Modern Art makes me want to rock out...

...was genuinely all I could think as we walked round MoMA this evening.

Damn you Art Brut.

assistants unite and rebel!

I'd love to write some clever entry, sweet and witty a la the Imaginary Socialite or something, but I think the magazine's own blurb does a perfectly good job so I'll leave it to them. I'd just like to say I think this is a fabulous idea and I hope it goes places.

"Where have all the Assistants gone?

Assistants are talented individuals masked under a temporary role and need a platform to present their work, to stay creative, build their portfolios and to be acknowledged. Focusing on their strengths, briefs are set for the concept of that issue, pushing their skills further and exercising the next step in professional work. This is a magazine for them. This will be their voice- an amplifier- and will shout from the rooftops that, “we are here” - alive and kicking! These Assistants are the next generation that will define a new era in fashion photography, journalism, design and image making. They have ideas, thoughts and opinions shown from a new perspective and their creativity is filled to the brim."

Let Them Eat Cake

who wants to work when it's spring outside?

It was kind of one of those days today so I bunked off work and disappeared down to the LES for a bit to go check out the ruined temple on Rivington that I had been told about over a lovely brunch this past Sunday. It was so sunny and warm out and so boring and bumming-me-out in that I really didn't want to go back to work.

the only thing better than old friends coming to visit is

...is old friends coming to visit and bringing care packages from home and family:

* SuperSuper that I've been wanting to see but that isn't available here yet
* Flux magazine which I have some work in but that takes forever to get over to these shores [I'm impatient],
* more Cadbury's chocolate than I know what to do with,
* a squashed tub of jaffa cakes
* and some slightly belated birthday cards.

Of course I went straight for... the magazines. *Such* a magazine junkie. Sod the Cadburys that I haven't had in however long. *Look* at those babies. So pretty pretty.

BFF in NY

L to R: Alice, Laura, Me. Alice's younger sister, Amy. In the foreground, my little sis, Fi. Circa 1985?

So I know this photo has appeared on here before, but it's one of my favourites ever, and I'm putting this up in celebration of the fact that Laura and Alice are getting into NY today and I get to hang out with them for a bit. BFF and all that jazz.

Iron Will

So my "no caffeine, no soda" thing lasted a whole three days. And two of those were unintentional.

It got to 10am this morning and I felt like I couldn't move [bad insomnia - again] so I dragged my sorry ass into the kitchen and made cawfee.

Three whole days. Be impressed by my resolve, cower before my iron will-power.

so i may be 25 but i'm hardly going to act all grown up

CC made me this incredible birthday hat/crown/paper sweatband that had the words "Thug Life" cut out of it. I wore it most of the night when we were at The Annex, only taking it off to place on other people and then take their photo.

Unfortunately I didn't quite have the nerve - or enough vodka in me - to get BKB to pose with it, although their keyboard player did express an interest in it.

Low point of the evening: some random girl comes up and starts talking to me - has ascertained it's my birthday so comes to say happy.
Her: "So how old are you?"
Me: "Umm, 25"
Her face drops.
"Oh. Wow. Well, happy birthday."
Her and her friends, they're in town from Kansas on Spring Break [woo hoo! ahem], they're 19 - and look every inch the 19 year old Kansasians [or whatever the term would be]. Let's face it, half the kids around are underage, but NY teenagers seem to have a certain... elan, a certain flair, which makes them a little more untouchable.

So anyway, my birthday sucked royal ass until about 9:45pm when I met up with Lauren and Sarah H. and then it picked up from there, until it became a whole lot of fun and pretty fucking great at The Annex. So there we go.

And of course there's still Round 2 to come this evening...

If this was Logan's Run I'd only have five more years left to live

When I was a little kid - not quite as little as in the above pic, as I'm not sure one-year-olds have much grasp on this - I could never really picture being 25. It all seemed so far off and misty, something that would happen when people had hoverboards and drove flying cars. And of course by the time I was 25 I'd probably have a successful job and husband and a small brood of babies or something.

So I turn 25 finding myself single [and perfectly happy with it, to be honest], in a kerrrappy job [but have the opportunity to do some awesome freelance writing work] and no kids yet [phew]. Although an impending godchild awaits me in the UK which I'm so stoked about.

