drat fink

bowery blues

when i left my apartment tonight to go out to dinner with my neighbor to discuss our fast approaching displacement from our home of six and forty years respectively, there was a note on the steps from the son of the landlord. the son runs the lighting store on the ground floor. it was somewhat unusual but not wholly beyond the realm of possibility that he would want to talk to me. so i called him when i got back from another fine meal at alias (especially fine as my guardian angels picked up the tab), only to find SOL (son of landlord) in a rebellious mood. seems he was trying to enlist my support in an effort to sue his father who is in the process of evicting the three of us from the building. as if my real family werent disfunctional enough. i doubt anything will come of it as neither myself nor my neighbor is itching for a fight at this point but its sure is tempting to throw a wrench into the fathers plans. after all, what kind of father forces his own son out of business? is the animosity that it would generate within the family worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars? the fuck has already had a stroke in the last couple of years. does he need more heartache? does he want his grandchildren to grow up hating him too? if i only had the right kind of friends, we could take care of the problem without any pesky lawsuits. who needs lawyers when youre above the law.

oh yeah, you would think that dining with me would be the highlight to anybody's day but my zelig-like neighbor attended a luncheon at mayor bloomberg's townhouse as part of some nyc educational conference. and what did he and bloomy bond over as hizzoner made the rounds? the blight of teen smoking, of course. alot of good that will do in helping us to get an apartment or two, but if i ever get another ticket for running a red light on my bicycle, i know where to call and complain.

tonight im gonna party like its 1995

managed to overcome my dis-ease and mal-laze to attend the late rock show tonight at the knitting factory. i probably would have liked the angular guitared punk chicks in the earlier show ( erase errata) more but the proggy punkish swedish rockers The Soundtrack of Our Lives put on a good show. and theres still nothing like being 5' from the stage to appreciate the histronics of which there were many. but i still wanted to crack the kid who kept backing into me across the skull with my beer bottle. too much of the sopranos on dvd, i suppose, or else im harboring a thinly concealed veil of rage. (we report, you decide.) i mean, i had a nice perch until he snaked his way in front of me, the least he could do is knock into the people in front of him instead of me. overall worthwhile but i didnt stay for the encore.

the whites of their lies

"In what may be the opening battle of the war for Iraq, the Kurds are preparing to crush an Islamic fundamentalist group which has seized territory on the Iraqi-Iranian border and which some claim provides evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden."

smoke-free

"The few remaining outposts of smoking in public indoor spaces in New York City, such as small restaurants and bars, will soon be smoke-free — if Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way, and it seems that he will. While most of the workers in these establishments and their nonsmoking customers breathe a sigh of relief, smokers find their universe shrinking yet again. The law, if passed by the City Council, will put the city alongside California and Delaware as the nation's most unaccommodating places for smoking."

high flyers

""Futurists say that if anything's going to happen in the way of leaps in technology, it'll be in the field of medicine," says retired Rear Adm. Stephen Baker, the Navy's former chief of operational testing and evaluation, who is now at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "This 'better warrior through chemistry' field is being looked at very closely," says Admiral Baker, whose career includes more than 1,000 aircraft-carrier landings as a naval aviator. "It's part of the research going on that is very aggressive and wide open."

credit check

"Instead of sending cash, coins and cheques up to the altar on a collection plate, parishioners can use special envelopes to charge monthly donations to their credit cards, or they can add their offerings and gifts to God to monthly bills paid online or through automatic bank account transfers."

chipping away

"The Los Angeles Police Department is seeking to censor films and television shows by threatening to sue any company that uses its name, badges or logos without getting approval for the script first."

"The city attorney's office said it would take legal action to protect its "intellectual property rights" as it expects to be "treated just like Starbucks and Coca-Cola"."

croc me up

theres got to be an easier way to go.

tarmac daddies

"Pavement - archived and committed to video as rumoured elsewhere (well, fuck, here actually), we'll be reissuing Pavement's groundbreaking 'Slanted & Enchanted' album on October 22, completely remastered with scads of extra tracks (at least 3 outtakes, the "Summer Babe" b-sides, b-sides from the "Trigger Cut" single, the entire "Watery, Domestic" EP, plus more), liner notes from SM, Spiral, Chris Lombardi, Dan Koretzky, Gerard Cosloy, Boche Billions and other hangers-on.

On the same day, we'll also be releasing the long-awaited Pavement 2-DVD collection, 'Slow Century'. Compiling all of Pavement's videos, two live gigs with multiple camera angles, plus a 90 minute documentary by director Lance Bangs. And no exhaustive DVD set would be complete without self-serving commentary from the musicians and video directors. If only we could've hired Elvis Mitchell to lob the softball questions up there the way he did on that "Memento" DVD....well, that would've taken us another year to get together, so be thankful we didn't bother."

saturday in the dark

blew some cash this afternoon on discs, although it could have been alot worse. bought nina nastasia's The Blackened Air in anticipation of not seeing the show. also picked up francoiz breut's Vignt a Trente Mille Jours. the darla records samplers are always "a treat" for $6 (the middle listing at the bottom). for my oldies buzz i picked up fairport convention's Heyday: BBC Sessions 1968-1969. and finally despite my waning enthusiasm, i couldnt help but grab the sleater-kinney pre-release promo for One Beat. and i also couldnt pass up a $10 North by Northwest dvd.

among the many other items consider but passed over were:

1) Bright Eyes -- Lifted, or The Story is in the Soil... (clip)

2) Gram Parsons -- Live 1973

3) Les Sans Culottes -- The Ennui and the Ecstasy

4) Interpol -- Turn On The Bright Lights

5) Lee Hazelwood Tribute Album -- Total Lee

6) T-Rex -- Dandy in the Underworld

7) Carter Family -- Clinch Mountain Treasures

8) The Fall -- The A Sides