No baseball! Fuck!
FUCK!!!
Posts published in “Life”
Last night I was at The Belmont Lounge for my friend Dumaine’s birthday party. We arrived just a little after 8 right in the middle of some sort of unsigned R&B/hip hop artist showcase which sounded like an open mic, but wasn’t. Dumaine and his fye-ance Erika had reserved a table in anticipation of the friends who would eventually show up. A smart move, I think. We spoke to the hostess and got her to seat us at the table. Apparently, the woman running the showcase had placed some record company folks, whatever the HELL that means, at the table with the delicately lettered “Reserved” sign on it. When the hostess did her job and moved the record company folks to seat us, this woman raised a hell of a stink.
Instead of doing the right thing and saying, “Hey, you know, I know you have this table reserved and everything, but I would love for these folks to be able to see the rest of the show from here since I’d love for my performers to make some sort of deal with them. Would you mind if they stayed here?”
You know what we would have said? We’d have said, “Of course! No problem. There’s only three of us right now and we’d be happy to share the table for the remainder of the show.”
But, no. She had to pull the passive aggressive card and give us stink eye all night and bitch to the staff and call us out on the microphone. We were polite and didn’t let her bother us, because, really, what’s worse for people who are passive aggressive than to reply to them with straight positivity and politeness?
We sat and listened to the second half of the show. After 2 or 3 7 dollar Brooklyn Lager bottles (I know, right, what the fuck), I’m getting lost in my own head a little as all this not-very-good R&B blares through the bar. Conversation was impossible with the volume, so all I had was my own brain. Luckily, at this point, we’re friends.
I recognized that every song we heard was about how much the singer loved someone and how they either wanted to spend their lives with the other person or how they were the most beautiful in the world or how they wanted to take them home and sleep with them or whatever. You get it, I think. It was all hyperbole and adolescent descriptions of love and relationships. Kind of silly, really. Not realistic at all.
I got to thinking that it would be really awesome to do a song in the same style where the guy basically told the woman that she was all right, maybe a little annoying, but that he liked fucking her. That he didn’t want it to get too serious since he really couldn’t see them in a relationship. That he thought she was ok, but not really that great and, in the end, he didn’t care too much about her and that she’d probably be better off with someone who respected her. All of it sung in that “I can’t just hold a single note” style of modern R&B singers that I dislike so much. It’s like constant vocal gymnastics that seems to me more often cover up the fact that the singer’s not really hitting the note they’re trying to hit. Instead of just singing, they’re masking that they can’t sing. But whatever.
On the way in to work this morning I was thinking about the song still when I realized that I already KNEW a song like that. Funny, right? It took me 12 hours to process that the song I thought would be so funny pretty much exists. Here it is.
[audio:https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Our-Love-Would-Be-Much-Better-If-I-Gave-A-Damn-About-You.mp3|artists=Dag|titles=Our Love Would Be Much Better (If I Gave a Damn About You)]Now, the Dag track isn’t quite exactly perfect, but it’s pretty close. Do any of you brilliant people out there have any songs like this? Let’s start a collection!
Last Saturday, a lovely warm spring day by any account, I moved from my old apartment where I had lived since April of 2005 into my new apartment in Greenpoint. From Williamsburg to Greenpoint. Maybe that’s what I’ll call my memoirs one day. It’s good to have a title in mind all the time, I think.
With the selfless help of Mike Fiduk, Jesse Allen, and Señor Roberto Caruso, we drove all my stuff a mile and a half and deftly moved everything inside. Moving is a painful process, but with the help of my friends it was quick and efficient. With an unexpected assist from Richie, the 82 year old gentleman who lives on the ground floor of my building, we were finished by about 1 o’clock. I bought the fellows some beers and sandwiches and went to deliver the truck on Dekalb Avenue. I left Jesse and Mike to deal with Time Warner when they showed up—Robbie had to run off to work. When I returned from delivering the truck, the Time Warner guy was drilling a hole in the wall to run the cable to the place I had specified to Jesse. Bam bam bam. Knocking things out. I was pleased.