I remember mentally making a list of things I wanted to do before I was 25, and to do before I turned 30, and I can't really remember many of them apart from the fact that living in NY was always one of them. That, and the magazine business. So it gives me some small satisfaction that I can at least cross those off.

In general I really don't like my own birthday; the pressure to "do something" stresses me out - and this year it felt like it would be weird not having my sister around. But I received a rad care package containing two mix CDs and two Cadburys Creme Eggs from her [one of which I ate at like 6:30am whilst talking to her online. I've been feeling a little sick ever since] and a couple other packages and cards from the UK. My roommates, bless their cotton socks, gave me a card and cake this morning. And this evening there's the Ivy League show and Stolen Transmission with current faves, Boy Kill Boy. Now I just have to convince both bands to sing me Happy Birthday, mwahahaha. If only there was room for a small nap between work and class and shows and parties. Ah well, that's what the flask of vodka and can of Redbull in my bag are for, right?

Happy UnBirthday to all youuuuu.

retreat/to sleep/go out again next week

So it was the Live From London showcase at the Bowery Ballroom [Plan B, Boy Kill Boy, Towers of London, The Rakes] - with afterparty and further acts [Brakes, The Young Knives] at The Annex.

I've had like seven hours sleep in the past two or three days so can barely see straight right now but just to say:

- Only caught the last song of Plan B but seemed okay enough.
- Didn't even watch Towers of London - was sat downstairs chatting with Sarah and Gurj and Jordan and half-hearing the screeching going on overhead. Did get back up to see some poor girl, injured, surrounded by security and worried friends. I heard they kicked her or a mic stand or something into her face. Excellent work.
- Boy Kill Boy great.
- The Rakes were sweet and played a pretty tight set, but didn't blow me away. I kinda wish they had. I was impressed with how coolly he handled someone throwing a pint cup of ice at him. It totally smacked him in the face or chest, and he just said "good shot" and carried on. I also got a little distracted by the fact that the guitarist looked SO much like one of my friends younger brothers, only skinnier. But he could totally be a long-lost member of their family. It was weird.

Brakes at The Annex

the rest of SXSW round-up

DAY THREE [Saturday]

Where we stayed: Paul's apartment, on an air mattress - but feeling unwelcome because his roommate - who, it turns out, had crashed for a year on his couch - was pissed at the number of people staying with them. There was Lauren and I, and another couple who had left on Friday...
What the weather was like when we woke up: painfully grey
Place of breakfast: ihop! My first ihop experience. It was... interesting. A very strange mixture of locals and people that were very obviously in town for South By.
First show we headed to: the Alt.Press show at Emos.
Who we we ran into outside Emos: Shawn, Gurj, Deewall, Omri & Steve.
Who we ran into inside Emos: Alex [Stolen Transmission], Evan Steel Train, Arielle.2
Number of people who could have been runners up in the MySpace Stupid Haircut awards: I lost count
Number of horrendous tattoos: I also lost count
One of the worst: a kid with an under-21 stamp on his hand that had big tatts on his left upper arm of portraits of Frankenstein, Dracula and a Werewolf. I'm telling ya, once he grows out of his Goosebumps and Point Horror books, he's gonna regret those...
How far away the evening show was: miiiiiles. It felt like it, anyway. Way up by the UT campus.
Free drinks nabbed: Strangely, none I don't think. We did get cherry ices [slush puppies/slurpees/whatever you want to call them] though, and top them up with whisky from my hipflask , which was actually surprisingly nice.
How many people were at the show in the parking lot behind Cream Vintage: not that many considering the lineup.
What happened after that show: hopped on a random bus hoping it'd take us downtown [it did], ran into Casey and Ryan-Nightmare of You on 6th who were talking about finding some beer, left them and went and met up with Jenne, Joe and Sammy-NOY plus their Tour Mgr and Sammy's friend at a roof terrace bar somewhere, went for sushi with Jenne, wandered down to La Zona Rosa then realised we actually needed to be a block further down at the Austin Music Hall for the Say Anything/Saves The Day/Dashboard show - but it was badges-n-wristbands only. Arielle.2 offered to help us get in once Say Anything had finished their set but we bailed, leaving Jenne & Joe and Tour Mgr Sean to go see the show while we headed over to Beauty Bar to see Lauren's friend Nicole. We walked past BKB on the way in.
Bands encountered: Say Anything [acoustic set], Circa Survive, Head Automatica [amusing how many people wandered off once they'd played Beating Hearts Baby], Diamond Knights, Oxford Collapse, We Are Scientists [yay!] - and of course the usual hundreds we walked past in the street. And BKB at Beauty Bar.

