Artist of the Week

Speaking of Blitzen Trapper (last post rant), they just recently released yet another album!  It is called American Goldwing and I downloaded it from iTunes.  It is also available on Amazon MP3, but iTunes offers a bonus track (and yet you pay two dollars more!)

American Goldwing Album Cover

It seems that Eric Earley and the boys have been quite busy.  It feels just not long ago they released the colossal work of art that Destroyer of the Void album was.  Following their trail, I had noticed that they had not stopped touring, yet somehow they found time to put out yet another compilation.

The first impression of the album: 7 stars out of 10.

The album seems to be a definitive separation of Blitzen Trapper from the rest of genres that they dabbled, and further into the hardcore prog rock that they emanated throughout their previous work.

I used to enjoy their folksy and acoustic pieces, and I miss them in this American Goldwing.

The album opens with the extravagant Might Find it Cheap, an epitome of prog rock with heavy riffing and an exquisite 12-string-acoustic lead that is bound to induce flashbacks of a golden era of rock and roll.

What seems to be the beacon piece of the album, Love the Way You Walk Away, is my favorite song on it.  It possesses certain elements of a country ballad, coming both from its vernacular as well as the rhythm guitar play. 

As with Destroyer of the Void, American Goldwing keeps a theme throughout the album, yet with each song paying an homage to a different substyle or a different artist.  For example, Your Crying Eyes (song 4), to me, resembles even some David Bowie sound.

The lyrical prowess of Earley is still heavily present, and quite enjoyable.

There are a few mellower songs on the album, but we are certainly not getting another acoustic, "murder ballad" such as Man Who Would Speak True (Destroyer of the Void), or Black River Killer (Furr).  And, we are certainly not getting a grandiose folksy piece such as Furr, or even Tailor. This is my personal bias.  If you are a die-hard prog rock fan, you will get more out of it.  I find it somewhat monotonous.

I would still recommend it and would buy it again, knowing what it was about.

On the State of Music

Recently, my favorite, local radio station had shut down.  It was called 101.9 WRXP, The Rock Experience, and it was headlined by Matt Pinfield, and his co-host Leslie Fram.

Matt Pinfield in Village Voice

For a while, this was my main source for obtaining new music.  Their show was promoting smaller bands from all over the country.  They would always have a guest band or artist that would perform in the studio.  We (my wife and I) learned of so many bands that we ended up going to see live in the area: Rocco DeLuca, Audrye sessions, etc.  They would also promote local music, featuring a weekly session called "Local Licks" and during this time they would play bands from the local, tri-state area.

Evidently, their show was not only about new R'N'R, new bands, local bands.  They played plenty of ol'school Rock and, with the musical historian Mr. Pinfield at the helm, their selection was exquisite.


Now that their gig is up and gone (Pinfield is back on MTV2 for 120 Minutes), I found myself in a very frustrating situation - here we are, in one of the most affluent metropolitan areas in The World, and I could not get a good radio station.  Well, this statement should be qualified.  I could not find a good station that goes out of their way to promote and preserve good music.  That sounds so pompous and esoteric, but take it as you may.
When I lived down in the Philly area, my favorite stations to listen were the College radios, especially the Ivy Leagues' - UPenn and Princeton.  Heck, I learned about Spoon on Princeton's 103.3.  Up here, I tuned into Columbia, Seton Hall, NYU, and found nothing appealing on the waves.  Nothing. 

After this debacle, I turned to my trusty Pandora.  Pandora had become my favorite means of obtaining new music.

However, by poking around the Interwebs, I found that there are still some good sources around the U.S. that invest themselves into preserving good music.

One such station is WNRN in Charlottesville, Virginia.  I subscribed to their YouTube channel after seeing many of my favorite bands and singer/songwriters featured in their studio (e.g. Delta Spirit, Blitzen Trapper, Ellis Paul, Jesse Malin,etc.)  I started checking out new artists I'd find there, and going out to see them live, when they come through the area.  I, thus, discovered really cool new music like Head And The Heart.

Now I get alerts about their uploads in my YouTube account and check them out religiously.  Great acts appear constantly and good music flows my way.


So, what the hell am I talking about here?  What is this rant?  What is this preservation and promotion of good music bullshit that I am spilling?
The way I see it, it is the modern-day radio DJ's responsibility to show us up and coming music acts, all entwined with reminiscing of what good music we've had in the past.  And these reminders should consist of playing the obscure pieces of great bands as well as the most widely known ones.  We've all heard "Like a Rolling Stone" on a radio show three bajillion times; play us something like "Talkin' New York" or "Masters of War".  Those lesser known pieces that defined the artist in his/her era what they really were.

Surely, the media landscape has changed so much in this digital revolution and we can all recur to Podcasts, Music genome projects, instead of our local radio - but the job of the DJ is still the same.

It should also be said that I tend to not discriminate against musical genres.  Though I have been lately, heavily leaning on the side of folk-rock, alt-folk, alt-bluegrass, indie-rock, indie-folk or whatever similar labels are applicable, I can enjoy anything from a good country song to a trance groove.

On another note, my cousin showed me this station in Louisville, KY that seems to be doing the exact same thing.

91.9FM, Louisville WFPK.  They stream and play a plethora of great rock, blues, indie music, folk. 


Why can Louisville, KY have a great station that will play Head and The Heart, and NYC does not???

