"Which one," asked the fat, middle-aged man in the business suit. He leaned back in the plush office chair.
"That one down there," his wife aswered. She waved to the wall of boxy paintings, staggered along the wall. Each canvas had a clear sky but conveyed with various colors of daylight. Taken as a whole, they gave the wall an arching sense of a passing day. At the center of each sky floated an immaculate, painted feather. I was hovering along the deep purples of twilight as Kat lingered among the pinks and baby blues of dawn.
"I know what 'down there' means. You just said 'down there'-"
The blonde-streaked helmet head swiveled back to her husband.
"Then what are you askin' for," she asked with an arched, Long Island/Jersey drawl.
"Which one?" The suit tried to lean back further in the office chair to punctuate his statement, but he had reached the limits of the chair. Sandwiched between the couple was a 30-something, Japanese woman, perched upon a swiveling art stool. Her Smile of Humoring was in full plumage.
"The one on the end- any of 'em. They're all so gore-juss" she exclaimed with a flush enthusiasm fueled by red wine. She waved and gestured with a hand that appeared to have a junebug clasping for dear life upon her ring finger. Only when she paused for dramatic effect could I make out the cartoon-sized, wedding ring mounted on her hand.
I glanced about the worktables for any sign of the free wine we'd been sampling all evening, but resources were running slim at this late hour. It was time to call it a night anyway. The excitement of wielding plastic cups of free, red wine amongst an open house of art studios, choked with expensive art and their antsy creators had lost it's allure... and the threat of spillage had become a treacherous possibility.
It was time to go.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
lesson in Thai cooking... wear gloves
Less than a block from the infamous 5-Points section of Lower Manhattan lies a jewel of grocery store called Bangkok Center Grocery. It's a hole-in-the-wall place that's smaller than my living room, but packs enough Thai goodness to keep my mouth burning all year round. I go there whenever the travel bug hits and I need some nostalgic nourishment to placate the fact that I ain't going anywhere anytime soon. The days are shortening and with the 1-year anniversary of my Thailand trip looming on the horizon, I was jonesin' bad.
I had taken a few Thai cooking classes when I was in Chiang Mai and immediately fell in love with the food. New York is woefully lacking in quality, Thai restaurants. We're hip-deep in Chinese, Italian, Indian and sushi, but authentic Thai and Mexican are rare-if-ever sightings. If I wanted some Thai, then I was going to have to do it myself. The four hardest, quality ingredients to come by are fish sauce, shrimp paste, palm sugar and kaffir lime rind/leaves. The first two smell awful the first time you try them. Palm sugar is a great not-so-sweet sugar. Kaffir lime isn't nearly as tangy and sour as conventional limes. It has a great taste that instantly takes me back to Thailand whenever I smell it and it's the secret weapon of really good Thai cooking. If I lived somewhere warm and I had a yard, I would plant myself a kaffir lime tree. It's that frigging good.
Even with the ingredients and the know-how, it takes a lot of practice to get a food dish into the Rotation- eaten on a regular basis. The key is ease-of-preparation. Even in my neighborhood, delivery food is quick and ideal for a tired S.O.B. who's just returned home after a 45-minute commute. I'm not, generally, in the mood to heat up my kitchen and cook for an hour. It's gotta be simple. Pad thai is the first Thai food that I've gotten down pat. It's easy, tastes awesome, and soaking the rice noodles for 12 minutes is half the prep time. Still, it's not a particularly exciting meal. It's mild and frankly, my favorite Thai foods have a little kick. That's where the curry paste comes in.
The cornerstone of hot, Thai cooking is a good curry. Curry paste is the barbecue sauce or marinara of Thai food. If you can nail down a good curry paste, you can stick it in the freezer and pull it out whenever you need it. Cook it with chicken or pork or duck or tofu (all organic, of course) and you will be able to quickly assemble a couple dozen fantastic meals. I made a few curry pastes when I first got back from Thailand, but with middling success. I made a red paste, a paenang paste and a sweeter, milder curry paste called Chiang Mai paste (my favorite). I discovered two keys to a good paste- smoothness and heat. On my first attempt, I got impatient with the food processor and ended up with a bunch of paste that wasn't smooth enough. In addition, it had a good flavor, but didn't give the kind of nasal-clearing heat I'd come to expect from a good curry dish. This time around, I wasn't going to fuck around with the peppers. This time, we were going to have some Serious pepper action in the kitchen.
On Monday, I decided to make some yellow curry paste and a double-batch of red curry paste. I soaked 3-dozen dried, red peppers then added another 10 tiny, green peppers to the mix. I cut and I cleaned the seeds out and I soaked them and when I was done- Success! I busted out my wok, added some coconut milk, 4 tablespoons of red curry paste, palm sugar, tofu. Man! It was like I was back in Southeast Asia. Even Kat, who had been eyeing me nervously all through the prep had to give me props.
