Shots Fired!

Yeah, I did it. Brought the guns in and fired the first shot to what could very easily become a nasty war with the landlord. Hopefully not!

Yesterday, I made the long phone call with 3-1-1, which is like this weird omni-service call center for NYC. The topic? Two complaints, one for the shit ass cat pee ventilation system, the other for the on going roach infestation, to which we've tried most everything at this point including Borax powder around the edges.

Just waiting for the next shouting bout to launch the 3rd missile to 311. Letter also to follow soon. Though, I don't know if he can read it. I've heard rumors...

When its all said and done, all we want is a decent place to live, without all the riff-raff. Yes I said that, bring it back to your conversations.

Spot On: Yen and the Dollar United

I look at this chart like Al Gore stands on a mini-lift: in utter awe and wanting to share.

As far as I can recall from my many trips to Japan, the dollar had always edged out the yen. The first time I went in 2002, the rate was a nice conversion (for Americans), around 120~127 yen to the dollar. Ie, cashing in $500 yielded me ¥60,000, which felt like giving $500 to get $600. It's like opening up a cash register and taking a Franklin. When determining the value of something in yen, I always had to put in a fudge factor for what I thought it probably was in dollars.

Generally speaking here, I think that it's pretty normal for most folks who go abroad to think in terms of their own currency when determining the value of something.

With time this rate has fallen. Last spring, this rate was around 105~110 yen to the dollar. Not hateful, but a sign of change.

But with the fall of the economy, and the declining markets of both the US and Japan, the yen and dollar rates are out of whack. Last November, the yen actually overtook the dollar. With no planned trips to Japan at the time, I didn't feel any direct effects, but thinking about it was weird. 96¥ for my $1? Buh?

And then this image, which popped up in my Vista converter, taken on April 8, 2009. All the digits, all lined up. I call it the Spoton. An exact 1 to 1 ratio, how often do we see that?

The Jesper Bench

Here, we have the “Jesper” bench. I don't own one, but I think I saw one the last time I was at IKEA. They didn't quite have a full gaming rig, so it's hard to say how it would work out.

From Tiny Cartridge:

It combines the function of a lounge chair with all the comfort of sitting on a stationary bike. I’m headed to IKEA this weekend to pick one of these up, unless they happen to have a hobby horse.

What's the most bizarre furniture or comfort setup you've used for gaming? Me, I remember back in the day we were draping blankets back from the tv to create a Nintendo cave, and that did me wonders.

DC Quickie

Made our first trip to DC this past weekend via the bus (DC2NY, about 5 hours thanks to traffic.) The idea when we planned the trip was to go down for the National Cherry Blossom festival events, though by the time we got there, the trees were mostly peaked, and a storm had come through and taken off most of the flowers. This made it more of a quest for finding the few trees that were still blooming! Which is exactly what we set out to do after checking into the hotel.

Friday was really pleasant outside, sunny and 60's. Spent the whole afternoon just walking around the Mall green parks area. Saw all the memorials - too many to count. Really, if you think about it, DC itself is basically a giant memorial. Thai food for dinner and then back to the hotel, where we had to move rooms because the tv wasn't connected to the wall. (Honestly, wouldn't that be the first thing you check when you install a tv?)

Saturday saw a stark change in weather, cold and rainy. Cold spring rain. Figured it would be a good time to go check out the Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian. Thing is, that's what everyone else was thinking. So, so crowded, I started getting dizzy when we entered the main hall. And with all the kids coming in from cold rain, I'm surprised we didn't catch anything from the cough cough cough in there. Anyway, cool exhibits with some cool illustrations made for some cooler photographs. After that we were a bit burned out on museums for the day, and spent the rest of the day walking around town, watched a bit of cable tv in the hotel room. Just felt good to relax. There's only so much you can go out for in cold rain anyway.

Sunday was sunny / cold, made for a good walk around the block and trip to the zoo. And what a nice zoo, for free! In contrast to the lazy pandas we saw in San Diego, these blokes were all munchy munchy on their bamboo, pretty awesome. Also, had no idea that the maned wolf, which looks more like a fox, can pee urine that smells like a skunk sprayed the area... but surely it does. The capybaras and komodo dragons were also neat to see, each impressive in their own right. Also: cool / strange critters at the Invertabrate Exhibit, a dark room of sea creatures and insects, made for some good videos.

