL database on the forum to work with. He asked for a back up. Eddie went to the host, who told him that they didn't have one despite the fact that they're supposed to do two a week. We both paniced, figuring we were going to lose roughly seven years worth of history. That was resolved this morning when the host did come through and found a back up for us that they'd stored on a different server for some reason. Sounds kind of flaky, but whatever works. Long story short, we're behind on our projected 'go live' date (we were hoping for today) but by this time next week or very possibly a couple of days sooner, we should be 100% done. We'll probably lose some of the more impatient board members, as people don't like waiting anymore, but the relaunch should be a beautiful thing. I even talked Paramount into giving us some awesome prizes to giveaway once the big day comes.

So yeah, life is good, things are happening, and I'm keeping busy. And now I can watch Michael Gross in high definition at no extra cost. Huzzah!

I just like this picture.

2008-03-31T15:30:00.000-04:00

I took this the other night at the Fat Black Pussycat. The place was almost completely empty while we were there, which was surprising considering how busy that area of the Village is. Anyway, I just like the way it turned out. If you look to the lower left side, the chubby gal by the dart board is obviously glaring at me and looking like she wants a fight. It kinda contrasts nicely with Alison's manic giggling and the big, pretty chandelier. Also, if you look at the larger image, you can see an Italian locadina for Planet Of The Apes and a nifty one sheet for Lynch's Blue Velvet.

Stupid Ghosts!

2008-03-30T12:09:00.000-04:00

OK, so we went into Manhattan yesterday at 4pm to meet up with the ghost tour thing a 6pm. Had a nice light dinner at the Town Tavern on 3rd (burgers, beer and wings, all at a fair price though the waitresses choice in hot pants were confusing). We met up at the big arch in Washington Square Park at 6pm which were the instructions as laid out on the website. No one else was there. Well, there were plenty of people there, but not ghost tour people. We thought one creepy guy hanging around might have something to do with it until he walked off with a lady. After waiting 15 minutes or so we gave up and went to the Fat Black Pussycat for a pint of tasty Brooklyn Lager. After that we walked over to Barnes and Noble where I bought two books on the stranger side of the city's history. I'm gonna do my own ghost tour! Take that!

Actually I'm going to email the company that organizes the tour and see what's what. Based on a whole bunch of articles I've read they've been doing this a long time and are quite reputable. Maybe there was a last minute cancellation or something. Either way, I was looking forward to it and it was disappointing that it was cancelled.

Regardless, Alison and I had a nice time wandering around until it got a bit too cold for her at which point we subway'd it back to Queens. I watched an ultra gory German action film called War Dog (the dubbing, by German guys trying to sound Texan, winds up making the cast sounds like Newfies) and a late sixties Turkish action film called Iron Claw The Pirate in which a guy in a mask with a pistol fights a masked villain named Fantomas (!) who is bent on collecting microfilm and taking over the world through means never discussed or elaborated on. Good stuff.

Good for what ales you.

2008-03-26T19:53:00.000-04:00

Not much going on lately of note, but lots coming up. While the search for a job that doesn't suck continues we've been keeping busy interesting projects and mini-trips around the area. Here's a quick look at semi-interesting things that are on my upcoming calender just because...

March 29 - a guided walking ghost tour of the supposedly haunted parts of the Lower East Side/Village area in Manhattan. Should be interesting.
April 11-13 - drive to Canada to see my family and back. Hooray!
May 13 - Mike Ness plays Irving Plaza. Contains both honky and tonky.
June 13 - IRON MAIDEN at Madison Square Gardens. Color me stoked.
June 27-29 - Flashback Weekend in Chicago (We weren't going to go this year for fear that it'd be too expensive but I used some airmiles and we get to fly return for $10. That made it very doable).