DAYS FOUR & FIVE [Sunday & Monday]

SXSW: now officially over
Order of the day: cab it to where NOY are finishing up brunch - say goodbye as they take off on tour, leaving Jenne and Casey with us. We hunt for bagels, try on stupid hats in a toy store, head downtown where we get beer, nachos and a shot of Jameson [it's not even 3:30pm]. We sing Nada Surf and My Chem and Fall Out Boy songs [with the Andrew Mathas lyrics] very loudly on the interstate as Casey drives us back to the hotel, where we check emails and myspace and 911 conspiracy theory websites ["La Quinta: Spanish for free wireless"] and all but pass out watching Dodgeball. Casey comes back, we send him out again to pick up a *lot* of beer. We drink aforementioned beer, go out in the midst of a horrendous tropical storm to see Omri, decide the weather's too crappy to stay out so go back and have a lock-in in the hotel room till the very wee hours - when we still can't sleep because the birds outside are making such a racket.
So long Austin: another ihop breakfast, as we're right opposite one and the other restaurant we check out looks like a cafeteria in an old peoples' home [the cashier seemed genuinely shocked when we turned round and walked out: "Y'all don't wanna eat heeyah?"], Casey drops us at the airport before carrying on back to Dallas. It's 80 degrees, clear blue sky, sunny - we sunbathe outside for a while, reading, dozing, head inside eventually to horribly delayed flights [ugh], lots of band people [including the Blackbuds who we're sat near on the ground, who, however cute they may be, are hogging all the sockets so we can't plug in phone chargers or laptops] and young Steven Rojas. We also finally affirm our NY Princess status by hollering across the check line with Steve about DJ sets and Myspace. Oops. More band people on the plane, and a rocky landing at LaGuardia where I genuinely think we're about to touch down on water, and we finally arrive back to freezing NY temperatures and a wonderful welcoming committee, who, it would seem, are actually there to pick up Nas, but settle for us instead.

SXSW days one and two

DAY ONE [Thursday 16th]

Where I stayed Wednesday night: CC's apt, Brooklyn
Number of drunk roommates and roomates' guests running around brandishing vibrators: 3
Hours of sleep: maybe two and a half
Airline flown: American Airlines from LaGuardia to Austin
Layovers: one, in Houston
Number of people that actually got off in Houston: about five
Vehicle that met us at Austin airport: a big dumb red truck, as abound in Texas
Degrees warmer Austin was than the temps we'd left in NY: at least 30
Number of NY kids [or peeps Lauren knew] we ran into within a couple hours of being in Austin: hmm... Heath Miller, Evan and Doug Steel Train, Josh Madden and John er... let's just sum it up with "a whole bunch"
Number of bats seen flying out from the South Congress bridge: Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. Way too many to even count.
Meals eaten: one, in a 20-hour day
Free drinks nabbed: not as many as we should have
Rawkstahs and bands encountered: stood next to the Fiery Furnaces at baggage claim, walked past Belle & Sebastian in the airport, made eye contact with Stuart Murdoch, got a somewhat disarming grin from him [swoon. again.] Queens Of The Stone Age brushed past us as we were standing on the corner of 6th and Congress. And of course all the band kids Lauren knows; ArmyNavy and Socratic are the only ones springing to mind right now. That actually played: Lucero, Film School, Spinto Band, Steel Train, Carina Round. Walked past the bar where Boy Kill Boy were sound checking - playing Back Again and all I could do was squeak and grab Lauren's arm. I *love* that song.