Pumped on adrenaline and intense enthusiasm all afternoon, I was finally starting to come down when I noticed my hands- what was that... that burning? My hands began to get warmer and warmer until suddenly they were in full-blown pain. The oils from all the peppers I'd been handling made me feel like I could light a candle with my fingertip. Ho-ly Je-sus. I scrubbed and I scrubbed. I held them in front of fans, I poured milk on them, I scrubbed them some more, but they kept burning and burning. This is what happens when coddled, office hands meet hot peppers. Yow. Five hours later, the burning subsided enough for me to fall asleep.
Last week, my glasses broke. One of those little nose bridges snapped off as I was putting my yogurt in the fridge at work. With no money to buy a new pair, I've started wearing my contact lenses again. They've taken some getting used to, but I was beginning to adjust. Mercifully, I was lazy on Monday and never bothered to put them in. The morning after my Flaming Hands performance, I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom- completely forgetting that my hands were burning just hours earlier. Now, they felt fine. I'd like to think that I'd have been a little smarter if I'd waited another 10 minutes to wake up but, alas, I will never know for sure, for it was with infinite stupidity that I ambled up to the bathroom sink and popped in my right contact. The next 15 minutes were spent trying to get it out. You know you're in a bad way when you start negotiating with yourself. Out Loud. Kat, one of the most squeamish human beings when it comes to eyes, actually offered to use Her fingers to get it out. Finally, the contact abandoned ship and I managed to lurch through my daily prep. Unfortunately, I was left to wear my broken glasses the rest of the day... and again today.
Good curry paste, though.
I had taken a few Thai cooking classes when I was in Chiang Mai and immediately fell in love with the food. New York is woefully lacking in quality, Thai restaurants. We're hip-deep in Chinese, Italian, Indian and sushi, but authentic Thai and Mexican are rare-if-ever sightings. If I wanted some Thai, then I was going to have to do it myself. The four hardest, quality ingredients to come by are fish sauce, shrimp paste, palm sugar and kaffir lime rind/leaves. The first two smell awful the first time you try them. Palm sugar is a great not-so-sweet sugar. Kaffir lime isn't nearly as tangy and sour as conventional limes. It has a great taste that instantly takes me back to Thailand whenever I smell it and it's the secret weapon of really good Thai cooking. If I lived somewhere warm and I had a yard, I would plant myself a kaffir lime tree. It's that frigging good.
Even with the ingredients and the know-how, it takes a lot of practice to get a food dish into the Rotation- eaten on a regular basis. The key is ease-of-preparation. Even in my neighborhood, delivery food is quick and ideal for a tired S.O.B. who's just returned home after a 45-minute commute. I'm not, generally, in the mood to heat up my kitchen and cook for an hour. It's gotta be simple. Pad thai is the first Thai food that I've gotten down pat. It's easy, tastes awesome, and soaking the rice noodles for 12 minutes is half the prep time. Still, it's not a particularly exciting meal. It's mild and frankly, my favorite Thai foods have a little kick. That's where the curry paste comes in.
The cornerstone of hot, Thai cooking is a good curry. Curry paste is the barbecue sauce or marinara of Thai food. If you can nail down a good curry paste, you can stick it in the freezer and pull it out whenever you need it. Cook it with chicken or pork or duck or tofu (all organic, of course) and you will be able to quickly assemble a couple dozen fantastic meals. I made a few curry pastes when I first got back from Thailand, but with middling success. I made a red paste, a paenang paste and a sweeter, milder curry paste called Chiang Mai paste (my favorite). I discovered two keys to a good paste- smoothness and heat. On my first attempt, I got impatient with the food processor and ended up with a bunch of paste that wasn't smooth enough. In addition, it had a good flavor, but didn't give the kind of nasal-clearing heat I'd come to expect from a good curry dish. This time around, I wasn't going to fuck around with the peppers. This time, we were going to have some Serious pepper action in the kitchen.
On Monday, I decided to make some yellow curry paste and a double-batch of red curry paste. I soaked 3-dozen dried, red peppers then added another 10 tiny, green peppers to the mix. I cut and I cleaned the seeds out and I soaked them and when I was done- Success! I busted out my wok, added some coconut milk, 4 tablespoons of red curry paste, palm sugar, tofu. Man! It was like I was back in Southeast Asia. Even Kat, who had been eyeing me nervously all through the prep had to give me props.