We took Alison's son to Central Park on Easter for a horse and buggy ride before going to visit her mom in the hospital. Doing things like this with what has essentially become my NY family makes me miss my PDX family and my Canadian family as well, so it'll be great to see the Northerners in a couple of weeks and to check out my brand spankin' new nephew for the first time (my sister tells me he screams and poops a lot so we're obviously related). It'll be a belated Easter/Patrick's birthday celebration and while we won't have a ton of time, at least I know I can come back in a few weeks time. It's nice being closer geographically and knowing I can drive down whenever I feel like it, though I miss PDX Manly Movie Nights and Happy Hour at the Lucky Lab with the crew in P-town.

But NYC is a lot of fun so far. New Yorkers aren't nearly as rude or unfriendly as people make them out to be, they're just blunt. That's not a bad thing at all, and in fact, after the passive aggressive behaviour I saw so often in the work place and outside my little circles in the Northwest, it's actually pretty refreshing. At least you know where you stand with people most of the time.

In other news, lots of writing continues and more side projects involving the TV show and a few other media related bits and pieces are shaping up. I recently had a publisher ask to quote from an interview I did in an upcoming biography of John Holmes (!!!) and I've secured a connection with Paramount to get DVD Manaics (soon to be AV Maniacs...hopefully within the week) some mainstream screeners. We're not going to stop covering the fringe stuff at all, if anything we're ramping it up, but it can't hurt to cover worthy mainstream titles like There Will Be Blood or Sweeney Todd, both of which I've tackled to surprisingly successful results (and traffic).

What else is new.... oh, music. The new Willie Nelson CD is pretty rad. Fairly stripped down and simple but most of the time country music is better that way. The new Nick Cave album is mediocre and sounds pretty phoned in, unfortunately, and the new Danko Jones CD has yet to really grow on me despite a couple of really solid stand out tracks.

And last but not least.... a picture of the Weng Weng Pale Ale that fellow Filipino midget spy enthusiast Todd Jordan home brewed specifically for the Monster Mania Convention we attended a couple of weeks back in New Jersey.

'Tis truly a thing of rare beauty.

St. Patrick's Day Citycrawl!

2008-03-18T12:25:00.000-04:00

This weekend Alison and I went to NJ to the Monster Mania convention, almost got lost in Camden (scariest place I think I've ever been), drove into NYC the next night to catch the Pogues at the Roseland (damn that was a good show...until the pint glass landed on the soundboard - thankfully during the last 10 seconds of the second encore) with our pal Jeremy, then back to Jersey that night to finish up the convention on Sunday. It was a good time. Got to hang out with some old friends and make a few new ones as well.

We were exhausted when we got on Sunday but a good nights sleep did me a world of good and so Monday I took the train into Manhattan. I had to drop something off for her mom at the hospital but figured since I was going in anyway, I should bring my camera and do some wandering. I figured I'd head over from 57th and 10th into Times Square at 42nd and Broadway to hit the Virgin Megastore. Bought myself a documentary on transients who live in the NYC subway tunnels and a Street Dogs CD and passed what's left of the old Troma building on the way. Lloyd has moved his outfit to Queens to save some money. The DVD industry isn't doing so well right now and it's hard for the indies to survive. While Troma has made far more crap than they have decent films, it'd still be a shame if they went away after three decades or so and that building is so familiar to anyone whose seen any of Troma's DVDs that it's hard to imagine them existing anywhere else.

Once I got out of the store, I spied a bunch of people wandering around with festive St. Patrick's day stuff and remembered the parade was on. I wandered over to 5th Ave. where I caught the middle of it. It was a lot of fun and it was neat to see so many people into the spirit of the thing. Granted, there were probably more African Americans and Puerto Ricans than actual Irish there, but that didn't seem to matter to anyone, and really, why should it? The day itself has been mainstreamed so much that it really doens't matter anymore. The breweries have convinced us all that on St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish, even if the majority of people gathered on the sidewalks probably had no idea what the holiday means. It was interesting to see the different marching bands and organizations stomp their way up the pavement and wave their various flags. Eveyone seemed to be having a great time and there was a neat energy to the whole thing.

