is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Rocking in Various Formats.
Rocking in Various Formats.
What a jam-packed five days in New York! What with the movies and the rock shows and the urban artists. And it just kept going. On Friday I went to see Vanderslice again, this time at Southpaw in Brooklyn. Earlier in the evening my friend Will cooked for me an excellent dinner of vegetarian moussaka. I made us some tasty vodka tonics with lemon. We sat around talking and laughing. I then convinced Will to convince his friend Dave that both of them should come to the Vanderslice show with me, and it worked, and that was fun. The bad band from Thursday was there again, but there was also a new band which all three of us enjoyed.
At some point during bad band, I went over to say hi to John, and he's all HI and I'm-glad-you're-here-again and then he said, �hey this is my friend Sufjan,� and I was all �Sufjan Stevens?� Sufjan Stevens and John Vanderslice looked shocked. Sufjan is a quirky not so well-known musician whose music I have heard driving around Puerto Rico with Jeff (who is a fan). You should check him out. Anyway, like I said, I said �Sufjan Stevens?� He said: �You know my LAST NAME? What is YOUR LAST NAME?� I told him, and said I liked the Come on Feel the Illinoise album.
By the way, Sufjan Stevens is HOT. I had no idea. However, he seems to be the kind of hot guy who knows all too well how hot he is. He is borderline soap-opera handsome, but what he does (for a living, or at least for his art) is too quirky to render him normatively handsome, so that means I can still find him hot while holding in reserve a portion of my admiration because of his too-hotness and his too-aware-of-his-hotness (that is a complicated equation, and perhaps a frightening glimpse into my almost-unconscious).
Will and his friend Dave kept me pretty well entertained. The show was good, but the Thursday show was the better of the two. On Thursday they had a cellist sitting in with them, and it was really great. You could tell it was just a very �on� night for them, too. On Friday there was no cello, and a different set list. I was glad to hear different songs, and some of the same songs in different arrangements, but also the show just felt a bit less inspired. I think it was partly crowd enthusiasm, partly road-tiredness. The guys just seemed more tired than they had the day before, and the crowd was a bit less attentive than the Mercury Lounge crowd. It�s the alchemy of club-going, you never know for certain what you�ll end up with when you mix a bunch of people together with booze and music.
Saturday I had lunch with Ramsay and Julia and their daughter Amelia in Central Park. Linda and Wendy came, too. We hung around for a couple of hours eating yummy sandwiches. Then Linda and I headed back to Gramercy to set up for the pot luck we had arranged. The food was excellent�potluck alchemy worked in our favor as it sometimes does�as was the company: Linda, me, Wendy, Strauss, Paul, and Jeremy. Then we met up with Yoktan and went to a party for Air Guitar Nation, a documentary in the Tribeca Film Festival about the international air guitar contest. A bunch of people showed us their stuff, and there was some rocking, and some free booze and merchandise. I now have a white wrist band emblazoned �air guitar nation.� That event was fun and funny, and ended around 11:30, so we moved on to a bar in the east village. I ended up staying up most of the night talking and laughing with Yoktan, then I went to eat brunch with Catherine on Sunday, and now I�m back in Philly, exhausted and ready for sleeping.
My east coast birthday party is Saturday night: Linda, Wendy, Yoktan, Greg and Trip, David, Gayle, Amy, Caroline, and perhaps a few more will be coming in from out of town, for part or all of the weekend. And people around here are excited about the event. I may just prove myself capable of having a party in a city other than San Francisco! (Do Not Worry. I am also having a West Coast Birthday Event. Or two.) So this week I�ve got lots of food to prepare and booze to buy, and preparations to make, plus I�m having my students over from dinner, cake and final discussion on Tuesday. And I have to finish writing a conference paper by Friday. So� after five days of goofing off, it�s time to get back to work, so that I�ll have plenty of time for more goofing off next weekend.
9:41 p.m. - April 30, 2006
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