Put On Your Marching Shoes!

It's that time of year again, folks...

April is almost here, baseball season is about to peek over the horizon, and the indecision of my most hated month's weather is giving way to sun and warm air. This can mean only one thing... It's time to dust off the ol' sneakers, and get ready to March!

That's right, my beloved NTGers... Sunday April 2nd, 2006... The Third Annual Two Man March!

The tentative route for this year is to begin at the doorstep of Ben's Greenpoint chateau, cross over the Williamsburg Bridge, head across town to Broadway, and not stop walking until we hit the footbridge into the Bronx at 225th Street. Our time estimate is around 7 to 8 hours for the whole trip. And rest assured, there will be photos... Oh yes, there will be photos...

I'm just as excited this year as I was in '05, and the weather report gives us a 59 degree sunny day. Could life get much better?

HERE'S a smattering of favorite snaps from last year to whet your appetite...

Get ready... Get prepared... This is prophecy... God is with us...


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Happy Vernal Equinox!

Now, I know the official equinox came on the 20th, but I've been busy.

At any rate, I figured it would be a good day to check in and update the NTG populace on my ongoing battle with March. Has this month been as cruel to me as in previous years?

In short, not really. I was dealt a shocking blow when it was revealed to me that the release date for Samurai Jack: Season III on DVD is in fact MAY 23, rather than today. But aside from that, the month has been pretty non-confrontational. The air-guitar competition was a nice, absurd and fun way to start the month, and St. Patrick's Day weekend was enjoyable on all fronts...

March has gone by pretty quickly, and there's only another week or so to go. I'm greatly anticipating what April has to offer, in the Third Annual Two Man March, and my trip to Europe. How shall I pass the remaining days of my most hated month?

One word: SUDOKU.

That, and watching my calendar for what could be one of the greatest days of summer... August 18th.

Yes...


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New Snaps 03.14.06 - Recent Concerts Edition!

Well, this was my POV for a good portion of this past weekend. My exodus to the shore was therapeutic and tranquil, and besides that snap and some incredible home-cooked meals, I've got slightly sunburned legs to show for it. It wasn't really warm enough to hang out at the beach for long, and definitely too cold to swim, but I managed to sit for a few hours. It was virtually deserted, and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. There's something about sitting on an empty beach that makes you feel like you own the world...

I also had some downtime to look in the archives, and I threw together these snaps from recent shows. Each show was excellent in its own right.

Enjoy... I'm gonna do a sudoku...


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Arbor Day & Tyson Meade, @ Cake Shop 2.24.06

This show was special, in that it was a birthday party for my good friend, Steve May. His longtime idol Tyson Meade (former frontman for both Defenestration and The Chainsaw Kittens, and a lifelong inspiration to Steve's artistic sensibilities) was playing his first show in some years, and the first Steve was ever able to attend. NYC favorite Arbor Day opened and backed Meade for his set, which was nothing short of a dream come true for both Steve and Arbor Day thereminist/trumpeteer/tambourinist Andy Levine. Needless to say, emotions ran rather high.









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Dalek, @ B.B. Kings 2.25.06

I've already spent enough NTG space lauding Dalek's latest record Absence, but this show was actually when I made that purchase. It continues to be an apt soundtrack for the hated month of March. The show was great, if not a tad wasted on the tepid B.B. Kings crowd.







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The World Blanket, @ The Delancey 3.4.06

You know whenever Pomranz plays a show, and I'm not on stage with him acting a damn fool, I'm in the crowd snapping relentlessly. This time around I took about a hundred, which is a modest effort on my part. His latest band, The World Blanket, blends an increasingly mature instrumentalism with the vibe of his early Fellers material. In short, it's real damn good.






















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Another day, another batch of New Snaps. Still working on that sudoku... And now I'm hungry. Time to heat up some leftovers from last night...

How 'bout some rightovers, for once?





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Throw the Snacks in the Bag, and I'm Ghost Like Swayze!

So I'm still not at 100%, but I'm definitely feeling much better than I have the past few days. Thanks to all you kind NTGers who called and emailed to wish me back to health!

And the great thing is, it's Friday at 4:00, I just ate a late lunch outside in Bryant Park in the first combination of sun and warm air that this city has seen in something like 4 months, and in two hours I'm getting on a bus to the Jersey shore. No, it ain't beach weather, but I'll be reveling in sea air and Mom's cooking until Sunday.

If that doesn't get me back to tip-top health, nothing will. Have a great weekend, I'll type at you all sometime soon.


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The Plague of '06

Ahhhh, sickness.

Both Zack and I have felt like ripe shit since last night, which means we probably picked up whatever we got at the same place. Apparently it's been going around. It could have been at the Lolabrigada show on Saturday, or maybe at the movie theater where we saw Dave Chappelle's Block Party earlier that day.

