Up All Night With Amy Winehouse

Friend and fellow Fairfieldian Claire Hoffman has written a brilliant and disturbing piece on Amy Winehouse for Rolling Stone this month. Give it a read.
(Photo of Amy Winehouse inviting Claire into her flat.)

Technology

Sorry Apple fans, but Blackberry kicks Mac's ass in the latest round of Smartphone wars. I am, however, relatively devastated that Blackberry appears to be pushing the launch of the Bold from July to August. Sob. In the meantime, I guess I'll have to scratch my itch for technology by coveting the Amazon Kindle (been lasciviously ogling it for some time now but still on the fence about getting it) and the Canon Vixia HV30 camcorder (for personal use).
A girl can dream.

Are You Ready?

Then let's change the world.

Nothing Says I Love You Like Someone Elses Words

Remember when you were a kid and you had a crush on that boy (or girl) who sat two rows away in your English class and ate glue while the teacher read a Roald Dahl book to the rest of the class? You used to stare longingly at him until you finally took action, sneaking a box of sweethearts marked "From Your Secret Admirer" into his desk and waited for him to find it. You anxiously wondered if he would figure out who it was from, until you realized that every girl in your class had done the same thing, those bitches!

Wait- what was I saying? Oh yes, love and crushes.
The point I was trying to make is that I don't think we really ever grow up, but rather than sending that anonymously marked box of sweethearts, may I suggest a mix tape? You know, mix tape, like the ones you used to record on actual tape cassettes and embellish with hand drawn art that would list the songs that said all the things you, as a teenager, couldn't say yourself without being, like, 'totally uncool'?

If you still have those old mix tapes, by the way, be sure to add them to the online collection at Cassette From My Ex, a fun site I mentioned in an earlier post. If you don't have your old mix tapes, create a new digital one at Muxtape, or steal the one I recently updated and send it to your sweetheart with the words 'up all night,' and 'blood, sweat and tears' mixed into the accompanying note that explains how hard you worked on it.

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

JK Rowling gave a touching and lovely commencement speech at Harvard earlier this month. Clips and transcript below:




Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

Yes We Can

Obama's campaign makes the wise decision to counter false accusations by way of a website dedicated to such a purpose. This is yet another brilliant tactical move that further exemplifies how and why Obama is a smart, effective and conscientious candidate who understands the zeitgeist of our country and respects the intelligence of our populous enough to recognize that, given the choice, we will seek to educate ourselves on the truth and take part in the political and social discourse occurring in America. Yes, we care, and yes, we can.

I'm Voting Republican

This is funny. Please don't get your panties in a twist if you find this satire a bit too one-sided or black and white.

Rising Sand in New Yorkland

I'm so happy today, I don't know where to begin. I guess I'll start by mentioning the source of my current blissful state. Aside from the weather, which is truly momentous, and my friends, who are even more exceptional, aside from all of that, I am encountering the effects of the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss pill I took last night, a pill that is fast acting but administered through a time release capsule that keeps on giving, long after the show has ended.
Watching the final night of the New York leg of the Rising Sand tour, I was struck by what I perceived as something- a quality, a feeling, I didn't know what- something in the aural-visual experience of what was in front of me that struck me as unique comparative to the other shows I've seen over the years. It only took me a moment to realize what it was; it was an awe and comfort in knowing on a visceral level that I was watching people who didn't just perform music but actually lived and breathed it, not because they loved it but because it was the only way they knew how to operate. It was like watching an isolated world of perfection (particularly the acappella rendition of Down in the River to Pray) in an impossibly imperfect world, and it left me feeling momentarily released from my corporeal reality. I think it's rare moments like these that are the reason music and art exist, and holy (insert the name of something holy), am I grateful for them.
Music is an unquestionable passion of mine and though I've never considered it as a career for myself, I would go mental if I didn't get to play or sing with friends and family. In a happy twist of fate, I recently and serendipitously fell in with a group of musician friends who were looking for a singer. I tried out for them and they liked what they heard so we have started recording a couple tracks to see if the chemistry continues. If all goes well, I'll hopefully be able to blog about our own gigs and an upcoming album (everything is pretty much lined up- they've just been looking for the right vocalist), and soon be posting "Gone, Gone, Gone," the first track I recorded with the band that just happens to share the title of the song Alison Krauss and Robert Plant so generously closed last night's show with.

On a final note, I will be singing with Crystal Ponzio at 7pm on Friday, the 20th of June, at Rockwood Music Hall, and then again at the Living Room in August. Come say hi.

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
-Aldous Huxley

The Summer of Music Continues....

Last night, Marc and I headed out to Union Hall to see the bands Adem and Wildbirds & Peacedrums play an 8pm show. This was a rare treat because it's not everyday that Marc can go to shows on weeknights, given that he has to be up uber-early for work. Tickets were no longer available online by the time we decided to go so we showed up to Union Hall early, had a drink, talked about religion and relationships and how/ if they differ, in as much as they both fill a void (though pro-relationship, Marc is vehemently anti-religion. I am more likely to hold the individual responsible more than the institution in both relationships and religions).

