augie march (an australian band, at the mercury lounge)

On Sunday night i cracked open 'time out NY' to see what was going on monday night. I never used to read it, but now i'm a huge fan of the magazine. it's all about NYC so it's cool and everything is mostly relevant to me, which is why it's a more useful magazine than, say, wired. some stuff is a bit too hipster, but whatever.

So Augie march was listed for Mon night at mercury lounge (east houston), and I remembered the name: when i was in australia, they were on the radio a LOT and brandon (friend who i stayed with) played their albums incessantly. I thought 'no, these guys are HUGE in australia, how could they barely be headlining on a mon night at a small club!' But yes, they were. for $12. greg and heather (who are getting married in a few weeks and had spent a year in sydney together) and i went. The show was awesome!

I ended up finding a $20 bill on the floor... and that seemed to be an ethical dilema. What to do? No one was standing near it, and it looked like it had fallen as someone probably walked somewhere, so the real owner was likely gone. Do you give it to the bar? And then how would someone even claim it?? "hey, i uh lost a $20... do you have it?"

Greg, who just took the NY bar exam, said that legally you are obligated to report anything you find that is over $20 to the police. Then you have to wait something like 3 years to see if anyone claims it. The amusing thing here, of course, is: say i was the one who lost the money... how would i claim it? Go to the cops, say i lost $100 did they find it. Seems mighty easy to fudge that.

fun weekend w friends and dispatch

I went to the Dispatch concert at MSG on Saturday night w my friend Larry (MHS and JHU). It was an amazing concert -- Dispatch reunion, 25 songs (about 3 hours!), and proceeds going to Zimbabwe. The problem was, somewhere along the illustrious Dispatch history, they picked up half a million high school kids as fans. I'm not sure how, since I was in college back in 2000 when they were pretty well-known, and then I thought they disappeared after their 4th and final original album came out around 2002. Apparently, they disbanded for a few years then had a huge reunion concert back in 2005 where 120,000 people came out. I think that's when all the high school fans emerged. See, i figured Larry and I (both in our late 20s), would see more of our ilk there. Instead, it was a swarm of 20,000 15-17 year olds. Not that I don't like high school kids -- after all, i make my living tutoring them -- but these kids were REALLY annoying and obnoxious, in ways Larry and I couldn't remember when we were in high school. It appeared as if they replaced smoking weed with taking speed, coke and other amphetamines. These kids were AGGRESSIVE, like at a sports event, roudy, loud and a little crazy. You'd think Dispatch, with their relaxing groove attitude would allure a much calmer crowd, but I guess the anticipation of the 3 successive nights of shows - several years of waiting -- made the teens anxious.

It could also be that Dispatch is from Boston, and many of the Bostonions had come out... and people from boston are generally a bunch of asshats. (not all, but most).

The show was great though. Dispatch played a few songs, then took a break to show a vignette video about Zimbabwe (filmed when they visited 2 months ago). They were good, encouraging, and wasted on most of these annoying little teens. They brought out some people from Zimbabwe to do some drumming and singing for a few songs, and even played an acoustic set sitting atop their beloved tour van, which drove into the center of the arena. They have 4 albums with maybe 45 total songs. They played virtually ALL of the "hits" and a few new ones, but we were worrying towards the end that they were running out of songs to play, and how much longer could this last?

Meanwhile, we were sitting in the front row of one of the levels, so people were freely walkng in front of us for food, bathroom, whatever. Halfway in, the nincompoops started all getting up and doing a bizarre conga line, jumping around, and, oddly, slapping hi five with anyone who would raise their hand. This was annoying since a virtual endless line of stupid little kids who probably dressed up for halloween last october continually came by and held up their hands like they were in a marathon or otherwise deserved a hi five. Well, they deserved to get out of my line of sight to the stage.

But it was a good night. We hit up the Gingerman afterwards (where NONE of those kids would have gotten into) and hung out w all the old Hillel hopkins crowd.

Later we hit up a 7-11 which, in China, was as common as Starbucks here. In China, the 7-elevens all smell horrendous bc they all sell an odd meatball-like fish thing - basically 3 tubs of grease with lots of small meatball things, behind the counter -- you eat (definitely NOT me) with ketchup. Luckily this 7-eleven didnt serve that shit, but instead was all decked out as a KWIK-E-Mart for the upcoming Simpsons film! They had a lot of funny decorations, donut signs, slurpee machine signs, and even the guys behind the counter were forced to take part with purple simpsons t-shirts.

Good Stuff.

On Thursday, I went with Hoff to see Dick Valentine (frontman for Electric 6, one of my favorite bands) perform at Joe's Pub in the village. It was a pretty intimate show, not even close to sold out, and Hoff and I sat comfortably at a table. One of the songs he played was, I believe, one he wrote (not a cover) and one of the funniest songs I've heard in a while -- impressive, since every Electric 6 song is amazingly funny.

I took the liberty of transcribing the lyrics:

I met a girl named Gabrielle
She was dressed in black and young as hell
She took me to her dormicile
Invited me to stay a while
She fed me breakfast and fed me wine
And later on we took the time
We explored each others area
Ran into a language barrier
It can be so frustrating
When we insist on communicating
But I do not parles vous you, oh

I don’t speak French
But somehow I got on the good side
I don’t speak French
But theres only one thing on her mind

Vou les vous, mon amie, bon swa baby
Is all I know how to say right now
But you get better I’m learning how ?
Cause where I’m from the thing to do
Is paint yourself red white and blue
How bout you? Can you say you do the same thing too?
I’m just your average yankee
Trapped in a world of French hanky panky
But I do not parles vous you, oh

I don’t speak French
But I’ve got a shitload of Euros
I don’t speak French
But that doesn’t matter to French girls



Here are 2 parts of the show. enjoy!

