Matt Hobbs

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.

Oh wait. I am.

In an attempt to re-excite myself about the coolness of modern technology I’ve finally installed RealJukebox. This is a very cute little digital music player that does a wonderful job of recording your CDs while you listen to them. The music you’ve listened to is automatically categorized, stored on your machine (at great expense to your hard drive) and then used to make your playlists on demand. I’d always been a bit reticent on this as the MP3 encoding devices I’d looked at before seemed to have huge troubles working on Windows NT – but the new drivers seem smooth.

Of course I still can’t get my Sony Music Clip to work on NT. Sony have a policy of only supporting Windows 98 which is frankly ridiculous. They make such great little devices, it’s such a shame they get so draconian on music security policies and so crap on their platform support.

On a less musical note, went to see the film Memento last Sunday. Amazing film. The story is about a guy with no short term memory since his wife was murdered trying to find the murderer. This means that he can’t remember what happened 5 minutes before. So to combat this he writes notes to himself to remind him where he’s staying, what his car looks like and so on. This is a strange concept to take in and hard to relate to – so to help us understand what it feels like the movie is filmed backwards in 5 minute segements. You don’t know what just happened, like the protagonist, so you get a sense of how he feels in a situation. The difference is you have a memory of his future. It’s all very weird and very cool.

There are times when not having the right information drives you mad. Then there are times when having the right information drives you mad. Go figure.

Oh. And then there are times when you have to make a decision and all the options look bad, but the decision you feel you ought to make is one of the most painful. To quote the Simpsons – “The Japanese word for ‘crisis’ is the same as the word for ‘opportunity. Cris-ortunity!”

You just gotta love some bouncers in New York City. Last night we observed some fine specimens at Centro-Fly (no link as I want to discourage you from going) as we waited to go in to go to GBH. Complete lack of any sense of humour, inflated sense of their own self-importance and the size of a small South American country with possibly more tattoos. Having got inside there were even more bouncers randomly deciding who should move between floors based on cuteness and whether they were their mates. I don’t mind queuing, I do mind a lack of even handedness that would make Hitler seem humanitarian. So, boycott Centro-Fly and convince your favorite DJs they should do the same.

Of course this would be all so much easier if there were more than 3 major clubs in New York. It’s times like this that I do really miss the UK club scene. And also wish that I’d gone to Organic Grooves instead which is always a much more relaxed vibe (just didn’t feel like going on my own).

Anyways, the rest of Friday was cool. Took the day off, something I heartily recommend, and drank nice wine from lunch onwards and wandered around SoHo taking in the sights. Highlights were Puck Fair which was playing the Stranglers and had the Mirror and Sun to read, and Mercer Kitchen where the food was wonderful as was the atmosphere (replate with upside down umbrellas hanging from the ceiling to catch the leaks).

Had a cool, busy and repetative weekend, nowhere near exotic countries. Friday went to a party in Billyburg, in a big white concrete ant-hill of a building on N 4th and Kent. Great views of the water and cats that seemed totally unfazed by 50+ drunk people dancing around them. Nice sandwiches too. Amazing open corridors that screamed for roller blading. No pineapples and long sandy beaches though.

On Saturday went to the Andreas Gursky photographic exhibition. Huge photos – about 6 foot high by 12 foot. Some of them were pretty cool but others didn’t really impress me – looked like large holiday snaps. Later went to an opening where someone had coloured large sheets of paper with pencil. Cheap at $30,000… wish I’d realised it was worth that much when I was doing the same thing as a kid. Later than that (after some bar antics) went to a review called Kiddie Corner. Some very disturbed young men recounting fake childhood incidents of abuse and suicide. Cheery stuff so we ended up boozing in Marion’s to finish the night. Oh, and then Sweet and Vicious. At no time were we attacked by elephants.

Sunday was completely different. Finally went for brunch at a nice little place near mine before going to a photographic exhibition from black photographers at the Brooklyn Museum after a few wrong turns on the subway. A few really nice pictures but no coherence – bought the book anyway which hung together much better. Then went into town, shopped for hifi equipment before going to a new chinese place for some gorgeous beef stuff. Yum. Then off to the Oscars. Well, my friend Stjohn and Barb’s apartment where I watched on the TV. very similar though, but less tropical fish to scuba dive with – more Steve Martin though.

Back in 1992 I got a copy of what is possibly my favorite chill-out tape of all time. This was from a guy called Dave Schell who worked at PGL and was one of a crowd of wanna-be DJs that used to use the kids disco gear to practice. The tape was of Future Sound of London (FSOL) doing a session on Kiss FM in London, before Kiss got sucked down the whole garage thing and became a lot more boring. The basic concept was two ‘virtual’ DJs, Cyberface and Yage, talking over some very cool dubbed out tracks with the usual FSOL soundbites and ambient backgrounds. Superb stuff.

So why do I bring this up? Well, I was listening to the Essential Selection on Radio 1 (thank you streamed audio) and the trainspotter track was one of the tracks off this tape – Song of Life by Leftfield (Lemon Interrupt’s Dubbed Up Mix). Nice to know what it is, and at some point I promise to get that tape onto MP3 format.

Oh, and forgot to mention that I finally had brunch in Williamsburg the other day. Went to Teddy’s pub on N 8th and Wythe (or thereabouts). Nice, filling food in an old English style pub. This is opposite Osnot’s Dish which is supposed to be pretty darn good as well. I need to hang out in my hood more… Thanks to StJohn and Barb for dragging me down there and providing company later back chez moi where they learnt the intricacies of Dreamcast snow boarding games.

New York is under a torrential downpour at the moment. Just like being back in blighty – although with less foot and mouth disease and rail accidents. Oh and less snow. This British climate encourages inventors to come up with useful stuff like a robotic dog that “can climb over obstacles, play football, do handstands and even move like a crab”. Now I may be missing something here, but dogs don’t normally move like crabs, not unless they have serious infections in which case get them to a vet. So why bring it up as an important facet of a robot dog. Go figure.

Meanwhile the pressures mount from various sources to jack it all in, escape the Internet downturn and go travelling on my savings until it all gets better. All very tempting indeed. Everyone I know in New York seems to be a lot more stressed these days. Could just be the rain though and the low quality $2 umbrellas everyone has blowing inside out though. Oops, there goes another 20 points off the Nasdaq. Slidey. It’s times like these I’m very glad I never bought shares.

Ah, Spring has arrived, the sun is shining, the subway is getting sweatier. On leaving the subway looking for some cool refreshing air I discovered a new feature of W 40th st, the new office location – severe car fumes. I dread to think what it’s going to be like in summer…

On the plus side though, I’m 5 minutes walk from Hammerstein Ballroom which means I can easily bypass Ticketbastard fees for shows there, as with Roni Size this weekend.

Went along to see Wayne Krantz, sometime ex-guitarist from Steely Dan, play down at the 55 Bar last night. Amazingly talented. Three-piece with drums and bass. Actually played live music that sounded amazingly like drum and bass for that matter (although the drumming was more jazz). Used about 4000 pedals to get some great sounds live. Recommend checking him out sometime.