Pumped on adrenaline and intense enthusiasm all afternoon, I was finally starting to come down when I noticed my hands- what was that... that burning? My hands began to get warmer and warmer until suddenly they were in full-blown pain. The oils from all the peppers I'd been handling made me feel like I could light a candle with my fingertip. Ho-ly Je-sus. I scrubbed and I scrubbed. I held them in front of fans, I poured milk on them, I scrubbed them some more, but they kept burning and burning. This is what happens when coddled, office hands meet hot peppers. Yow. Five hours later, the burning subsided enough for me to fall asleep.
Last week, my glasses broke. One of those little nose bridges snapped off as I was putting my yogurt in the fridge at work. With no money to buy a new pair, I've started wearing my contact lenses again. They've taken some getting used to, but I was beginning to adjust. Mercifully, I was lazy on Monday and never bothered to put them in. The morning after my Flaming Hands performance, I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom- completely forgetting that my hands were burning just hours earlier. Now, they felt fine. I'd like to think that I'd have been a little smarter if I'd waited another 10 minutes to wake up but, alas, I will never know for sure, for it was with infinite stupidity that I ambled up to the bathroom sink and popped in my right contact. The next 15 minutes were spent trying to get it out. You know you're in a bad way when you start negotiating with yourself. Out Loud. Kat, one of the most squeamish human beings when it comes to eyes, actually offered to use Her fingers to get it out. Finally, the contact abandoned ship and I managed to lurch through my daily prep. Unfortunately, I was left to wear my broken glasses the rest of the day... and again today.
Good curry paste, though.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Sons and Daughters at Northsix
Seeing a musician at the top of his/her game is a fantastic experience. It reminds me why I see bands play live and why people pursue an artistic career. A mediocre band can show flashes of brilliance that make me want to embrace them and root for their development and future success. Bad bands instill a stronger belief in myself by illustrating that, despite their tremendous ability to suck, they're out there, putting it together, getting gigs, recording music and doing what they believe in. If the ongoing duties of computer repair/software installation hadn't absorbed my entire, 3-day weekend, I would have been a guitar-playing motherfucker come Sunday morning 'cause I was hip-deep in inspiration.
Kat and I crawled out of the cave on a rainy Saturday afternoon, propelled ourselves through the subway for an hour, all for a little music-lovin' in Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. For the non-native, Williamsburg is a perfect example of what might have been and what is so very Wrong with New York. Earlier last century, Williamsburg was an Italian-American neighborhood full of Brooklyn Dodgers fans and mafiosos. Later, Poles and orthodox Jews huddled together in tight-knit communities. Recently, it has been embalmed by overeager developers and deep-pocketed hipsters who were eager to gut a neighborhood and build a SoHo to call their own. When Kat and I moved to New York in 2001, Williamsburg was already in the process of transmogrifying from an artist-friendly neighborhood of lofts and cheap apartments into an over-priced community of perfo-kitsch and clubs outlined by Beemers and Benzes. Still, some cool venues have held on. Galapagos still has great, free burlesque shows on Monday nights and Northsix has managed to consistently book some great, up-and-coming indie bands. I'd been wanting to go for years and on this night, the stars finally aligned and suddenly, there we were.
In the typical plumage of urban-chic, Northsix didn't have a sign. Only a large black man on a barstool hinted that there was a bar behind those doors. We flashed our ID's and slipped into the high-ceiling foyer(?) that had a bar with the only beer on-tap (Heineken). We checked in through Will Call and entered the performance space where a flock of tittering Hispanic girls fluttered about the unmanned, sales table. They ogled $15 T-shirts and debated whether the buttons and stickers were free or not, despite the sign in the middle of the table that told them. I excused myself, plunged my hand into the mass of stunned ladies (completely non-sexually, of course) and snagged a Sons & Daughters sticker.
A long, light-wood bar undulated from the entrance, down toward the stage. No barstools, plastic cups stacked behind the bar for mixed drinks, yet $5 for a bottle of Red Stripe beer? What the hell kind of Cosmo-drinking, indie crowd was this? A narrow stairway and a few, bleacher-style seats stood facing the wide stage. The drink prices were disappointing but still, I live for these sorts of spaces where you can talk to the band as they're loading in/out their gear. The usual suspects of music geeks had already secured their seats. Cute, vaguely-nerdy female groupies were paired up and claiming nosebleed seats while the intense, Übermusik geeks carefully scoped out the Ideal seat that stood just above the heads of the standing crowd yet offered the perfect balance of comfort, acoustic fidelity, and eye-lines. I, on the other hand, am of the genre who has to be there nice and early so I don't miss Anything. I went to see Stars at the Mercury Lounge about a year ago and it still bugs me that I missed most of the opening set featuring I Am Kloot. Yep, I'm That Guy.