From there I wandered up from 42nd St. to 86th St., which is a pretty serious hike, and passed the block where the crane fell over the weekend. Those who don't know what I'm talking about should click this link - it's pretty sad stuff and something that could have and should have been prevented. At any rate, the block was protected by cops and emergency workers who stopped the curious like myself from getting too close but a 200mm zoom lens lets me get a little closer than most obnoxious camera nerds and I shot a few pictures not only of the wreckage but also of the NYPD and FDNY workers having to deal with the mess. It was odd going from the drunken festivities of the parade to the somber wreckage and the inhebriated parade goers of 5th Ave. seemed very silly in contrast to the fireman standing by with a stretcher in case another body should be pulled out from under the rubble.

Coming full circle, as I walked up 2nd Ave. to 86th St. I passed a bunch of Irish pubs where the cops and fireman who, I assume, had been marching in the parade were in enjoying the holiday and having a beer or seven. Part of me wanted to wander in and check out the scene, but I knew I'd be out of my element and I was starting to feel my feet complaining. By this point I'd been walking for five hour straight and covered a lot of ground.

It was an interesting day and I got to see a good chunk of Manhattan I'd never seen before. I passed the 59th St. Bridge and felt a little groovy as I did so, and I took a few hundred pictures just cause I felt like it and didn't have much of anything better to do. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and doing stuff like this makes me happy to be in New York. It's big enough that there's always going to be something to do or see even if it's just wandering around by myself looking at weird random stuff.

Climbing The Stairway To Stardom!

2008-03-13T18:48:00.000-04:00

Joining the likes of wacky comedian and Ramones fan Uncle Floyd and cranky Jewish pornographer Al Goldstein, I finished my first session at MNN, the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. That's right, PUBLIC ACCESS TELEVISION! The credit goes to Edwin, who started DVD Maniacs years ago, for coming up with the idea and doing most of the work. He's the one with the connections there and the one with the technomological know-how. Regardless, we'd been talking about doing something together for a while and finally got some studio time to make it happen. The ultimate goal is to broadcast it on MNN once it's finished in post production (we have to edit out some flubs and add opening/closing credits) and then on the newly revamped website, which will be found here.

Essentially what we did was sit in front of three cameras and talk about movies. We shot an hour's worth of footage, so that's two episodes worth, and covered Bronson's Death Wish movies and Romero's zombie films and we were joined by our friend Todd for the second show. It was a good experience, I haven't really done anything on camera since my college days, over a decade ago, and my first shot definitely left some room for improvement but I didn't completely embarass myself either. Alison and I watched the very rouch cut that came out of the control room last night, and it wasn't that bad. It's got some personality and some nerd appeal. This was a solid first shot and in theory it shold only get better from here on out. Whether or not we'll ever make anything out of this aside from public access broadcast and some webcasts remains to be seen but at some point soon we'll probably host some live call in shows, which should be fun.

I'm excited about the idea of getting this off of the ground and about pitching in with some of the editing duties. My skills are rusty and out of use but the basic principals haven't changed even if the software has (if anything it's gotten easier). So we'll see. Even if I just end up being the remarkably handsome guy on camera, I can live with that. But even if the odds are against us getting rich and famous from this endeavor, it's a foot in the door and a step in the right direction and whatever other enthusiastic cliche you'd care to throw in. It's also me using skills I went to school to gain and then, based on life and circumstance, promptly wound up doing very little with.

Public Access. Who knew? But then again, where else are you going to see a couple of grown men argue about old low budget zombie movies on TV? I like to think once we get this off of the ground we'll be filling a niche. A weird, obsessive compulsive, nerdy niche but a niche never the less.

