tuesday, january 30, 2001
i should have written this story on pat kiernan, my favorite news anchor and really the only news anchor i've ever truly liked.

i don't have much for you today. how about some astoria pics?

sometimes they have buckets on top.

the view from my vestibule.

this is my street.

the alley behind my building, where dogs bark and cats yowl.

a view from the subway platform.

monday, january 29, 2001`
the anti-bloggies are pretty funny, with categories like "please turn off your webcam blog." hee! see, that's why i am going to have to think many times about putting up any of the fabulous and ridiculous self-portraits i am indulging in with the elph. [via betsy]

yes, i am going nuts with the digicam. here are some pics from the chinese new year parade yesterday:

mott street, before the parade began.

the way these dragons move is just amazing.

i fucking love the dismemberment plan. and now so does amy, and i may just make it my mission to convert as many people as possible, after this second time seeing them at the knitting factory (which by the way is definitely the sweatiest club in new york). observe:

put your hands in the air, and wave 'em like you just don't care...

travis is exceedingly cute, no?

friday, january 26, 2001
it's stories like this one, about other pranks outgoing clinton staffers are perpetrating upon the white house, and this one, about the various ways in which dotcoms announce layoffs, that make me glad i have a job.

so what if they called you bighead as a kid? fat babies are smarter adults, at least up until age 43.

men in afghanistan are apparently flocking to get "titanic" haircuts. and the taliban just does not like this at all.

thursday, january 25, 2001
despite the best efforts of the film-loving salesman at b&h, who made me answer lots of questions about why i wanted a digicam instead of talking about camera features like i wanted him to, i got the elph, and it is so cute! i love it already. i've read the manual and taken a few shots, and it's, like, the funnest thing ever. i don't know when i'll start posting pictures, but i think i'll want to redesign first, which i've never really done, so it might be a while.... over lunch i went out and took a few shots, hoping to find ben affleck, who's shooting a movie nearby, right outside holly and linnea's building, actually. a lot of people were standing around, but ben was not one of them. i accidentally got herded away with a pile of extras who seemed very excited to be standing in this one certain spot. okaaaay. so after about 30 seconds of that i went up and took pictures of holly and linnea, and was astonished to discover that the lithium battery is already almost kicked. it's rechargeable, but damn. and that's when linnea told me i was nominated for a bloggie, in the category of "best pitas-powered weblog." can i get a woo-woo? now everybody go vote and help me reign supreme in the land of pitas.

also, because of my infatuation with the elph, that's probably it for today. in the meantime, why not check out some of the sites nominated for bloggies? they're very thorough, though strangely there is no journal category, which i would say is a sad omission. i know it's the "weblog awards" and all, but so many blogs (the best ones, i'd say) are essentially personal pages that it just seems wrong.

wednesday, january 24, 2001
christian theme park???

do i even need to say how i feel about the fact that we've now got old 97s tour dates? do i???

i like this bit of dialogue from "infinite jest." and you're going to read it.

"... The choice for death of the head by pleasure now exists, and your authorities know, or you would not be now trying to stop the pleasure."

tuesday, january 23, 2001
really what i'm waiting for is bush's first major verbal gaffe, for some comic relief. (the inauguration was not fun.) but this story, about outgoing clinton staffers removing the W key from white house keyboards, is pretty funny.

i really liked this short story in seventh grade: the most dangerous game. not so much now, but perhaps good for a nostalgic trip.

by the way i'm still collecting recommendations for digital cameras. at first i thought i wanted this sony with the flip-and-swivel LCD screen but now i'm thinking maybe this canon elph. any photoheads care to comment? tomorrow i go to camera megastore b&h photo where hopefully i will find salesmanship is not dead. so chime in quick.

monday, january 22, 2001
grrrrr....i miss bill already, don't you?

so i just got finished with my annual review. i did the math, and not counting overtime, which thankfully i do make, the raise works out to $5.85 per day, before taxes, so at a nice cheap bar that means an extra beer. kinda puts it in perspective.

friday, january 19, 2001
today i am enjoying an oft-considered, never-actually-offered comp day, in thanks for all my "hard work" on the march issue. and i'm anticipating a weekend of cooped-up-ness because of another damn snowstorm that's going to drop another 7-10 inches of inconvenience on us. so i rented three movies (rent two get one free!), and because i'm getting a pitful amount of email these days, you're going to have to ask if you want to know what they are.

last night i saw jay farrar (of uncle tupelo and son volt fame) with betsy, who has a roundup. i didn't know a single song, but they were almost universally slooooow and sad. long live tweedy! new york types, tweedy is playing his first-ever-in-nyc solo show feb. 26 at irving plaza (coincidence?), and tickets are on sale today.

in addition to wearing ridiculous white cowboy hats, another of the things presidents should not do is shake their bonbon. what a dork! he sort of looks like a south park character dancing in that picture.

thursday, january 18, 2001
you've probably heard about this by now, cause it's been, what, a day, but: moist toilet paper. the new new thing.