Kat spotted a row of wooden seats against a side wall so we snagged them. It gave us seats and a good vantage point to people-watch and ruthlessly judge others... that being the only alternative to drinking. Besides, my standing endurance was running low and even with my steel-tipped, Doc Martens with heel supports, I was gonna be struggling by the end of the night. It sucks getting older, sometimes. Kat and I baby-sipped our beers and entertained ourselves by making sweeping generalizations of everyone who passed. The flock of Hispanic senoritas swept from one end of the performance space to another, searching for a land where they could see the band, be seen by everyone in the club, and find butt accommodations for the entire group. It was hypnotic.
The first band of the night was a 5-piece group called Eiffel Tower. I vaguely recognized the name from my perusal of KEXP playlists (the no-streaming policy at my day job has effectively eliminated my morning dose of online radio). I was eager to check them out. Well, I am eager no more. It's always a bad sign when the opening band is really loud. It's like guys who drive jacked pickups - you just know the dick has gotta be small. Screeching loud generally means that they're making up for other insecurities. It's not like Eiffel Tower was lacking in the indie cred- they had the nerd-savant on rhythm guitar, the T-Rex backup wannabe on bass and a wry, blond keyboardist who was affable and humble. Had the band been tight, the singing been consistently in tune or the hooks solid, this might have been a solid band. Maybe it was an off night. Maybe the lead singer had been rooting for his alma mater during an afternoon football game, but this was not their night. It's a tough career they've chosen and tonight, they inspired me with their tenacity and ability to get gigs!
There is a chance that I was getting a bit jaded by this time. I'm not a newbie to the scene. I'm not floored simply by the ability of the band to vibrate the air around me with a great half-stack. With no beer buzz to propel me through the evening, I only had a pair of earplugs to separate me from suck and I was starting to feel bad for dragging Kat's beloved ass to some vacuous corner of New York. Just then, I noticed a willowy fellow take to the stage. He looked like a member of the 1930's worker party or a roadie for Woody Guthrie, if such a thing were possible. He was soon joined by a platinum blonde that Kat had earlier pegged as an A&R exec. A ripped jeans guy who I'd mockingly pronounced to be a spoiled-rich producer type turned out to be the drummer. I have no future as a detective. The band was 'The Rosebuds'.
There are two things I'm a sucker for when it comes to bands - solid drumming and a guitarist who can play an entire show with ONE guitar. Nothing can kill a show quicker than sloppy drumming or a guitarist who has to swipe out and re-tune his/her guitar between every. single. song. If you're playing power chords through a distortion pedal and your low 'E' is a half step off, I'm probably not going to be put out. Making me sit through a couple minutes of you staring at a BOSS tuning pedal, trying to get it just right, well just shoot me now. Either learn to play an entire set in drop D tuning or learn to fret it standard. The Rosebuds had a good drummer, a good guitarist and what resulted was a rousing set of unmemorable songs. The blonde beauty was, unfortunately, completely mixed out of the set. The brief flashes from her keyboard and mic gave me cause for hope, however. The band showed hints of The White Stripes and they had some fun hooks, but they never quite seemed to take a full bite from what they wanted. Of course, not every one would agree with me. The best entertainment of the night might have been a cute, young woman who knew all The Rosebuds's lyrics and had a natural, rhythmic dance going that was just fun to watch- and not in that creepy, sexual way. In New York, such dancing is a notable anomaly. NYC is mostly known for white-boy nodding or stilted, cooler-than-thou posing. Even Kat was taken aback by this lady's inappropriate display of enjoyment. If only other New Yorkers could learn to enjoy a night out...
The Rosebuds finished their set and our free-spirited dancer consummated the evening by proclaiming, to the lead guitarist, that he was awesome. I love small venues like this. Kat and I rose and shuffled towards center stage. A short, young man with a greaser's pompadour raced about the stage. He tuned his guitars, set up the mic stands and fitted windsocks on the microphones before whisking himself offstage. I would later discover that his name was (and probably still is) Scott Paterson and he is the best reason to go see the band Sons and Daughters. When the four-member band finally launched into their opening song, it took all of two seconds to see that Scott was the Real Deal. From the opening power chords through the final crescendo, he was On Task, cranking out with an intensity normally reserved for drummers on coke. He immediately reminded me of a Joe Strummer-type of player. Sons and Daughters are not, however, anything like The Clash. Adele Bethel was the vocal engine of the band, providing a solid performance and a hypnotic, to-and-fro rocking motion. Ailidh Lennon, the bass player, blew something on her amp stack on the second song and spent the rest of evening being the World's Poutiest Cute Irish Woman in a Red Dress.