Tomorrow Alison and I leave for New Jersey to attend the Monster Mania Convention. Corey Feldman is going to be there, and Malcolm McDowell, but more importantly so is John Morghan, aka Giovanni Lombardo Radicci - the whipping boy of 80s Italian horror films. That's right, the guy who had his weenie chopped off in Cannibal Ferox and had his head drileld in Fulci's City Of The Living Dead is going to be in Jersey of all places. Should be a fun weekend. Saturday night we're going to drive back to NYC to catch the Pogues show (Billy Bragg is supposed to be opening!!!) and then head back to NJ (we got a hotel for the weekend) which'll put a few miles under our belts but I'm looking forward to hobknobbing with a few friends I haven't seen in a while and pursuing my nerdly interests with my equally nerdy but much prettier female partner in crime.

Murals N' Me In NYC.... Part One

2008-03-10T20:50:00.000-04:00

OK, long story short, about a week ago Tolch and I were talking and I mentioned some big Run DMC mural I'd seen driving around Astoria, Queens while looking for a comic book store. He told me I should have had my picture taken in front of it, and that I should have my picture taken in front of all murals I pass, in hopes of creating a coffee table book called Murals N' Me.

This was a really stupid idea, so when Eddie and I went for lunch the other day and I had my camera with me, I figured it was time to beat that dumb idea to death.

So without further ado, the results of a few hours worth of wandering in the Village and Alphabet City areas of Manhattan. I was told afterwards we were lucky we didn't get shot in Alphabet City, but I have a feeling that the area is a lot safer than it used to be. Sure, there were a lot of projects and some weird bits and pieces here and there but it was broad daylight and there was nothing threatening save for the odd hobo or two.

I'm particularly impressed with the 'Bad Pussies' picture. It's just.... odd.

And The Award For Strangest Email Of The Day Goes To....

2008-02-28T16:10:00.000-05:00

Woke up and found this in my inbox this morning....

"Hello Ian,

We are producing a show for the A&E Biography series about Scott Baio and I wanted to see if you'd be interested in doing an on-camera interview for us. I see that you are well versed in Happy Days and I was curious if you'd be able to talk about that, Joanie Loves Chachi, and possibly Charles in Charge as well.

If this is a possibility or if you have interest please contact me.

XX XXXXX

XXXX Productions

XXXX@XXXXXproductions.com

Thank you for your time."

Now obviousy I inserted the XX's where personal information was contained. I checked out the website and it seems legit. I figure they must have found a Happy Days DVD review I wrote and found me that way. Of course, I wrote back and told them that I'd be happy to come on TV and talk about Scott Baio. Who wouldn't?

The Brave One Vs. The Canadian One

2008-02-25T17:45:00.000-05:00

So last night Alison and I sat down with the HD DVD (RIP!) release of Neil Jordan's The Brave One, in which Jodie Foster does an excellent job of portraying a woman pushed towards vengeance by the anguish she feels over the death of her fiance at the hands of three thugs that the couple encounter in Central Park late one night.

First of all, don't go into Central Park late at night. That's not smart. Second of all, if you do and you have a big German Shepherd with you (as the couple does) don't let it off the leash for a cute little run around the area. That's not smart either. Just some words of caution for anyone considering that....

Regardless, it was a solid film. I wrote about it at length for DVD Talk, you can find my take on it there if you're so inclined. What stuck in my brain about it for whatever reason was the way that New York was portrayed in the film, and I left that out of my review as it's really not related to the film so much as it is to my own personal thoughts about the city I now call home. Let me preface this by saying, yeah yeah, I know, I've been here two months and I am fully cognizant of the fact that I am far from an expert on the crimes rates or policing practices in place here. Regardless, Foster's character encounters a horrible ordeal where she and her fiance are attacked. He dies, she lives. She buys a gun and then, that very night, goes to a convenience store and witnesses a murder. She's forced to use her gun to save her life. A day or two later, she's on the subway and is threatened. Bang bang, problem solved.