more on yesterday's earthquake. according to the experts we're all pansies for even talking about it. and according to that map, i live very close to a fault line!

this aol chatroom transcript is hilarious. i think this guy is the same one who wrote about going into a sports chatroom and shouting things like "go, kierkegaard!" this time he went into a britney room and grilled them about george w. [via daily net buzz]

i guess something was just drawing to me the virgin megastore. i'm pretty sure it was the $11.99 badly drawn boy, but i also discovered i needed a half-price calendar and cd's from buill to spill/caustic resin and the silver jews. actually i sort of had to go out for lunch (even though i usually eat at my desk) due to office reorganization. so i had some excessively buttery pasta from sbarro's, where some african youths were taking loads of pictures of each other (huh?). and now it is snowing.

rolling stone talks to rivers cuomo of weezer about how everyone worships them now. apparently he's written 350 songs since the last album! good lord. and by the way if anyone out there can get me tickets to the show at roseland i would be eternally grateful. ticketmaster made them impossible to get, with their "internet presale" that wasn't a sale at all, in that you couldn't actually buy tickets, at least for the roseland show, and then by the time jan. 1 came around i had sorta forgotten and didn't remember till about the 7th and it probably sold out really fast anyway. bleh. at least i can scoff at those fools on ebay.

kevin smith has a column. fun. [via mad orange fools]

wednesday, january 17, 2001
i don't care if he has pride in his state, the president of the united states should not be wearing that hat! someone stop him!!

indie cd's galore at saul goodman. made me not have to go to the evil virgin megastore at lunch today.

apparently some really stupid people shop at home depot. [via daily net buzz]

i'm pretty disappointed that i didn't feel anything of the earthquake that hit queens this morning. holly, however, felt her lower east side apartment move.

tuesday, january 16, 2001
bill werde on internet hoaxes and lars ulrich's balls.

so i finally checked out plastic.com, first brought to my attention by jami, who called it "a big fat weblog." it claims to be "a new model for news" but basically it's a better-designed metafilter, except you can't see all the comments on one screen and you're supposed to be impressed that the editors are from places like spin, inside, and modern humorist. still, some good links there for the link-hungry. i guess the reason people are talking about it, though, is that it's the first venture from the feed-suck merger.

all right who are the cool people who want to go with me to see GBV at the bowery ballroom feb. 14? i happen to know that bob pollard accepts kisses from strangers, so no worries about that valentine's day thing....

monday, january 15, 2001
in honor of martin luther king day, why not read about his life, or, if you prefer, the assassination.

steven brill interviews president clinton on (what else?) the media.

sunday, january 14, 2001
attention modest mouse fans: in april k records is releasing sad, sappy sucker, an album recorded in '94, before their first album came out. end of bulletin. [via yuppie slayer]

revealed in this article about bush on his ranch (which accompanies the real story about how he's going to try to undo a lot of what clinton has done recently) are the following astonishing facts: 1. bush is reading a book. 2. he is going to work in the oval office at the same desk used by kennedy -- and clinton. i.e. the same desk under which... ahem. you know what i mean.

and then, in the magazine, are two more stories about our next president. c.e.o., u.s.a., peppered with little digs, made me laugh out loud here:

"A good executive is one that understands how to recruit people and how to delegate," he said after he presented three designees in Austin right after the New Year. "How to align authority and responsibility, how to hold people accountable for results and how to build a team of people. And that's exactly what we're going to do. This is a team of people who'll be dedicated to doing what is right for America." Who but the most unpatriotic shareholder could argue with that?

w.'s world considers the kind of foreign policy we'll see in the bush years. which is to say, i bet you can guess.

friday, january 12, 2001
apparently i'm not the only person who googles everyone she meets. in fact, i think there are a few people i haven't googled. i think i'll go do that now.

thursday, january 11, 2001
get your white-trash name and just wish you had one as great as mine: stinky-bud gibbs. [via lauratitian]

because i'm totally inspired by brooklyn kid, i now want a digital camera so i can take millions of cool pictures. please send me recommendations, advice, etc., and i will be forever grateful.

this genetically modified monkey could be an incremental step toward genetically improved humans. he's also really cute.

wednesday, january 10, 2001
music is ancient:

"Music is far, far older than our species. It is tens of millions of years old, and the fact that animals as wildly divergent as whales, humans and birds come out with similar laws for what they compose suggests to me that there are a finite number of musical sounds that will entertain the vertebrate brain." -a researcher on the origins of music

tuesday, january 9, 2001
those of you who pester me to do a "copy corner" on the pita, it's not gonna happen. instead, get thee to the grammar lady. the site itself is not terribly useful but the lady does have a hotline that she operates 9-5 for all your language queries. pretty freaky, huh?

vh1's 100 greatest albums, mentioned here a few days ago. i really need to catch up on my classic albums. and also, via pearls, check out the top 10 lists of spin staffers. i would have posted mine already here but there are still many albums i need to get from 2000, you know?