My place is still jam packed with boxes and cardboard and crap. I have three pieces of furniture I need to assemble. I need to sweep and mop. I need to get my receiver fixed and then hang my surround speakers. But I have the interwebs, which is easily the most important thing. More important than running water. More important than sunlight. More important that gravity.
Luckily all those are still in place so the internet works nicely.
The only weirdness about the new place is that I don’t have a sink in the bathroom. Kind of sucks, but since I’m the only person in the place and I’ve hung curtains, I can wander around all sorts of buck ass naked and never worry that the people on Greenpoint Avenue are going to see me in my birthday suit.
Funny story, the morning after I moved in, I was getting out of the shower and wandered over toward the bedroom to put on some clothes when I saw my friend Charles, of Year of Record fame, peeking into the window from across the street. Being on only the second floor you can pretty much see right in to my place. I recognized Charles and waved at him and his friend and they came into my apartment. They both agreed that it’s super duper awesome, which it totally is. But that was also the point where I recognized I needed curtains as soon as possible.
Look out for photos in a couple days once I have everything set up and tidy. Until then, enjoy a video of my parents’ dog blowing off my little brother.
Stupid dog.
This is god damned amazing. I don’t even want to think about how much work this took the director/animator Rogier van der Zwaag to do. Apparently it took 3 months and 4085 photos. Really, really impressive.
Check out the mockumentary style making of video after the jump.
My sister from the same mother and father, Christina, has been kicking ass at her relatively new job at eBay doing, uh…whatever it is she does there. Marketing or something. I don’t know. Christina, what the hell do you do there?
Anyway, I’m super proud of her for kicking ass in her job and all in all being such a cool little sister. And here she is featured in a video from eBay’s blog. She’s the first face you see. Isn’t she like so adorable or some crap? Of course, the very first thing she does is to break the Second Commandment, but I forgive her.
Good job, Kissie!
About a million years ago I went to the Guggenheim with my friends Chris and Ryan when they were in town for a little visit. We wandered into the permanent collection and saw what I consider to be the most beautiful painting ever created. This is it.
That’s right. It’s a painting of a lobster fighting a cat. By Pablo Picasso. Is it not the finest piece of artwork you’ve ever seen? The Guggenheim has a total bullshit write-up of the painting on their site, but I like to think that we’re seeing the result of kooky, old Picasso making something he thinks is funny for a friend. Like, “Hey dude, we’re friends, I made you this rad painting of a lobster fighting a cat. Sweet. See you later!”
I have a print of this painting hanging in my living room right now. It’s awesome.
I have some other art too. I have three small, original paintings by artist R. Nicholas Kuszyk of robots. Today I also purchased a print of a piece called “Zombies vs Unicorns” from Josh Cochran.
I’m pretty excited about this one. I definitely need to get it framed.
I also want to print out a bunch of photos nice and big and frame them and place them around the apartment. Unfortunately, Adorama is closed for Passover so I’ll have to wait a little bit. Not really a problem.
There has always been one piece of art I’ve never seemed to able to find as a decent sized print. It’s this.
Ok. Do me a favor and look at this painting. Do you see the surly clown sitting there having a drink, smoking a cigarette, and being ignored by the patrons? It’s totally awesome, right? I know. It’s a painting called “Soir Bleu” by Edward Hopper, who you might know by his iconic “Night Hawks”. The real painting lives at the Whitney here in New York and while I’d like to steal the original, I think I’ll make due with a print. The problem has always been that I’ve never been able to find a decent sized print of the work. I’ve seen posters, but those are lame. I’ve seen post cards, but those are tiny. But, I’ve never seen a good sized print.
Until today. While chit chatting with a friend on IM about artwork, I found that the Whitney will make me a 24×40 inch print for 85.00. Seriously? I’d be stupid not to do that. It’s absolutely worth the 85 bucks for something that big to put in my apartment. I think it would look magnificent hanging in my house opposite my Picasso. I’m not sure yet where the Unicorn and Zombie piece will go, but I’m sure I’ll find a home for it.
Are there any things you guys think I should add to my collection of decoration for my new place? Nothing make a home feel like a home as quickly as hanging things on the wall and having furniture. After a Saturday bonanza at Ikea, the latter is accounted for. Suggestions, friends?