In this film, NYC is a haven for crime. While parts of the city maybe, the upscale part of Manhattan where this film plays out probably isn't. Here in lil' ol' Jackson Heights the streets are very well patrolled. So good is the 5-0 coverage in fact that I'm happy to admit that I feel safer walking the streets here than I did in Portland, OR. or in Toronto (the other two major cities I've had the luck to live in for prolonged periods of time).

Obviously in a city this size, horrible crimes are going to happen (just last week a man hacked up his shirk with a meat cleaver - they caught him in Queens a few subway stops away from where I sit as I write this) but it's also a city with an amazing history and a lot to offer. Anyone who opts not to jump in based out of fear is doing themselves a disservice. NYC is a tough town, it has to be out of necessity, but it's got a culture and a strange vibe all its own and Neil Jordan's skewed view won't stop me from exploring more, and I'll do it without the aid of a concealed handgun. Instead I'll just stay out of dark alleys, not wander through tunnels in remote areas and just use plain old common sense. Big cities all over the world suffer from crime problems but people still live in them. Even after the events of 9/11 there was no mass exodus off of the island. Anyone I know who lived in Manhattan before the towers fell still lives there. For the most part, especially POST 9/11, NYC is a pretty rad place. I like it here. A lot. There's nowhere else like it. Parking sucks, but it's a great place and I intend to hang my hat here for a long time to come.

Oh and check out The Brave One. It's well done. A smart film, very well acted by Foster and Terrence Howard, and it's got some nice cinematography. And I realize that the city is portrayed the way it is in the film for dramatic effect, and on that level, it's certainly an understandable decision. It just got me to thinking is all...

rambleramblerambleramble.

2008-02-22T21:49:00.000-05:00

I had to get up early this morning to head into Manhattan for a job interview. It went well despite some strange questions ('If you were an animal, what kind of an animal would you be?' - I'm not kidding, he really asked me that - I told him I'd be a German Shepherd, he told me he'd be a giraffe cause 'they're fuggin' cute and girls like'm') and the fact that the conference room was booked so my interview took place in a hallway. The two guys that I met who I could potentially be working with seemed nice, laid back, with a good sense of humor. We'll see. I'm not entirely sure I'll take the position if it's offered to me, depends on the money, benefits, and what not. But we'll see.

At any rate, after that I walked two blocks to the St. Marks strip and did a little DVD shopping. From there I hit Midtown Comics (my favorite comic store in NYC - I actually don't feel nerdy shopping there, they discount the cover price for you automatically and they have an impeccable selection of graphic novels) in Times Square. From there I wandered up Broadway a little bit, just because it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I noticed that John Schneider is now appearing in the NYC cast of Chicago. For reasons unknown, that appealed to me and made me laugh.

I got home just in time for a friend to ask me if I wanted to meet him at the St. Mark's Pub, across the street from where I'd been an hour ago buying DVDs. I opted not to take the train back into the city. Queens was okay with me at that point, helped by the fact that we got a whole lot of snow dumped on us over night and this morning and that because of that I was wet and cold. Alison's shift at the school was cancelled today, they were closed because of the weather. She'd been kind enough to perform emergency button surgery on my shirt before I left. When I got home, I think she'd just gotten up from a cat nap.

From there I went to Rite-Aid and bought:
-jellybeans
-gum drops
-diet coke
-sunkist
-planters dry roasted peanuts
-malox

An odd shopping list I suppose, but that's what Rite-Aid is for - odd shopping. Came home and we watched the wonderfully remastered Blue Underground re-release of Jorge Grau's The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue (better known in some circles as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie), a politically charged Spanish zombie film starring Ray Lovelock and, oddly enough, Arthur Kennedy. I'd seen it before but it holds up well. It's a lot more tense than I remember it being the last time I watched it, though it'd been a few years. Speaking of movies, we went and saw No Country For Old Men last night. Later than everyone else on the planet (there was one other couple in the theater, that was it!) but we both enjoyed it quite a bit. The ending is odd, for sure, but it's not entirely out of place and the more I think about it, the more I like it, even if it is a depressing theme.