DAY TWO [Friday 17th]

Where we stayed: Paul's apartment, on an air mattress
How much rent he pays for a big two bed-two bath, nice balcony apt in Austin: about 860ish
How much you'd pay for something similar in NY: I dread to think
Time we woke up: super late, which was nice
Shows we had on our list of things to do: the Jane mag party, the My Chem/Lifetime show at Emos, ArmyNavy wherever they were playing, the Stolen Transmission party
Shows we actually went to: the Jane mag party where the line was half a block long but we cut in with a kid Lauren knew about 15 people from the front, and the Stolen Transmission party which we arrived at early after leaving the Jane mag party with Joe and Ryan Nightmare of You and Jenne, then said we needed to use the bathrooms real bad to get in as it wasn't actually open yet
Number of people we knew that were also already there even though the party hadn't started: the usual suspects really
Free drinks nabbed: a lot of vodka-diet dr peppers at the Jane mag party [tasted like cough syrup but they were free so we choked them down] and about three large vodka-redbulls at the ST party at the Redbull House
Coolest thing about the Jane mag party: a baby being carried around on his dad's shoulders, wearing massive earphones to protect his ears, and looking like he was having a blast
Bands encountered: Film School [tail end of their set, again], Of Montreal [brilliant], Mates of State, Nada Surf [the bass player chainsmoked throughout the entire set], Nightmare of You, Boy Kill Boy [swoon, and so good], Lady Sovereign was bopping around the ST party [she's tiny!] and numerous others that I walked past thinking "you look kinda familiar but I have no idea who you are" - and no doubt others that I walked past even more oblivious than that. You couldn't throw a stone without hitting a band of some sort at South by.
Best outfit: the wedding dress the lead singer of Of Montreal wore on stage to start their set

peace out noooo york!

So I'm off to SXSW mofos, but for those of you still in NY, never fear, Ivy League are on hand to assuage your South-by-South-sadness...

we get back on monday night, then it's a mere two more days until my birthday. yikes. stay classy new york.

jPod...

...the new Douglas Coupland, reads like Microserfs rewritten by Bret Easton Ellis pretending to be Douglas Coupland.

In my opinion and in case you were wondering.

I am Jack's fucking irritating insomnia

"When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake."

Can you die from insomnia? Going through a bad patch right now. Feel like a robot.

Maybe it's time to watch Fight Club again.

Tyler? You there?

a spring in my step

Could Saturday have felt any more like the first day of spring if it tried?? I escaped Dirty Jerz to go have brunch in Brooklyn [Phoebe's on Graham - tasteee] then we wandered down through McCarren to Bedford, aiming for the ice cream place. McCarren was *buzzing*. Everyone was out, running, jumping, climbing, skipping, batting, bowling, barking [the dogs, that is, not people], being wasted at 1pm [people now, not dogs]...

Saturday night was adventures in bowling - Leisure Bowl at Port Authority for [Annie] Danger's birthday... special guest starring young Michael all the way from LA [who, despite it not being my birthday, still gave me a lovely present; a Fantastic Mysteries book his dad had given him when he was a nipper. Soooo good].

Sunday was work time [and pissing with rain time] then the evening was filled with lovely friends and vegan pasta and reality shows in the East Village, and then over to Skillman Ave and the tail end of Grey's Anatomy and talks of the Arctic Monkeys on SNL and people possibly heading out to Sway and Ry standing up to perform the "Party Head" story and talk of muggings that made me not want to walk to the station alone... then when I finally got back to JC something felt wrong and I wasn't sure what till I realised it was so misty and foggy that you couldn't see Manhattan at all and it was very strange.

something about this seems a little wrong

Did you know that a doctor gets £350 for every death certificate they sign? In the UK at least. Makes you wonder why there aren't more Harold Shipmans running around, if they get that much for writing their name on a piece of paper every time one of their patients kicks the bucket.

And now the red ones make me fly/And the blue ones make me fall

A medical professional just recommended me for anti-depressants.

I told them to take a running jump [although not quite that bluntly].

I have music and friends and New York City to bring me up, and a good cry every now and then is healthy.

I ent filling my head with that junk. Who cares if my chemical fucking imbalance [new emo band name alert!] isn't quite right.