The band had opened for The Decemberists at Webster Hall on Tuesday and although I wanted to go, my boycott of Webster Hall remains in effect. I didn't expect Sons and Daughters to play at a particularly high level on this night but I was pleasantly surprised. The band really shone when Scott was cut loose and allowed to run. Their rendition of "Johnny Cash" was particularly strong. There was a disturbing moment during song that required audience participation. The whole band suddenly swapped out from performing to hand clapping. Parts of the audience joined in. Kat, however chose to sit this clap-fest out. The drummer, seemingly put out by the fact that a cute, blonde woman in the audience was not dying to participate, attempted to Will her to clap through an extended, intense stare that elicited raised eyebrows and an uncomfortable laugh from Kat. Having never seen another man attempt to hypnotize my girlfriend in the midst of a concert, I was momentarily taken aback. Fortunately, Kat's laugh ended Rasputin's seduction as quickly as it had begun. The band did a one-song encore after promising us that they had to go. It was just as well. Kat and I were at least hour of subway riding away from home.
Kat and I crawled out of the cave on a rainy Saturday afternoon, propelled ourselves through the subway for an hour, all for a little music-lovin' in Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. For the non-native, Williamsburg is a perfect example of what might have been and what is so very Wrong with New York. Earlier last century, Williamsburg was an Italian-American neighborhood full of Brooklyn Dodgers fans and mafiosos. Later, Poles and orthodox Jews huddled together in tight-knit communities. Recently, it has been embalmed by overeager developers and deep-pocketed hipsters who were eager to gut a neighborhood and build a SoHo to call their own. When Kat and I moved to New York in 2001, Williamsburg was already in the process of transmogrifying from an artist-friendly neighborhood of lofts and cheap apartments into an over-priced community of perfo-kitsch and clubs outlined by Beemers and Benzes. Still, some cool venues have held on. Galapagos still has great, free burlesque shows on Monday nights and Northsix has managed to consistently book some great, up-and-coming indie bands. I'd been wanting to go for years and on this night, the stars finally aligned and suddenly, there we were.
In the typical plumage of urban-chic, Northsix didn't have a sign. Only a large black man on a barstool hinted that there was a bar behind those doors. We flashed our ID's and slipped into the high-ceiling foyer(?) that had a bar with the only beer on-tap (Heineken). We checked in through Will Call and entered the performance space where a flock of tittering Hispanic girls fluttered about the unmanned, sales table. They ogled $15 T-shirts and debated whether the buttons and stickers were free or not, despite the sign in the middle of the table that told them. I excused myself, plunged my hand into the mass of stunned ladies (completely non-sexually, of course) and snagged a Sons & Daughters sticker.
A long, light-wood bar undulated from the entrance, down toward the stage. No barstools, plastic cups stacked behind the bar for mixed drinks, yet $5 for a bottle of Red Stripe beer? What the hell kind of Cosmo-drinking, indie crowd was this? A narrow stairway and a few, bleacher-style seats stood facing the wide stage. The drink prices were disappointing but still, I live for these sorts of spaces where you can talk to the band as they're loading in/out their gear. The usual suspects of music geeks had already secured their seats. Cute, vaguely-nerdy female groupies were paired up and claiming nosebleed seats while the intense, Übermusik geeks carefully scoped out the Ideal seat that stood just above the heads of the standing crowd yet offered the perfect balance of comfort, acoustic fidelity, and eye-lines. I, on the other hand, am of the genre who has to be there nice and early so I don't miss Anything. I went to see Stars at the Mercury Lounge about a year ago and it still bugs me that I missed most of the opening set featuring I Am Kloot. Yep, I'm That Guy.
Kat spotted a row of wooden seats against a side wall so we snagged them. It gave us seats and a good vantage point to people-watch and ruthlessly judge others... that being the only alternative to drinking. Besides, my standing endurance was running low and even with my steel-tipped, Doc Martens with heel supports, I was gonna be struggling by the end of the night. It sucks getting older, sometimes. Kat and I baby-sipped our beers and entertained ourselves by making sweeping generalizations of everyone who passed. The flock of Hispanic senoritas swept from one end of the performance space to another, searching for a land where they could see the band, be seen by everyone in the club, and find butt accommodations for the entire group. It was hypnotic.
The first band of the night was a 5-piece group called Eiffel Tower. I vaguely recognized the name from my perusal of KEXP playlists (the no-streaming policy at my day job has effectively eliminated my morning dose of online radio). I was eager to check them out. Well, I am eager no more. It's always a bad sign when the opening band is really loud. It's like guys who drive jacked pickups - you just know the dick has gotta be small. Screeching loud generally means that they're making up for other insecurities. It's not like Eiffel Tower was lacking in the indie cred- they had the nerd-savant on rhythm guitar, the T-Rex backup wannabe on bass and a wry, blond keyboardist who was affable and humble. Had the band been tight, the singing been consistently in tune or the hooks solid, this might have been a solid band. Maybe it was an off night. Maybe the lead singer had been rooting for his alma mater during an afternoon football game, but this was not their night. It's a tough career they've chosen and tonight, they inspired me with their tenacity and ability to get gigs!