Speaking of that, we actually saw the first 2/3 of it Friday night, but the projector froze. It was awful... the crowd was great, the energy was so positive, and the movie was outstanding... and then they killed it with a bum projector. If it wasn't for the free passes they gave us, I'd never go back to that theater. It's easily one of my least favorite in the city.

The effort of writing has already made me weak. I feel like I have a bowling ball made of mucus inside my sinuses. I left work early, came home and slept for about five hours, so now I'm wide awake for Round 2 of the Champions League, Chelsea vs. Barcelona! So there's some silver lining to feeling this awful...

Take your echinacea and don't kiss me!


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Am I Alone In Not Giving A Shit About The Oscars?

Seriously, this farce of a ceremony couldn't have been any farther off my radar this year. Or for the past three years, for that matter.

I'd be hard-pressed to name 5 movies that were in the running, for ANY category. The ones that I can name, I either had no interest in seeing, or saw and didn't like, or attempted to watch and gave up after 20 minutes. And I'm not a half-assed movie watcher, so I have to take that to mean that the current crop of bloated epics wasn't worth my time anyway. There are a few that I'm sure I'll catch in retrospect, but the idea of sitting through Hollywood's 4-hour, self-congratulatory jerk-off session is akin to oral surgery.

So, here's my short list of films that actually meant shit to me this year. Cook up some popcorn, and enjoy!

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FILM OF THE YEAR:

Batman Begins

I've already dedicated enough space on NTG to praising this film, but it was my hands down favorite for 2005.


THE NEXT FOUR:

Kung Fu Hustle - Essentially a martial-arts-meets-Looney-Tunes mash-up (and how can I NOT love that combination?), this film is relentlessly entertaining and surprisingly tender. Stephen Chow has proven himself to be an actor/director of precise vision and sharp comic timing.

A History of Violence - The final shot of David Cronenberg's near-masterpiece - Viggo Mortensen's strained face, imploring silently of his family, "So what do we do now?" - perfectly sums up the entire film. See it. Just see it.

The Aristocrats - It's hard to imagine a single joke stretched into a feature-length documentary being this entertaining, but given the abundantly funny cast and over-the-top vulgarity, I can't recall laughing much harder at anything else all year.

Mr & Mrs. Smith - This is my guilty-pleasure pick of the year, a movie that I expected (and honestly, kind of wanted) to like much less than I did. But you can't argue with the formula: two very charismatic stars, a funny and sharp script, lots of things blowing up, and a touch of heart.


HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Wedding Crashers
Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Ong Bak: Thai Warrior
Sin City


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DRINK... From the Nectar of the Gods...

Ahhh, metal... The music of champions...

AIR GUITAR CHAMPIONS, that is! Last night was the competition, and I have to say that considering it was my first time out of the gate, I didn't do half bad.

I got to the Knitting Factory a bit early, and the scene was, honestly, pretty disorganized and negative. It re-enforced the things I dislike about KF as a venue: the people in charge are humorless dicks, and it's always uptight. It makes it so enjoying whatever you're there for is a challenge in and of itself. It took me awhile to find someone who knew what was going on with the Competition, but when I finally did I signed in and was asked to choose an Air Guitar Name. Nervousness and the pre-show beers left me a little unsure, so I came up with The Avid Swordsman, which seemed to go over fine. I hung upstairs with a beer and my green all-access bracelet and watched the opening band, a true Metal act called Gods of Fire. They were solid, and there was no irony in the fact that they love playing metal, and do it well. Which was quite refreshing.

No one told the competitors any order, so I just wound up hanging backstage chatting with a few other people. It's funny, the air guitar community really is just that: it's a small, insular community of people, all united by the thin and somewhat surreal thread of pretending to play instruments for the entertainment of others. There were dudes there who knew each other from previous years (I actually heard the phrase "yeah, I saw you in [insert city name]" a few times backstage. There were also some elaborate costumes, which made my typical jeans and faded black t-shirt kind of boring. And one of the criteria on which we were judged was Stage Presence, I understand if I came off kind of lame. I tried to make up for it with the verisimilitude of my playing (which was another of the three judging categories, the third of which being the elusive quality of "Airness").

Out of seventeen competitors, I went up third, which was a bit earlier than I would have liked, but I got over that quickly enough once I got out there. I threw my fist up, winked at the two comely lasses in the front, and got in my rock stance. The MC (last year's New York champion, imaginatively named "Bjorn To Rock") asked what song I was doing. Heheheheh...

"...And Justice For All" by Metallica. And the crowd screamed in approval.

HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED... (notice the smattering of boo's, right before I go into the thrash solo... heheheheh... What can I say, maybe it was an alienating song choice...) [JMP NOTE - I know, the link isn't functioning. I'll recompress the video file when I get to work on Monday, and repost it. Sorry for the inconvenience! And thanks for reading!]

So there it is, I played the US Air Guitar Championships. The judging was on a scale of 4.0 to 6.0 (which is apparently just like figure skating), and I scored consistent 5.0's across the board. That's fine by me, considering that one of the harsher scores given to a competitor was a scrawled drawing of a flaccid penis. Oh, those judges...

Next year, if (ok, let's not kid ourselves here... WHEN) I do this again, I'll probably choose a song that's a little better recognized, and go more for presence and less for exactness. But for now, I'm riding the wave of what fun it turned out to be. Before yesterday, could I have said I got up and air guitar-ed in front of a couple hundred screaming people?

Nope.

Thanks to US Air Guitar, the other competitors, and all who showed up and supported me... Don't stop-a-rockin'!!!

METAL... is about to rule the WO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-ORLD!!!!!!


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How Much More Is It Going To Take?

So, I read in AM New York on the train this morning that not only was Bush SPECIFICALLY WARNED about the threat of Hurricane Katrina breeching levees in New Orleans, but he is actually warned ON VIDEOTAPE. So there's no escape for him. None.

What is it about this guy getting warned about things, and doing nothing about them? (You know, that little thing that happened four Septembers ago? Oh, wait, he knew about that from all those planning meetings... My bad...) Between 9/11, the war in Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina, THIS ONE GUY is directly/indirectly responsible for causing/allowing the deaths of people that number in the TENS OF THOUSANDS, and not only is he not in jail for life, he's still in the most important office in our entire country!

And Clinton got impeached for getting a blow job. And THAT wasn't even on videotape!

Can someone PLEASE make some sense of this for me? I figure someone from the government is reading this anyway, maybe one of you guys can email me.


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It Happened At Midnight...

I was asleep at midnight this morning, which is highly uncommon in JMP world. Karate had exhausted me, and rather than battle the fatigue and stay up til 2 like I usually do, I gave in. Ate some carrots & peanuts (a typical post-karate dinner), put on my latest CD acquisition (Absence by Dälek*) and slowly slipped from consciousness.

And while I slept, it happened. My arch-nemesis crept into being, before my sleeping eyes.

My most hated of all adversaries, who torments me every year for 31 agonizing days.

Her name... is MARCH.

I despise the month of March. I must apologize to several friends whose birthdays fall during the reign of this hideous bitch-goddess of a month... Chris, NV, and everyone else: I'm not trying to disrespect you guys, but there is so little to redeem this month in my eyes.

For one, March's weather is forever miserable. Cold, gray, overcast, depressing. The few sunny days that happen to appear in March are typically so cold that the sunlight is rendered obsolete, and when you spend 10 hours a day in a windowless room and cramped subway cars the spare moments of sun do little to boost the spirits. When it's not actually raining, so much of March seems to exist in that state of "just about to rain," with the gray skies and misty, humid air. It infuriates me to the point of casting my gaze at the heavens and screaming for March to make up her damn mind, rain or don't rain! Just get it the hell over with!

Besides being a long month, there are no major holidays in March. St. Patrick's Day falls in the middle of the month, but that's not a day off work, and my memories of last year's SPD still loom large and terrible in my memory (this was one of the most aggravating days in all of 2005... I may never go back to Hoboken, except to see shows at Maxwell's).

March is one of those months that seems to take forever, especially given that so many great things are on my horizon for April: the return of baseball; the return of spring, sunlight, longer and warmer days; a two week trip to Europe; and of course, the Third Annual Two Man March (April 2, 2006... mark your calendars! And yes, I'm aware of the irony that the word "March" pops up here again, mocking me as ever... but it's in a different context... what, should we call it "The Two Man April"?)! Given that all these things are contingent upon March's end, I'm sure she'll do her best to seem like she lasts longer than she actually does. March... how I hate her so...

So, I'm trying to ride the wave of the few good things that will definitely be happening in the next 31 days. They include: my debut air guitar performance (you're all coming, right?); the release of Samurai Jack: Season III on DVD; and at least one weekend out of the city, most likely spent at the currently deserted, and thus-tranquil, Jersey shore.

Since winter is the time when the world seems to die, and regenerate itself to new life in the spring, that's the way I'll approach March. It is the final tribulation before the new beginnings of April. March will be punctuated by some good things, but overall, I see it as a time to lay the burdens of the previous year to rest.

Only when the old has died, does the new have a chance to be born.


[* - apologies to this artist, on behalf of Blogger's inability to recognize umlauts. His name is actually spelled D-A with an umlaut-L-E-K.]


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