One other observation: the DC Metro subway is a freaking space gateway. The stations, which are so freaking far underground, felt way more out of this worldly than anything I've seen otherwise and were more reminiscent of Space Mountain. Seriously, space warp. And those escalators, man, we spent more time on them than actually waiting for a train at the platform.

And finally, here's a quick photo album for the event [facebook].

Enon Show

One thing I've really come to appreciate about living in NYC is the chance to catch one-off shows, some of them in my hood. The Bell House is great for this: not much more than a month after the Miho show, I biked it down to neighboring sludge town Gowanus to see likable Enon play with These Are Powers and The Forms.

The Forms: got there a bit too late and only caught the tail end. What I saw sounded good. The drummer was solid and played a sweet kit with a mounted electro pad and had a redneck mohawk that made him look akin to Joe Dirt. I'll try harder to catch them next time.

First and foremost: These Are Powers are absolutely amazing. Slamming, as I say. Before you read the rest of this, open up their myspace page and get that going. Distorted 808-beat loops with a synth sound pad / mini drum kit (designed to be played standing while grooving), Asian-slick chick vocals, and cover-all sound textures bassist got The Bell House moving. Loud, heavy bass put the PA through its paces just the way you wanted. Want to see white people shake it? Bring these guys over. These Are Powers couldn't have brought more energy to the table and to that, I say thank you.

Now: Enon takes the stage. Notable are the new drummer and the amount of electronics (everyone's got something), John having, a Midi sequencer connected to a laptop in the back with Ableton Live. Also, during sound checking, everything sounded too hot - the mic sounded like it might have been going flakey; in my opinion the drums sounded like shit. And then they opened with what might have been the coolest opener: Rubber Car, the first track from Believo. First few tracks were sequence heavy and it was apparent Enon was taking a very regressional approach to their sound, headed back to its roots with sequenced beats and drums over the top.

While the set was good, it wasn't their greatest for a couple of reasons. One, I couldn't get into the drummer. With sloppy technique, uneven fills, and the lack of doing anything cool over the top of a 60% loop based set, this guy was a very far cry from the impressive Holy Fuck stylings of left hand lead Matt Schulz. And part of that was the second issue: that poor sound in the Bell House. I still can't figure this one out as These Are Powers had sounded so full and rich. The drums were hosed and fake sounding, the guitar lost in the mix, and everything was just a wash. Sound quality can really make or break a set, this time being the latter.

But with everything the way it was, there was a nice, shiny bit of brown nugget here that in my opinion, summed up the whole evening: the douschebag in front who just tried to get love from the band and couldn't. I'd call him the gaijin, because he looked just like one of the trolls I've come across in my Japanese studies. And totally fixated on Toko-chan. Long hair in pony tail, glasses, likes manga where he can see comic butts. Started his act by pointing and making a loud comment to John before the set even started, to which John replied, dude, you don't have to point. Midway through the set, when Daughter in the House of Fools busted out, he tried oh so hard for the entire song to get skin from Toko, who was singing with just a mic in hand, by stretching his arm way out and onto the stage. Denied! Finally, by the end of the set, he just stood there, screaming like Charlie Brown, auuugggghhhhhhhh, weirdo. Even funnier was watching security come over and give him the boot, at the last minute of the encore In This City, effectively meaning nothing.

Day Note: In DC

Saturday morning here in DC. In contrast to yesterday's mostly sunny and 65, today is cold, rainy, wet, shhloppy out there. Should make for an interesting day. If it dries up, we're headed to the zoo. Because free zoos are free zoos!

Got a lot of things I want to talk about here like the Enon set, the equalness of the Yen to Dollar ratio, part 2 of the stomache bug, and what else - our trip to DC - but for now they're going to have to wait. People are wrapped around the corner to use the two computers they have in the Business Center here of the Dupont Hotel. Gotta get me a netbook, preferably one that runs Mac OS X software. Thinkin' I'm going to do that once I get back.

Out on the town for now though!

The Science of Sick Sleep

Had one of those nights where I'm having the same weird recurring dream over and over. Doesn't make any sense to me now (and mostly I've forgotten it), but it's the kind that I only get when I'm sick. Something about solving puzzles, perhaps like tetris, trying to get everything to fit and match perfectly. But I'm left with the sour taste that it was all work related, that perhaps the pieces I was trying to fit were part of a marketing scheme and I was trying to sell courses for the school. Like a Girl Scout selling cookies, perhaps. (For the record, I have yet to see any of those yet here in the city, and do miss me some Thin Mints right about now).