There is a chance that I was getting a bit jaded by this time. I'm not a newbie to the scene. I'm not floored simply by the ability of the band to vibrate the air around me with a great half-stack. With no beer buzz to propel me through the evening, I only had a pair of earplugs to separate me from suck and I was starting to feel bad for dragging Kat's beloved ass to some vacuous corner of New York. Just then, I noticed a willowy fellow take to the stage. He looked like a member of the 1930's worker party or a roadie for Woody Guthrie, if such a thing were possible. He was soon joined by a platinum blonde that Kat had earlier pegged as an A&R exec. A ripped jeans guy who I'd mockingly pronounced to be a spoiled-rich producer type turned out to be the drummer. I have no future as a detective. The band was 'The Rosebuds'.
There are two things I'm a sucker for when it comes to bands - solid drumming and a guitarist who can play an entire show with ONE guitar. Nothing can kill a show quicker than sloppy drumming or a guitarist who has to swipe out and re-tune his/her guitar between every. single. song. If you're playing power chords through a distortion pedal and your low 'E' is a half step off, I'm probably not going to be put out. Making me sit through a couple minutes of you staring at a BOSS tuning pedal, trying to get it just right, well just shoot me now. Either learn to play an entire set in drop D tuning or learn to fret it standard. The Rosebuds had a good drummer, a good guitarist and what resulted was a rousing set of unmemorable songs. The blonde beauty was, unfortunately, completely mixed out of the set. The brief flashes from her keyboard and mic gave me cause for hope, however. The band showed hints of The White Stripes and they had some fun hooks, but they never quite seemed to take a full bite from what they wanted. Of course, not every one would agree with me. The best entertainment of the night might have been a cute, young woman who knew all The Rosebuds's lyrics and had a natural, rhythmic dance going that was just fun to watch- and not in that creepy, sexual way. In New York, such dancing is a notable anomaly. NYC is mostly known for white-boy nodding or stilted, cooler-than-thou posing. Even Kat was taken aback by this lady's inappropriate display of enjoyment. If only other New Yorkers could learn to enjoy a night out...
The Rosebuds finished their set and our free-spirited dancer consummated the evening by proclaiming, to the lead guitarist, that he was awesome. I love small venues like this. Kat and I rose and shuffled towards center stage. A short, young man with a greaser's pompadour raced about the stage. He tuned his guitars, set up the mic stands and fitted windsocks on the microphones before whisking himself offstage. I would later discover that his name was (and probably still is) Scott Paterson and he is the best reason to go see the band Sons and Daughters. When the four-member band finally launched into their opening song, it took all of two seconds to see that Scott was the Real Deal. From the opening power chords through the final crescendo, he was On Task, cranking out with an intensity normally reserved for drummers on coke. He immediately reminded me of a Joe Strummer-type of player. Sons and Daughters are not, however, anything like The Clash. Adele Bethel was the vocal engine of the band, providing a solid performance and a hypnotic, to-and-fro rocking motion. Ailidh Lennon, the bass player, blew something on her amp stack on the second song and spent the rest of evening being the World's Poutiest Cute Irish Woman in a Red Dress.
The band had opened for The Decemberists at Webster Hall on Tuesday and although I wanted to go, my boycott of Webster Hall remains in effect. I didn't expect Sons and Daughters to play at a particularly high level on this night but I was pleasantly surprised. The band really shone when Scott was cut loose and allowed to run. Their rendition of "Johnny Cash" was particularly strong. There was a disturbing moment during song that required audience participation. The whole band suddenly swapped out from performing to hand clapping. Parts of the audience joined in. Kat, however chose to sit this clap-fest out. The drummer, seemingly put out by the fact that a cute, blonde woman in the audience was not dying to participate, attempted to Will her to clap through an extended, intense stare that elicited raised eyebrows and an uncomfortable laugh from Kat. Having never seen another man attempt to hypnotize my girlfriend in the midst of a concert, I was momentarily taken aback. Fortunately, Kat's laugh ended Rasputin's seduction as quickly as it had begun. The band did a one-song encore after promising us that they had to go. It was just as well. Kat and I were at least hour of subway riding away from home.