Around 9pm, we wandered downstairs, where the show was just starting. Unbeknownst to us, there was an opening act for Adem and W&P, and her name was Sharon Van Etten. We settled onto the concrete floor and listened. Her voice was a sorrowful, heartfelt quiver that sounded like a layer of sawdust that, when momentarily blown away in the crescendos of her songs, revealed her obviously strong foundations of self-awareness and conviction. Her voice was wonderfully complimented by her simple, soulful song structures and guitar strumming.

The song You Didn't was among my favorites, though quite a few of them ranked in the Highly Listenable category. (Click to download Damn Right).

By the time she wrapped, it was nearly 10pm, time for us to head home. Alas, we ended up seeing neither Adem or Wildbirds & Peacedrums, but I think we might have seen one of the best parts of the night regardless.

Next up, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Very excited. That show would be tonight and I'll be sure to say a word or two about in the coming days.

A Smattering of Things

As I earlier blogged, I planned on going to the Living Room to see the Tallest Man on Earth last night. I made good on my word. Perhaps it was the intimate setting or the attentiveness of the audience but for whatever the reason, what I was saw, just singer/songwriter Kristian Matsson and his guitar on stage, felt significant and magical. I hope the Tallest Man gets to keep on electrifying people across the country the way he did me.

For those who do not know who he is, I highly recommend giving him a listen. You can read about him at the following LINK, as well as hear some of his tracks at the bottom of the page.

After the show, Megan and I went for a drink at the Lobby Bar in the Bowery Hotel. After much hype, we wanted to see what the place was all about. I have to say, they've done a very nice job creating the feel of an antique personal library in the space. Apparently, the bar has been criticized for stepping too closely on the heels of Ian Schrager's Gramercy Park Hotel bar, Rose Bar, but seriously, the Lobby Bar is nice, so who cares?

And as for those accusations that the Lobby Bar and Rose Bar are too much alike, I frankly disagree.
Rose Bar
Lobby Bar
The Rose Bar is a deliberately and overtly stylized space that feels modern and contemporary. Its high ceiling and large central light fixture feels like a updated take on Spanish colonial decor while the black and white tiled floors are an homage to classic art deco New York. The Lobby Bar, on the other hand, is warmer and more organic with its spatial nooks and crannies, its Persian rugs and its worn leather armchairs, all of which communicate "room in an old English home" rather than "room in a famous designer's apartment".

After drinks, I wandered down the street on my way home and bumped into Nick Nace, who I've vaguely known for a little while, outside the Bowery Poetry Club. We chatted (and saw Robert Plant!!!) and I ended up stepping inside for a drink and to watch a bit of the always entertaining O'Debra Twins "Show & Tell" Open Mic.
The house band for the show is A Brief View of the Hudson, which is comprised of Nick Nace and Ann Enzminger (I believe there is a third member as well, though I could be wrong). This is probably one of those things you're not supposed to admit but when I've seen this band in the past, it's fair to say that I was distracted, either by conversation or by company, and it wasn't until last night that I think really I heard them for the first time, which is a shame because they were great. Check them out for yourself at the Bowery next Monday.
Speaking of the Bowery Poetry Club, gifted poet Rena Mosteirin, who won this year's Kore Press Short Fiction award, used to read there when she still lived in New York (she's in Chicago now). In my blog post from yesterday, I linked her brother Marc's name to a poem of hers that was built out of two years of his emails. Today, I've decided to post the actual poem (below).

I post this poem because I happen to love it. You could say I love it because I know the people it's about, or because it's from the point of view of someone I adore, but I think it goes beyond all that. I think it's just a damn fine piece of work.
I'm also posting what I find funny but what might not be of interest to anyone else. It is the Sit On My Face (Know the Difference) Mix, which is, in the words of Dr. J, "songs sung or discussed during mah recent trip to NYC, turned into a little half hour micromix." The title is derived from one of the best comments I've ever received on the streets of New York. It happened while walking from the LES with J and Chris to go to the Big Apple BBQ. A group of guys hollered in our direction, "Hey baby! Yo, girl! Sit on his face and sit on mine and you know the difference!" The tracks involved sound a little something like this:

1. Hot Fun In The Summertime - Sly & The Family Stone

2. The Spirit of Radio - Rush

3. 99 Luftballoons - Nina Hagen

4. Changin' My Change - Alex Battles & The Whisky Rebellion

5. Snakes Say Hisss! - Rubber Band Man (rmx)

6. Lil Mama - Lip Gloss

7. Power Station - Some Like It Hot

8. Richard Marx - Right Here Waiting

And with that, I leave you.
Stay hot out there, NY.

at least you don't scream for buttermilk every day like G-man
by Rena Mosteirin

(roughly 2 years of e-mails written by Marc Mosteirin woven together to make a poem)