the publishers of maxim are gearing up to publish a new music magazine called "blender" (ugh).

friday, january 5, 2001
amen! whenever anyone asks me what i thought of "cast away," i feel like too much of a killjoy to deride it for the corporate propaganda. it's not a bad movie if you can get past that. fortunately we have feed, who explores the egregious product placement phenomenon. good stuff.

also in feed (yay, feed!): an interview with michael chabon, whose new book i will eventually read, probably when it comes out in paperback....

neal pollack gives a reading in a train station bathroom. what a fool. does anyone know, is he any good or just a hype-worthy Friend of Dave? [via linnea]

revolver tops a list of greatest albums, from a survey of critics and musicians. one of my belated new year's resolutions is to purchase more beatles albums. to balance out all the hard ones (resolutions, that is).

thursday, january 4, 2001
how sad. george is folding. whenever i picked up that mag, even though that wasn't very often, i always liked it. via betsy, whose cute little messenger bag influenced me to design my own at timbuk2. it's this one, actually.

oh yes, and one of the best things about the cat's cradle was that if you hated the opening band, which i did, you could go to the back room and play an assortment of old-school video games. i opted for paperboy and moon patrol, but there were many more. then, while i was looking at the online exhibition on video games at the american museum of the moving image (in astoria, no less), i found this page of locations of classic arcade games (which means you people who refuse to go to bar code with me will have a new request to field). and also the 1st church of pac man, which is pretty fun.

my father always wants to know what's going on with axl rose, for some inexplicable reason. well, dad, he played a new year's show in vegas, and there are pictures! i think i read that tickets cost like $250. [via whitney]

that's bob up there. leanne, who in the course of the night somehow procured an eyepatch from a boy with a goatee, shook his hand after the show. she thinks she said "happy 2001" and he said "a space oddity." oh how rockstar.

by the way if you missed any late december stuff, i did the archive for it very early this month. aren't you impressed?

wednesday, january 3, 2001
harumph. wolf359 was disappointed with the fav/plan show. I could not have been happier had god himself descended. I will allow that tim harrington was not as insane as I have seen him, but I bought "the cat and the cobra" (my first cd of theirs) after the show, have listened to it a few times now, and have determined that it just does not compare to the live sound. I feel that I should add that even leanne, normally somewhat resistant to the rawk, said it was great.

anyway, as far as the hot freaky gbv journey, I feel I am not up to the task, and now that it's a whopping three days later, I feel it's almost irrelevant. but here's a shot: driving down with pete and kelly and leanne and dan and kenny was way fun, a lot more fun than i'd ever have expected, considering my general aversion to long car trips. but the scatalogical humor typical of the bothums was in full effect, and I laughed a lot, and hard. in chapel hill we walked a bit of the main drag, ducking out of the cold into record stores and thrift shops and movie theaters (well, one, for a hard day's night). I bought a lot of used cd's that I expect to be good, even got one free one, and that's always satisfying. we ate dinner at a lame sports bar, then back to the hotel for some imbibing and discussing of weighty moral questions like "would you rather give oral sex to bill clinton if he had a big nasty sore or have your arm chopped off?" and whatnot (always the whatnot). at the appointed hour, we magically hooked up with some fellow gbv freaks for a shuttle ride to the club. after some early ticket hassles that stressed me out, a stunningly bad opening band, and lack of enough champagne, it got good, with gbv in top form. pete, who got to hang backstage before the show (learning that bob was kind of unhappy with how "do the collapse came out) and also found his glasses stomped and destroyed near the stage, delivered this unordered partial setlist:

bob also made out with a "biggish" red-haired girl who wouldn't leave him alone. I have no idea where I was at that time. you see, though the champagne was not flowing that freely, the beer sure was. after the show, I fell over a sandwich board outside the club to general merriment. twice. no, I did not hurt myself. after that we returned to the hotel to throw champagne corks around the room and annoy kelly, who scolded us like she had to get up for a test the next morning, and was chided accordingly. pete audiotaped this portion of the evening, unbeknownst to the rest of us, and it was hilarious to listen to later. oh yes, and did I mention there are pictures? coming soon i hope.

tuesday, january 2, 2001
happy new year one and all. i'm going to write up my north carolina escapades sometime very soon, but i need a little help from my co-adventurers so that i don't miss any crucial events. (the champagne was flowing, you see.) so i'm waiting on that. in the meantime i will tell you that kiki & herb's christmas show was hilarious, o brother where art thou was pretty much a dud, the jukebox at the luna lounge is the best i've ever seen, and les savy fav and the dismemberment plan rocked the hizouse at the black cat.

oh yes, and the new york times wrote a story about weblogs that's kind of boring because you know it all already, but hey, it's the times. also, i don't know why all these mainstream media stories insist on linking to the most boring weblogs out there. one thing i hadn't seen before that i've bookmarked for future reference is weblog madness, which contains a whole host of articles and musings on the "phenomenon."