Music:

I've been listening to this new Aussie band "The Mars Volta," and they are unbelievable. They sound kinda like Rush with a little Scissor Sisters mixed in and really high energy with songs that go on for 10 minutes. I gotta get my hands on more of their stuff...

Last night I filmed Nicole Baguer's performance at Crash Theater. (Nicole is a friend and fellow JHU Alum and she has some of the most amazing vocal cords ever, plus she's hot and puts on a sick show!)

Check out her album through her website, or listen to some songs online at Rhapsody

See for yourself...

Well, I finished the marathon… in 4 hrs and 56 seconds. Let’s just round it down and say I did a 4 hr marathon. Hell yeah.

OFFICIAL RESULTS:
Here’s my official time breakdown:
Place: 12,495 (out of 37,000)
Official time: 4:00:56
Pace: 9:11/mile
Half marathon: 2:00:55

RUNDOWN:
The run went well. It was perfect weather. Cool, mid 40s to start, clear day and sunny. The first 10 miles were fine but I realize now I went a bit slow on them than I should have. Teresa was supposed to jump in at mile 11 but she wasn’t there! (I found out later that she couldn’t find where the mile 11 marker was and waited on Bedford and 5th, maybe 10 blocks from the marker. Oh well.) At the water stop around 70th street, some dude spilled a cup of gatorade on me from behind. He said sorry but that didn’t seem to make me feel better. I now looked like I had peed my pants, had yellow liquid running down my leg, which made my leg all sticky and on top of that, it was cold out so the liquid just made my leg even colder. Damn Gatorade. I managed to see my parents shortly after the incident at 1st Ave around 78th street. But I thought Jon was going to be with them because he wanted to jump in and run with me for a bit and I had told him to wait with them. I didn’t see him and scanned the next few blocks for him, but figured it was going to be another Teresa mishap and just focused on running. Out of nowhere, around 85th street, I hear Jon behind me say something. I can’t remember what it was, but I was elated he was there. He then ran with me for the next 8 miles, up until the last .2 miles where an organizer noticed he had no number and told him to get off the route. He was so helpful – I definitely would have slowed down if he weren’t running with me. Last year, my biggest mistake was stopping twice to walk a bit, thinking I wouldn’t lose much time. But this time, the last 4 miles I didn’t stop for water nor slowed down. I actually saw Teresa at Central Park South (about ½ mile from the finish), which was great. And I finished. Hopefully with a smile and a decent photo.

My nipples didn’t bleed, thank god, although I totally forgot to put Vaseline on them. I realized about 3 miles into the race that I forgot and it would probably be a problem, so I grabbed a stick of Vaseline from one of the medics on the sidelines.

The funniest part of the race was watching two guys dressed as the Blues Brothers take a piss on the side of the highway about a few miles into the race. They were standing there together, peeing on the cement on the side of the road. Hilarious.

Also hilarious is the video Jon took of me and him running. That is here for your viewing enjoyment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NsgziUyGaE



I had a slightly negative split – I ran the second half faster than my first half—which basically means I should have run a bit faster in the beginning. It’s a long race though, so it’s really tough to gauge how fast the first few miles should be.

When I finished, I waited with my dad, Jon and Doree for a while. My sister finished at 5:42 which is faster than her last marathon in Arizona. Pretty impressive since NY is a much tougher course (not flat at all) and she beat her last time by a lot.

BOBBY FLAY RUNS TOO:
My sister’s friend said something like “did you see bobby flay in the race,” which I thought was a joke, since I look like him. But she was totally serious. I said no.

Turns out, Bobby Flay actually runs the NYC marathon!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/468065p-393913c.html

This is funny for several reasons:
1) he is my doppelganger.
2) When I was on Iron Chef, Cat Cora (the female iron chef), would tell me I’m too skinny to be Bobby Flay. I told her it was because I’m training for a marathon.
3) I beat him by 10 minutes, but he’s older and wider than me so I probably should have beat him by more!

LANCE:
Lance just barely broke 3 hours and said it was the hardest thing he’s ever done. That’s a lot to say coming from him. Read what else he said. He’s cool even if he juiced up for this.

http://www.nycmarathon.org/news/story_27
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/468725p-394425c.html

COOL BAND:
There were some great bands that performed on the marathon route. Teresa said she really liked the one that she was standing near for a while waiting for me. I believe they are “Lewd Buddha,” a funk fusion band that rocks. I listened to some songs off their website and decided they were good enough to invest in. So I bought their album on CDBaby (one of the few albums I’ve actually purchased over the last 5 years) for $10 including shipping. I even emailed them to say they rocked. http://www.lewdbuddha.com/

I filmed Whitney's band Socially Irresponsible at Sin-E in the lower east side . It was a rocking show! but dont take my word for it. check out this youtube video i uploaded:

Nectar (Nathalie's band, top) and Socially Irresponsible (Whitney's band, bottom) played at Parkside Lounge in the Lower East Side. Nathalie was awesome (even with a sore throat!), as usual, along with her brother on guitar and her bassist. But unlike Nathalie, who is used to the dingy stages of bars, Whitney had never performed her songs in front of a live audience. She rocked out with her guitarist and gave a really amazing show. Very impressive. I'm looking forward to seeing her at Sine-E on wednesday when she'll rock out with her socks out along with her entire band. F-yeah!

Hit up "Flor De Sol" in Tribeca for Benny and Keryn's engagement party. So-so food (for the $50 price fix menu), but great atmosphere and very cool musical act towards the end.

Nelly Furtado's new album is absolutely amazing. I've just been listening to it over and over again, and so many of the songs are really incredible. She is quite talented.

check it out at www.allofmp3.com