Category: Musings

For those of you who aren’t aware, Glastonbury, the best music festival in the world, was not on this year for a number of reasons. Normally this would have been this weekend – meaning instead of being in New York I would have been in a field in Somerset enjoying the sights and sounds of British festivaling at its best.

All was not lost however – since I had my own little piece of Glastonbury going on back in New York. Friday night went out to the Frying Pan to see SquarePusher and other dance folk at Nesh. The Frying Pan is a rusty old boat off pier 23 in New York. Great venue and lots of outdoor dancing vibes. Then on Saturday (after some classically Glasto torrential rain) went to see Mogwai play at Irving Plaza. Another great show from the Scots lads – one that would have only been better had we all been sitting around in a field staring at the sky as the music washed over us. Smashing.

Here’s to Glastonbury 2002… Although if that’s cancelled I’ll hold me own little festival in my apartment – with fake toilet smells and everything.

Saw Tricky down at Irving Plaza last night. Great show – although Irving could do with a slightly stronger a/c. He was playing a mix of stuff off his new album (Blowback) and old classics. This week is a week for seeing gigs – I’m supposed to be going to see Air on Thursday (but now going to be in State College unfortunately) but on Friday I’m going to see SquarePusher DJ at the Frying Pan (a rusty old boat floating near Chelsea Piers) and then on Saturday it’s Mogwai…. Phew!

Silly site today – lots of Star Wars items re-done in the style of famous designers. There’s a shop down in NoLiTa called ‘goto’ that has some very cool Star Wars crossed with modern icons t-shirts. Storm Troopers with Kiss make-up. AT-AT walkers in Adidas stripes. Great place to look through if you’re down near Kenmare and Lafayette. While you’re there check out the fish bowl toilets in the Vice changing rooms.

If you’ve never known something, then you never miss it when it’s taken away. People blind from birth have said they don’t miss being able to see. So why is it I’m reacting so badly to small benefits being taken away? Is it just indicative of the changing of the guard? A deeper malaise that will be harder to cure the longer it is left to fester? Still – on the plus side I can get cheap glass desks.

Apparently electronic paper will be commerically available in 2003. Looking forward to reading my first digital newspaper on the subway in the morning…

“With nuclear energy, electric communication, and the computer, all the necessary components of a modernized megamachine at last became available: ‘Heaven’ had at last been brought near. Theoretically, at the present moment, and actually soon in the future, God- that is, the Computer- will be able to find, to locate, and to address instantly, by voice and image, via the priesthood, any individual on the planet: exercising control over every detail of the subject’s daily life by commanding a dossier which would include [his|her] parentage and birth; [his|her] complete educational record; an account of [his|her] illnesses and [his|her] mental breakdowns, if treated; [his|her] marriage;.. [his|her] income, loans, security payments; [his|her] taxes and pensions;… In the end, no action, no conversation, and possibly in time no dream or thought would escape the wakeful and relentless eye of this deity: every manifestation of life would be processed into the computer and brought under its all-pervading system of control. This would mean, not just the invasion of privacy, but the total destruction of autonomy: indeed the dissolution of the human soul.” – The Myth of the Machine, Volume 2: The Pentagon of Power; by Lewis Mumford – in 1964. Check this stuff out here.

Strange weather today. Gorgeously sunny than a stray band of thunderstorm hits us. Meanwhile hurricane season has kicked off – with Hurricane Adolf sitting off Mexico (great name).

Yesterday saw Bridget Jones’ Diary – very amusing. Also made me very homesick and thinking fondly back to the leek and potato soup that my mum makes. Need to try and make some of that after my other attempts at cooking over this long memorial day weekend. The muffins were edible when covered with jam….

Just reading an article on BBC news about the latest 3G phones. One of them is a Motorola Timeport with a credit card reader. The thought occurs that a cell phone with built in card reader is an opportunist thief’s dream – you hand over your card at a restaurant to order food, meanwhile they swipe your card through their phone, order the latest Lara Croft game from Amazon and then return with your bill. Nice one.

Well, it’s the start of May and summer’s come a bit early to NYC. It’s currently about 85 F in the park, a nice 30 C. Which, coupled with the gorgeous sunshine, would all be great except that I’m a) in the office and b) the office a/c has yet to be put together. From my desk I can see the unassembled components waiting for more loud banging noises and burning smells as their assembly continues…

On the plus side, it’s only 4 days till I’m in Puerto Rico… yay!

Finally got round to watching Taxi Driver, another archetypal New York movie. The background to watching it was straightforward – it was only $14.95 in Tower Video and it was 3am on a Saturday night when my neighbour was having a party that sounded like it was 1 foot from my head. Crappy walls. Anyways, the movie was amazing, one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time. So many of the sequences had been ripped off in movies I’d seen elsewhere that I felt I already knew it. That plus the fact it as so much about New York. Thumbs up from me.

And on the subject of crappy walls… My landlord has had some dodgy builders in hanging precariously on old hemp rope fixing my leaking wall. This has involved lots of drilling types noises at 8am on a Saturday with visions of a large drill emerging 2 inches from my head (with amusing consequences). I’m glad he’s fixing it, have to say that I have no confidence that all this work will fix it. I met another of my housemates last night, Antony and his kid Milo. He was saying that a lot of the tenants have filed complaints about the landlord which led to the housing board doing a visit – they found a pool of water collecting, this being the summer with major mosquito and disease issues. Always nice to lose that fake view of your landlord as a reasonable guy… maybe it was the beard, or the way in which he would ‘forget’ how to understand English whenever I had a complaint, finishing with “but you like the apartment, yes?”. Oi vey.