Last night I got ass-high out in the front with Rummy
and then watched Wu-Tang Invasion on the laptop.
I was standing under the tree and the cat got onto
the branch right over my head and started attacking.
That's the most enjoyment I’ve gotten out of that creature in years.
The flowers on the tree are really nice. An old European
man stopped yesterday to admire them. He didn't
speak any English but managed to explain to me anyhow that
he was impotent and could no longer have sex- mostly
using hand gestures. I'm contemptuously pessimistic regarding Lauren
and females in general. Must go for my daily walk now.
I somewhat enjoy those, at least it's gorgeous out.
I feel like the entire house is a cathode ray worship temple.
at any given time, at least one bright
blue inferno is slow-roasting the family soul.
At least you don't scream for buttermilk every day like G-man.
When I was a freshman in college I used to go to the dining hall and fill
up a glass 25% with Hershey's goo and the rest with milk. Suck it down
like there was no tomorrow. I don't know why I bothered
adding the milk. Ray got rejected from the American Express job
he's been trying to get for months so it's back to weed for him.
The cityscape is not exciting me as much as it used to lately. I think
my ocean of appreciation has been polluted
by the feeling that it's not ok to be economically idle anymore.
Saw the dentist today - old guy with a white fro.
Asked if I played soccer - i said no.
Said my teeth looked smashed-in. i said oh.
All this after talking to me about god and children and mouth biology
for one straight hour (there were polish ladies in the waiting room,
loudly turning magazine pages). He wanted to drill
my teeth down cause they're jagged. I refused
the procedure on the grounds that I get enough natural grinding.
I go to Benninger park and do pull-ups on the playground structure.
the little kids crowd around and say "Whoa, do you
take steroids?" and then they all boast generously and try
to pull themselves up. It felt nice to be in a crowd
of little kids today. They wanted to see my
arm muscles. There was the little kid area and an old man area –
dozen or so non-English speakers crowded around 2 or three
tables playing dominos and shit.
Maybe I’ll crash their party too sometime.

Weekend Update- aka Procrastination

Alas, tis Monday, yet again. Let's reminisce about the past, those days when we were free, shall we?

This felt like the first weekend of summer, though we are technically still 12 days away from being able to make that claim official. On Friday, Dr. J came up from North Carolina to take in the sounds of Four Tet, who were to play Studio B in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, as we reveled in anticipation of the show, we got word that it was canceled due to a family emergency. Rats.

I quickly cooked up alternate plans: catch the band Dirty on Purpose and a couple of short films at the opening night of Rooftop Films, followed by a visit to my friends Lady Rizo, Erin Hill and Luci Butler at the first installment of Lady Rizo Presents Girdle.


Saturday brought with it lots of heat, humidity and some damn fine BBQ. J, Chris and I made our way to Madison Square Park for the start of the 6th Annual Big Apple BBQ, listening to the DEFiBULATORs as we absorbed the beer, sweat and sauce. Afterward, we took the train out to Brooklyn to cruise up onto the rooftop of the lovely Dan Torres, where there was a sunset and more BBQ, courtesy of Dan's awesome neighbor who chefs at Benoit in the city. We tried to make it to BAM post BBQ to see Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog but we missed our stop and were too hot and tired at that point to turn back.

On Sunday, J, Marc and I had brunch at Falai Panetteria and then headed back to the Big Apple BBQ to see Alex Battles and the Whiskey Rebellion. Megan met up with us, we had more beer and danced, lavishing in 10 degree cooler weather. J and I then finally made it to BAM, where we were going to see the film Celine and Julie Go Boating. Unfortunately, we were a week early; it screens next Friday. We opted for lunch in Park Slope instead.

After lunch, we hoped into the 9th Street and 7th Avenue F Station, only to discover that there was a power outage causing the suspension of all F line service.

So we went over to Flatbush Avenue to catch the 1 train at Bergen Street. 5 minutes after swiping our cards, the lights begin to flicker. Power out. It was clear that no train would be able to take us back to Manhattan. Our alternatives were finding and waiting for a bus (the M41 I thought, but no, it does not cross the river), calling Arecibo car service (my favorite) or walking across the Manhattan Bridge to get from Park Slope to my apartment in the Lower East Side. Armed with iced coffee and bottles of water, we went for the walk, enjoying the hot, beautiful weather along the way.
It is now Monday. J is on a flight back home; Megan, Chris, Dan, Marc and I are all back at our respective jobs; the Big Apple BBQ is over; the subways are working again and I am thinking about tonight, when I'll be going to The Living Room to catch a performance from Sweden's answer to Bob Dylan, the musician Tallest Man on Earth.

Until then, here is an article I read in the Sunday Times. Love and relationships seem to be on the minds' of everybody I talk to these days. I blame the heat.

Politics Explained

from http://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/politics.html

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Obama

It's old news, but I'd like to continue reveling in it....