Alison made dinner and I fielded a phone call from Eddie who asked me kindly to post a news update on the message board for him promoting his appearance on Fangoria Radio, streaming live tonight on Sirius. I obliged and we discussed the potential TV show we've been bantering back and forth on for a while. Looks like we've got studio time booked for the evening of March 12th. Also looks like the DVD Maniacs upgrade should finally be done within the next 7-10 days (better way way late than never).

After dinner, Alison went to go babysit, leaving me here with nothing to do. Granted, a nice selection of video games, reading materials and a home video library to make most people green with envy should be enough but for some reason tonight none of that appeals to me. I took the dog for a walk, it had warmed up nicely by that point, and we wandered around for a half hour or so. When I came home I took out the Nikon and decided to monkey around with shutter speeds and aperature settings. I took some pictures of the TV while it was on, of the dog, and of myself - just for something to do. The results are below. They're sort of ghostly, kind of strange looking. But again, it was something to do. Then the camera battery died. I look very sad in that last picture, even though I'm in a very good mood today. Damn, are my sideburns ever getting grey though...

I think I might go across the street and get a beer, then settle down for the night with a Russ Meyer film or something equally superficial and fun. Or maybe I'll listen to Lenny And The Piss Poor Boys (thank you, Noland, for introducing me to what has become one of my favorite albums of the last few years) sing sad songs about booze and broken hearts. Or maybe I'll read some Silver Surfer comics.

The world is my oyster!

It's not hard, not far to reach....

2008-02-19T10:35:00.000-05:00

...but we didn't hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach. We drove there in my Honda instead so that we could hit Trader Joe's on the way home and stock up on delicious pasta and peanut butter pretzels, oh, and buy some comic books. Mission accomplished.

So anyway, yesterday was President's Day and Alison was off from work, her son was staying at his dad's, and we had a free day to do whatever we wanted. Super Patriot that I am, I decided we needed to do something. Alison agreed. We hadn't been for a drive in a while (likely because driving in most parts of NYC is just a headache) but that was what I was in the mood for so we tossed some music in the CD player (it was a Billy Bragg kinda day) and headed to the coast. We got there and, well, it's February, nothing is going on. It was unusually warm but also freakishly windy and there was so much fog rolling in off of the Atlantic that it'd make John Carpenter jealous. It was kinda eerie... anyway, after that we went shopping and had lunch at Sizzler where some woman in a yellow track suit glared at my Pogues shirt like I was somehow offending her classy Sizzler lunch. The salad bar was good.

We got home, parked the car, and I played video games while Alison had a cat nap. After that was out of my system I made a three cheese capiletti dish that was pretty darn good. Then we watched a few episodes of Freaks N Geeks (one of my new favorite shows - too bad I missed it when it was new material) and went to bed.
Yay for lazy vacation days.

A little V-Day fun....

2008-02-16T22:24:00.000-05:00

We celebrated the 14th by heading into Manhattan to have dinner at Jekyll & Hyde's Club, a sort of horror themed Chuckie Cheese style joint a block from Central Park. We'd been in there to the bar before but to get the full experience you need to stay for dinner. It wasn't cheap but it was nifty as nifty can be. Monsters pop out of the walls and entertain you with witty banter while you dine on over priced mediocre steaks and guzzle tasty and semi-reasonably priced beers. We had a table near the elevator, which had a bunch of skeletons on top of it, making for a strange view.

TVs are hung throughout the four floors of the restaurant where you can see the floorshow. Sometimes animated mummies will come out and do The Monster Mash, other times wolfs who have had their heads mounted on the walls will sing Summer Lovin' from Grease. Like I said, it's corny, but it's hard not to have fun. Those with better seats than we had were able to see the show without the aid of the TVs. When the show isn't going, the TVs show old trailers for Universal and AIP monster movies. At one point I looked up and saw a promo spot for House of Wax playing (fine, it's not AIP or Universal but it's still rad).