Fuck that shit.

this morning

in my PATH car, there was a young couple next to me, having a quiet dispute. The girl, wearing an army green bandana and a red scarf, her purple nail polish chipped and picked at, was trying to get the boy to look at her, her sweet face with puffy eyes and bitten lips to stop herself from crying too publicly.

And right behind them, almost back to back, was another couple, the girl in a mauve coat, talking, seeming as if there was no one else in that carrige but each other, punctuating sentences with gentle kisses.

finding that diamond in the rough

previous blog entry talking about May 2004:
"...or some amazing little shop. like that second hand bookstore in NY that was around union sq somewhere. all those bukowski and harry crews books, and the ladders that you moved around and climbed up yourself to rifle through the top shelves (imagine that happening at waterstones or barnes & noble... they'd be so scared of litigation if someone fell or something, customers wouldn't be allowed within a five mile radius of a ladder). and the fat cat that just sat in the middle of the back room and regally watched the book browsers, and the other cat that twined itself round your ankles as you weighed up whether to buy those two william faulkner books (you didn't in the end as you figured it was only your third day in town and you should watch your money until you knew how the trip was going to play out). and the smell of the books, kind of dusty and musty and papery..."

So when I was here a couple years ago I came across an amazing little bookstore during my ramblings. Then I moved here last year and have been searching for it ever since, knowing vaguely where it was, but never quite remembering. The other day I stumbled across it again, emitted a squeak of excitement. Went in - it was as brilliant as I remembered. Higgledy-piggledy shelves and stacks, books in piles, in stacks, covering most surfaces, the whole place exuding a warmth of a mostly undiscovered gem. Then my well-trained eye caught sight of something in the far corner. The new Coupland that's not out till May or so. An advance copy. More squeaks of excitement and almost pulling down the shelf in my eagerness to get to it. And then I find the Dennis Cooper [whom, rightly or wrongly, I kind of worship]graphic novel. *Amazing*.

I knew there was a reason i'd been looking for this place for two years.

this past weekend in which:

it finally felt like I regained some semblance of my normal life again...

...and Lauren sucked Alex's soul from the top of his head...

...and Steve pole-danced up and down some boy...

...and leaving my camera on a weird setting, or just standing at an odd angle, resulted in this strange-ass photo of Omri and Rob Hitt DJing at Orchard [where it looks like a picture of the boys with a weird paper clip laid on top - in my mind, anyway. It makes my eyes go funny]...

... and Sean got so overexcited by the hott DJs at Misshapes [Gurj and Jackson-Kurt-Cobain-alike among them] that it looks as if he's about to swan dive into the booth...

...and I ate sushi with my friends and attended birthday brunches mildly hungover and was tormented by my drunk roommate with his stuffed ferret [no, that's not a euphemism] and turned up at Misshapes at 1 just to see Gurjalicious DJ and slept in till the afternoon on Sunday and almost *cried* laughing when I finally got to watch that Andrew Mathas/Brand New video that's been doing the rounds [even though I didn't actually know the song before I saw it] and avoided the Oscars and watched half of Spaced series 2 [omg the best show *ever*] and didn't sleep on Sunday night so got up at like 5:45am to get to the shower before the boys then just passed out until about 8am when I had the hardest trouble getting out of bed because really, who likes Monday mornings??

is it wrong that i was hoping the fake-pete-doherty rumours were true?

gotta love The Sun...:

TAKING A LIBERTINE!

The Sun start campaign to jail Pete...
02 Mar 2006

The Sun, who normally crusade against paedos and Maxine Carr have focused their attentions on hapless junkhead Pete Doherty, starting a 'Get Pete Off The Street' campaign.

This apparently is a bid to help the hopeless junkie singer, because as we all know, people in prison don't take drugs and if they do when they go in they come out clean and sober and never re-offend.

In other news, Doh!erty, has apparently admitted himself into Homerton Hospital (where people are usually sent in to have bullets pulled out of them with tweasers). Pete is claiming to be suffering from manic depression. He wishes.

[from playlouder.com]

happy birthday kitten

Memorial Day weekend, May 2005, taken from an email:
"Outside [Luke-&-Leroy-era] Misshapes, talking basketball with Rob. He introduced me to a guy he was talking to (Matt*, I think) and a girl (Lauren) and I stayed chatting to them outside...