Monday, October 03, 2005
murder by BIOS
My computer died yesterday, and I killed it. I've spent a lot of time in front of a computer monitor and I've read more than a fair number of hardware and software guides. I took BASIC and Pascal programming classes in high school, taught myself SQL 4 years ago, but I always feel like I don't know enough. Murder always feels a step outside my tunnel vision of knowledge- there's always something that I could miss. I killed partially out of ignorance. I was playing with a gun I didn't know I was loaded called a system BIOS. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of my motherboard neglected to tell me that they were handing me a loaded firearm.
I built my computer three years ago. I'm very proud of it. I had never built a computer before. I did the researh. I studied a number of techie websites, including the fantastic Tom's Hardware Guide and My Super PC. I picked out the components and, for less than a thousand bucks, built a smokin'-yet-affordable system:
Looks great and technical, doesn't it? I went from a crap-ass Dell 'laptop' with a failed battery and floppy drive to an unbelievably fast and stable system completely of my own creation. I could cruise through Battlefield 1942 or Medal of Honor smooth as silk... not counting the occassional dirty look from Kat.
The Achilles heel of the system, however, was the O.S.. Eight months ago, Windows 2000 started giving me error messages. It had developed a glitch wherein Explorer would crash after closing file folders. I lived with it for a while, tried Googling the problem, performed a few tweeks, then endured a little more. Finally, I decided that it was time to start anew. I had a new, 160 GB hard drive to hold my new media files and now was a good time to format the new drive and re-install my system software.
The last 2 weeks have been spent on backup. On Saturday, I unplugged the Beast, hauled it out from under my desk, wrangled the dust bunnies from its innards, then carefully installed the new drive. I'd been dreading the whole process of formatting and re-installing Windows, but by that evening, I had a renewed system with a new, formatted hard drive, and an internet connection. Life was good. It was the easiest installation I'd ever done... then I made the foolish mistake of speaking out loud and telling Kat.
Sunday morning, I was up early and eager to go. I was convinced that I could have my Adobe Creative Suite and iTunes fully installed before Kat even knew the bed was getting cold. I peformed the Dance with Windows Updater and re-booted the system a few times, without incident. I went to ASUS's website to find the newest drivers for my motherboard. As I clicked through, I noticed that there was this convenient, new utility that proudly told me that it could perform a BIOS update without the aid of flash disks.
'Fantastic,' I thought, ' I can update the BIOS, reboot then install Adobe. I ran the utility, chose the newest BIOS, then started the update. The meters filled, telling me that my old BIOS was removed, that the new BIOS was being entered then the install was confirmed- no, wait a sec.
Error.
Did I want to RETRY the installation or EXIT and cancel the installation?
I clicked RETRY, watched the meters do their thing then... another error.
'Ah well,' I thought, fuck it. Best not get too greedy. I'll do the BIOS update some other time.
I EXIT from the utility, then Restart Windows to... a blank screen.
Huh.
I hold down the RESET button on my PC case.
Blank screen. The machine is running, the fans are turning, but nothing is loading. Nothing. Blank.
RESTART.
Nothing.
Oh shit.
RESTART.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh-
Nothing.
I scrambled into the bedroom where my Flintstone-era laptop lies. It was slow, but I had a simple ethernet connection going and right then, it was all the technology I had in the world. I went to ASUS's website. Troubleshooting. I swore. Forums. More swearing. I'm Googling.
Kat peered over the rim of the covers at the tall, sweaty boyfriend who's swearing like a sailor under his breath.
"Are you all right, sweetie," she asked from somewhere between a dream and the adrenaline-fueled reality where I was living.
I dragged my computer out from under my desk. With the motherboard instructions in my hand, I'm threading my hand through the maze of wires, carefully extracting the pin jumper from one set of pegs, and sliding them onto another. Supposedly, I am clearing the CMOS from my drive, but I felt like I was about to turn into one of the apes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and start hopping around hysterically around the Monolith.
I plug the monitor and keyboard back in and turn on the power.
Nothing.
I take it apart. Try it again. I plug it in, turn it on.
Nothing.
I try removing the motherboard battery - the power supply that keeps the BIOS alive in the motherboard. I plug it back in.
Nothing.
I have a boot disk. I install a floppy drive, enter the boot disk. I plug it back in.
Nothing.
CD-ROM boot disk.
Nothing.
I'm pleading, negotiating, offering my first born for the return of functionality.
Nothing.
I'm telling Kat all about the CMOS. I show her the directions and explain what I'm doing and ask her to read the directions and tell me I'm doing it right. She even holds the flashlight as I try to reset the CMOS for the upteenth time.
Nothing.
Kat Googles. Can't find anything new.
Finally, I had to Admit that... I did it. I had killed my computer with a poisonous BIOS.
Well, what's a credit line if you can't use it, right? I haven't ordered from Newegg in so long... maybe it's time to catch up on old times.