Some of the employees stay in character. 'Wellington' - he being the doorman - was a kick. Before he'd let us into the restaurant he made us stay in a room to listen to his spiel. When he was done delivering it, the roof started to close in on us. It all reminded me of the Haunted Mansion at Disney Land.

We got out of there pretty late and grabbed the first train back to Queens. Once we were home we watched the first half of Rock N Roll Nightmare (a personal favorite and a matter of pride for me) but we were soon out, it was closing in on 2am.

All in all a nice way to spend Valentine's Day. Maybe not a typical way, but that's okay. There will be other years for typical celebrations, this year we both wanted monsters more than we wanted flowers so that's what we got. Love is grand sometimes. It really is.

Hooray for Nephews!

2008-02-11T21:03:00.001-05:00

Well, a nephew at least. In the singular sense. My younger sister Sandra gave birth to a healthy new baby boy this morning (does that make him a newphew? I think it does!). Deklin Martin was brough into the world in the hospital in Orilla, Ontario, not too far outside of Huntsville, the town that she and her husband, Don, and their daughter Audra call home. It wasn't an easy nine months for my sister but from all accounts (I've yet to see a picture of the little tyke myself but I trust my grandmother implicitly) it was worth it. He's supposedly pretty cute. Always happy to have an addition to the family, and the prospect of educating, enlightening, and maybe corrupting a nephew the way my good uncle did for me makes me smile. I'm also very happy that my only sister is doing well.

A visit from Tolch and a few trips around the city....

2008-02-05T11:24:00.001-05:00

My good buddy Mark Tolch was up here visiting for the last few days. Good timing on his part as this week has proven to be job-searchy whereas last week I was pretty much free the entire time. That lead to highjinks! Here's a play by play.....

Thursday - Mark arrives. We pick him up at LGA and head back to the apartment. Alison has to stay home so she can get her son from the bus so Mark and I head into the city to find the 'Paul's Boutique Corner.' That's right. We're nerdy enough that we searched out the corner used for the cover art on the Beastie Boys' second LP. We found it. It's now a falafal shop and the finest menswear in Brooklyn was nowhere to be found. It's also not in Brooklyn, it's in Manhattan. Regardless, we made the best of it by wandering around and hitting a couple of nifty pubs in town. We also saw a building being demolished that had an old truck in the middle of it for some reason. Later that night we came back to Queens and Mark was kind enough to take us to dinner at the Cavalier where I ate chicken cordon bleu and had a strange conversation with a drunken and very effeminite man about the movie stars of yore. Oh, and someone fell off of their bar stool (not someone in our party, mind you). When we got home we watched The Warriors HD-DVD and geeked out.

Friday - Mark and I prowl the Village in search of cheap beer and quirky DVDs. Despite the rain, our mission was successful. We did some shopping and got soaked. At one point, some guy came tearing out of an Irish Pub in front of us, turned to some strange looking dude standing in a doorway and said 'Hey! Crazy Eddie! Wut's with de fuggin' rain?' Which was very amusing in a foul mouthed Tony Danza sort of way. Later that night we met Horace and John from the board at Manitoba's for a few beers. Alison arrived shortly after to make sure we all got home safe and sound. Handsome Dick Manitoba was actually tending bar that night, he told Mark that he loved Canadians and tried to get us to buy some Super Bowl Squares for his football pool.

Saturday - We took the train over to Forrest Hill (birth place of the Ramones) and had lunch. Then we took in a late afternoon showing of Rambo. That was simply rad. Ridiculous and bloody as bloody can be, it was still a fun time at the movies despite some failed attempts at some sort of semi-serious social commentary. See this one if you wanna see Stallone mow down a few hundred badguys with a machine gun and rip out a man's throat. From there we went back to Jackson Heights for dinner at Mario's. Tasty Columbian food. Yum.