...and later going back outside and talking to Lauren again, and then saying I was gonna take off... so she walked with me up to Christopher St and we were chatting and she took my number to hang out and a bar she's working at is having an opening party tonight and she said come along."

And that's how it all began...

I don't want to say anything more because I'll get all gushy and embarrassing, but I would just like to say that the birthday girl in question is one of the most amazing people I've ever met, especially for "taking a chance on an unknown kid" [name that film I just ripped off].

Lauren, have an amazing day, I love you lots, I hope you like the present - just don't point it anywhere near me. Happy 24, kiddo. xoxoxo

*Sweet kid. Ran into him the following weekend at Orchard Bar. We chatted. I made a big faux-pas about his band that I'd never heard of at the time. Clever me. Yeah, "Matt" would be the one and only Matt Rubano, who's birthday it was yesterday. So Happy Belated, Matt.

I Could Be Dreaming

Ahhh, Belle and Sebastian. I could ramble on about them at length... how 'Tigermilk' and 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' so immediately take me back to April 2004, unlike any other album I know of can time-transport me [apart from the 'Lost In Translation' soundtrack/Jan-Feb. 2004. I think there was something about that year]. How 'I'm A Cuckoo' is my walking-around-New York-that-time-I-ran-away-here-Spring-2004. How sometimes I feel like 'She's Losing It' could be my theme tune. And of course, the associations with 'String Bean Jean' surely don't need to be mentioned [Beanie - schedule in a London visit this summer please...].

I didn't have many expectations for the gig, apart from the fact that quite a few people had pooh-poohed the Nokia Theater as a venue. It was a tad commodified and soulless, but whatevs.
The New Pornographers opened the set. They were pretty good, but to be honest I was totally fixated on this old dude with almost a bowl haircut, standing about a foot away from me, getting wayyyy too into the music. I'm talking almost headbanging, constantly shimmying and writhing - and none of it was in time to the rhythm. He was definitely marching to the beat of his own drummer, who I'm guessing was probably on some form of pill or powder.

Then, randomly, this other band appeared in between the NPs and B&S. A Matter of Trust, apparently all the way from Germany. What can I say about them... they made the same joke three times, they spilled water on the electrical cables, the singer was reading the lyrics to their one song off a sheet of paper he clutched, the drummer told us we weren't allowed to blog about their performance [oops] and they had a back-up singer, maybe mid-30s, dressed like mid-40s, standing to one side... I can't even describe him. It was cartoonish. His dance, his occasional "it's a matter, a matter of trust, do-be-do...".

So finally when Belle & Sebastian took the stage, we were more than ready. So were a few fanatical Glaswegians in the crowd [the same thing happened at Arctic Monkeys with people from Sheffield. Why do people think that just 'cause they're from the same neck of the woods as the performers, that gives them license to be complete pains-in-the-arse?]

I want to say now, that Stuart Murdoch, in all his ginger-haired Scottishness, bopping and pogoing around the stage, his fey mannerisms, his wit and whistling and talking about bum-pinching at gigs and getting girls up on stage to do the can-can during the encore - not to mention the fact that he crowdsurfed [yes, really] ... well he had me at his softly-spoken, Glaswegian-accented "Hello we're Belle & Sebastian." Swoon.

crying into my coffee

a) I have only 23 days left of being 24, until I turn 25. [that sentence is nicely confusing]

b) I have only 66 days left in NY. *sob* although I haven't yet booked a flight because of following conversation:

Me: "Okay, well my last day at work is May 5th and I have to move out my apartment May 6th, so I'll be back May 6th or 7th."
Momma: [ slight hesitation] "Right. Umm, well we're actually on holiday then."
Me: [unable to form words]

What my friends say when I relate this story: "Yeah and they've changed the locks, and turned your bedroom into a study."

Funny, guys.

Ho hum. So I'm almost 25 and I almost have to leave my beloved NY. I'm not sure which is worse.

On the plus side, I am drinking coffee right now, and anyone that's seen me after hitting up the redbull [more specifically, Lit's cheap vodbull, Friday nights, as it's about the only time I ever drink it] will know that caffeine makes me nuts. Party time in this office...