I built my computer three years ago. I'm very proud of it. I had never built a computer before. I did the researh. I studied a number of techie websites, including the fantastic Tom's Hardware Guide and My Super PC. I picked out the components and, for less than a thousand bucks, built a smokin'-yet-affordable system:
Intel P4 - 2.4GHz Processor
ASUS P4PE motherboard
Corsair 512MB memory
Western Digital 120MB 7200RPM hard drive
Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200
ASUS P4PE motherboard
Corsair 512MB memory
Western Digital 120MB 7200RPM hard drive
Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200
Looks great and technical, doesn't it? I went from a crap-ass Dell 'laptop' with a failed battery and floppy drive to an unbelievably fast and stable system completely of my own creation. I could cruise through Battlefield 1942 or Medal of Honor smooth as silk... not counting the occassional dirty look from Kat.
The Achilles heel of the system, however, was the O.S.. Eight months ago, Windows 2000 started giving me error messages. It had developed a glitch wherein Explorer would crash after closing file folders. I lived with it for a while, tried Googling the problem, performed a few tweeks, then endured a little more. Finally, I decided that it was time to start anew. I had a new, 160 GB hard drive to hold my new media files and now was a good time to format the new drive and re-install my system software.
The last 2 weeks have been spent on backup. On Saturday, I unplugged the Beast, hauled it out from under my desk, wrangled the dust bunnies from its innards, then carefully installed the new drive. I'd been dreading the whole process of formatting and re-installing Windows, but by that evening, I had a renewed system with a new, formatted hard drive, and an internet connection. Life was good. It was the easiest installation I'd ever done... then I made the foolish mistake of speaking out loud and telling Kat.
Sunday morning, I was up early and eager to go. I was convinced that I could have my Adobe Creative Suite and iTunes fully installed before Kat even knew the bed was getting cold. I peformed the Dance with Windows Updater and re-booted the system a few times, without incident. I went to ASUS's website to find the newest drivers for my motherboard. As I clicked through, I noticed that there was this convenient, new utility that proudly told me that it could perform a BIOS update without the aid of flash disks.
'Fantastic,' I thought, ' I can update the BIOS, reboot then install Adobe. I ran the utility, chose the newest BIOS, then started the update. The meters filled, telling me that my old BIOS was removed, that the new BIOS was being entered then the install was confirmed- no, wait a sec.
Error.
Did I want to RETRY the installation or EXIT and cancel the installation?
I clicked RETRY, watched the meters do their thing then... another error.
'Ah well,' I thought, fuck it. Best not get too greedy. I'll do the BIOS update some other time.
I EXIT from the utility, then Restart Windows to... a blank screen.
Huh.
I hold down the RESET button on my PC case.
Blank screen. The machine is running, the fans are turning, but nothing is loading. Nothing. Blank.
RESTART.
Nothing.
Oh shit.
RESTART.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh-
Nothing.
I scrambled into the bedroom where my Flintstone-era laptop lies. It was slow, but I had a simple ethernet connection going and right then, it was all the technology I had in the world. I went to ASUS's website. Troubleshooting. I swore. Forums. More swearing. I'm Googling.
Kat peered over the rim of the covers at the tall, sweaty boyfriend who's swearing like a sailor under his breath.
"Are you all right, sweetie," she asked from somewhere between a dream and the adrenaline-fueled reality where I was living.
I dragged my computer out from under my desk. With the motherboard instructions in my hand, I'm threading my hand through the maze of wires, carefully extracting the pin jumper from one set of pegs, and sliding them onto another. Supposedly, I am clearing the CMOS from my drive, but I felt like I was about to turn into one of the apes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and start hopping around hysterically around the Monolith.
I plug the monitor and keyboard back in and turn on the power.
Nothing.
I take it apart. Try it again. I plug it in, turn it on.
Nothing.
I try removing the motherboard battery - the power supply that keeps the BIOS alive in the motherboard. I plug it back in.
Nothing.
I have a boot disk. I install a floppy drive, enter the boot disk. I plug it back in.
Nothing.
CD-ROM boot disk.
Nothing.
I'm pleading, negotiating, offering my first born for the return of functionality.
Nothing.
I'm telling Kat all about the CMOS. I show her the directions and explain what I'm doing and ask her to read the directions and tell me I'm doing it right. She even holds the flashlight as I try to reset the CMOS for the upteenth time.
Nothing.
Kat Googles. Can't find anything new.
Finally, I had to Admit that... I did it. I had killed my computer with a poisonous BIOS.
Well, what's a credit line if you can't use it, right? I haven't ordered from Newegg in so long... maybe it's time to catch up on old times.
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