Sunday - Mark's last full day in NYC was a good one. We went into town and he got to grab some souvenirs for his family. Saw the NBC Building, Rockefeller Center, Radio City, the big Disney Store and FAO Schwartz. From there we wandered through Central Park and marvelled at the break dancers and roller skaters. After that we found The Dakota (by accident), the hotel were John Lennon was shot. Walked from there to The Outback which was empty, probably because of the Superbowl. After dinner we hit 53rd and 3rd but the Ramones were nowhere to be found, it was disappointingly very none rock and roll. Came home and watched some TV. Heard the neighbourhood errupt when the Giants beat the Patriots, then crashed.

Took him to the airport yesterday and said goodbye. It was a fun trip and a good excuse to get out and see some more of the city. A few random pictures in no discernable order.....

The saddest dog in the world....? And a squirrel!

2008-01-30T20:18:00.000-05:00

This ridiculously sad looking dog is Emily. She's roughly three years old, Alison bought her for her son a few years ago. By far the most patient and docile dog I've ever met in my life, I decided to follow her around the apartment and bother her with a camera for an hour or so. She's pretty skittish and so she doesn't like having her picture taken but after a while, she tired out and gave up, allowing me to at least point the lens at her as long as I didn't use a flash. Fair enough. Flashes bother my eyes too.

At any rate, a couple of the pictures were kinda neat, so here they are.

And when I went outside today, I saw a squirrel. Dig it.

To Canada And Back Again

2008-01-28T17:24:00.000-05:00

So this weekend we drove from NYC to Niagara Falls, Ontario to see my family for a late Christmas celebration of sorts. My sister was a no-show, but in her defense she's about to have a baby any minute now and her doctor told her to stay put for the weekend. Perfectly understandable then that she didn't want to drive four hours! While it would have been nice to see her and her husband and my one and only niece, I did get to see almost everyone else - Mom, Doug, Dad, my three grandparents and Patrick and Brenden. I even ran into my old friend Dave who was working the pharmacy counter in the lovely Seaway Mall in Welland!

It was great to see everyone again - I'd seen them previously in September but have decided to make a point to see them more often now that I'm within driving distance (it's 6-7 hours but that's not that big a deal).

In addition to family dinners and visits, we also saw some tacky tourist stuff. My favorite local monument is the giant Frankenstein eating a Whopper at the top of Clifton Hill. Nothing expresses Niagara Falls' crass blend of monster museums, fast food and big dumb signage like this guy....

Alison and I took P&B up in the super sized ferris wheel that overlooks both the waterfall itself and the Clifton Hill strip. The cars are sealed from the elements and heated but that didn't diminish the fact that I am mildly claustrophobic and don't always do well with heights. Can't say I ever need to do that again, but we all survived and hey, check it out, you can see Frankenburger from the air to get an idea of just how big the stupid sign is.

We also hit up the Hollywood Movieland Wax Museum. Most of the exhibits were terrible... but the Freddy Kreuger circa Wes Craven's New Nightmare (note the hand claws rather than the glove... a dead giveaway to movie geeks like us!) was pretty cool and this picture turned out well so why not show it off...

...Marlon Brando, on the other hand, didn't fare so well. And what's with his Dollar Store stuffed cat? That's the dumb icing on the dumb cake!

Powerless to resist Frankenstein's charms, we had lunch at Burger King. The rad thing about both Burger King and McDonald's in Canada is that you can get poutine with your burgers instead of regular, boring American French Fries. Everything goes better with cheese and gravy!

All in all, it was a short but sweet visit and it's always a pleasure to see everyone. Age somehow seems to make one appreciate family more and more - either that or we've all just collectively gotten nicer and more fun to hang out with over the years. I think we'll make the drive again in 8-10 weeks.