The interesting part is that I woke up probably half a dozen times that night. You know, sick sleep. Every 60 ~ 90 minutes, I gotta get up and get a drink of water. And everytime, I'm taken out of this puzzle solving factory of a dream, trying to figure out what the hell that was all about, and soon forgotten by the time I crawl back into bed. 5 minutes later, here we go! Solving puzzles again.

Backstory: I came down with something funky starting Thursday, and due to late band practices and friends showing up from out of town, couldn't seem to fight the inevitable need to just take it easy and let it pass. So my body finally forced itself to heal-or-die mode when I went to bed around 11pm on Saturday in order to wake up for a Sunday morning band practice.

30 Firefighters Outside My House

Around lunch time today, the lights in our place started flickering. Really bad. We've seen occasional flicker before, which I chalk up to shitty, outdated electrical in and around our house, but nothing like this. There was even this really scratchy static zappy sound coming out of the tv. Scratchy, electrical. Not good, not good.

Then, the sirens came. And flashing lights. And the crowd of fire department, Verizon folks, and the electrical folks started to gather.

Across the street, a Verizon utility box was spewing out nasty, brown smoke into the air. Perhaps something had shorted out inside, but it was clearly on fire on the inside. Problem was, it was somehow tied to the electrical, which meant using conditional water spray was a big no-no. Further to that, it was right at the edge of the sidewalk, where three cars were parked, the owners not in site.

The box smoked for a good half hour, before finally a couple of firefighters got in there and busted it open. That's when the huge brown cloud was set free. The box continued to smoke for while, and at some point, water was used to blast the area. I saw a quick flare up right below the back of one of the cars - but quickly extinguished.

At some point our crazy hermit landlord ran outside, pissed as hell. The firemen had attempted to get him to come to the door by ringing the bell several times, and when he didn't come, they broke the lock off something to access our basement (emergency electrical shutoff, perhaps?). All it took was a good ax hit and he came out, yelling at everyone, calling it discrimination, and pissed in general that he had to be outside.

I'm not sure what exactly happened with our place - as the blinky blinky of the lights continued, I went around and shut off the lights, unplugged tvs. After a walk outside to talk to the fire fighters, I came back to find that our hallway absolutely reeked of some kind of electrical smell. We had to crack the windows open for a while before it finally dispersed.

Needless to say, we decided it was best to keep an eye on the situation here this afternoon. As of this writing, it's been about 8 hours, and the Verizon teams are still outside working. Power seems to be back on fine, but all the phone lines around here are down. And then there's these loud, diesel engines, just outside our apartment!

Check out a clip from it, that's the landlord shouting about 19 seconds in.

Free Shows

Every once in a long while, I end up at a free show that becomes an unforgettable experience. Something I anticipate to be cool ends up just taking me by surprise, opening up the doors of perception and creating more cranial activity than normally takes place.

Saw just that unexpected show last night that blew my mind: Steve Wynn & The Miracle Three. I have the fortune of knowing Jason Victor, their lead guitarist / hand freakout master / sound texture artist, who happens to play in my own band DBCR. Up until last night, I had no idea he was even active in another project.

It's rare that I'll find another band that kicks so much ass, but is otherwise pretty low key about it. Last night, there were maybe 50 people in the room, the intimate back room of The Lovin' Cup in Williamsburg, in a new venue called The Cameo. The group leader, Steve Wynn, reminded me of a younger Robert Pollard, and similar personable live presence. Linda, the beast behind the drum kit, kept everything perfectly in line where it needed to be, built off a solid foundation of driving rock beats and impressive technical fills. Same could be said of the bassist - everything in it's right place.

Funny that I would think of it like this, but almost seemed like some uber version of Guitar Hero, where everyone was playing the most difficult level and just drilling everything. If somebody missed something, it didn't matter - the pieces still fit.

Awesome Indie Rock sound with good pop hooks, but with some serious solo sections. Also, the sound guy was also totally impressive - that was the best live mix I've heard in a long time - levels were perfect.

Check out some of the tunes from the drummer's myspace page.
http://www.myspace.com/lindapitmon