I don't know who he is. I don't care about him or his urinal!

- My wife J, on Marcel Duchamp.


The two of us were in Manhattan one day, and we visited MoMa. We made it a point to see their house collection which is impressive, since it has been a while that we'd seen it.  I forgot the Marcel Duchamp pieces that they possessed.  I find them ingenious, though I understand that readymade art is an acquired taste for a visual art neophyte, much like myself.

Duchamp: Bicycle Wheel (MoMa)

After a few drinks and some music, I began some ramblings on Duchamp in our taxi ride home.  I elaborated with an inebriated, incoherent exploration of the genius behind Fountain (or whatever limited knowledge I had on the subject), and I kept insisting after perceiving mild indifference on her part, which pushed her to utter that epic quote above.  It really tickled me that she used the word "urinal", in her outburst, because of the simplicity that Duchamp achieves in the abstraction of the urinal itself.
The urinal's metamorphosis happens somewhere between our ears, without much intervention from the artist itself, but a careful placement of the title.

Duchamp: Fountain

The truth is, without even having studied nearly the amount of Art History that I wish I would have, I am certainly curious about Dada, in the most romantic way possible.  I am infatuated by its origins, and its evolution.

The movement started as a revolution in sub-bourgeois circles in central Europe, and it propagated to the US and Asia as well.  The rebellion against the bourgeois capitalism and its tendencies for arousing conflict pushed artists, bohemians, intellectuals to convene in small circles and share their satires and parodies in as many forms as possible.

Thank you, Duchamp, for giving us the Fountain to drink from, for many years to come.  We don't care about you, or your damn urinal.

Careless post

The biggest loss in humanity has to, unequivocally, be the onset of, or transition to, apathy.

Apathy, the way I process it, is much more wretched than hate.  There is a certain connotation of care in hate.  You hate, therefore you manifest a feeling.  Merely thinking about the person you hate evokes a feeling.  Yes, this feeling is hate, but feeling nonetheless.  Perhaps you just hate them because you wish they were different, perhaps they wronged you in a way, perhaps you were indoctrinated into the mentality of hatred by your lousy parents, or perhaps you were just born a hateful, fundamentalist, ultra-racist piece of shit.  However, you do harbor a feeling for a person.  And it is better than no feeling.  This, I call "care". 

Evidently, the subject of your hate would not agree with me and my, albeit arbitrary, assessment of which is better and which is worse.  Assuredly, I retain only a globalized, sociological view on this subject, for the purpose of this post. 

Recently, I had a person in my life (with whom I interact on a daily basis) transition almost the entire spectrum of this, so-called care.  I went from not knowing them to liking them, from liking them to disliking them then hating them, from hating them to loathing them, and ultimately to simply not caring at all about them, and largely ignoring them.

This actually made me sad.  No one had to announce this to me.  There were no fanfare, banners flying, no big announcement with an even bigger speech.  One day I just realized that the care in me, for this person, is gone.  They did and said things that I just ignored.  And this is a fellow human being, for crying out loud!  Yet, I could not bring it out of me to care anymore.  This person's presence evoked no feeling.

I am not going much further into the external circumstances that we were in, this person and I, but it suffices to say that those circumstances exhaustively aided this onset of apathy in me.

This is what I call the transition to apathy.

If you actually do not care for someone, initially, then I hold that there is no loss.   But if certain feeling for a human existed in you, but progressively evaporated and is no longer there, that is the loss. 

Where, do you think, did that feeling go? 

You may have heard me say in person, or read my ramblings on this blog, about how I hate people.  I truly do hate people.  I just wish they weren’t the dumbfuck sheep that they are.  Just walking around is one disappointment after another, seeing the ridiculous things that we do without putting half a mind to our everyday actions.  One slip-up and I hate you, yep.

However, as an individual whose path I have not yet crossed, upon the initial meet-and-greet, I always give one the benefit of the doubt.  In my mind, based on your behavior, you might, then, move in either direction – I might like you or dislike you.  But now I >>know<< you and I certainly have a feeling for you.

What must transpire between us for me to lose that feeling?

And that is merely speaking about those we know.  What of those we do not know at all?  Where does the feeling begin?  Does it begin with apathy or does it begin lopsided on some scale of care?

A couple of fundamentalists flew two planes into 3000 innocent people.  Do you not loathe them?  Hundreds of thousands of Somalis are suffering under famine and villainous paramilitary groups.  Do you not sympathize?  We’ve never even met any of these multitudes and multitudes of people, yet somehow they evoke feelings in us.  How does it happen that we grow apathetic, then?  How does one say “I just simply don’t give two shits about that?”

Human loss, that is.  

Getting Schooled

I signed up for a Songwriting class. I have been dabbling in this for too long with no aim and I decided that it would finally be reasonable to get some direction, or expert advice, or even just plain old tools to add to my arsenal.

I plan on blogging about it to document my experience. I will post here my weekly findings and other things related to it, as I do my homework assignments, think about what we learned, etc.

I signed up with Gotham Writers Workshop, a community of educators in creative writing of all styles.

I am attending a 10-week long course of 3-hour classes running once a week. My classes are on Wednesdays and they have a parallel course running on Tuesdays.

The first class was this past Wednesday.

The teacher is great. I tend to be very judgmental of educators in general. Subconsciously, I have found myself always trying to discredit them. It's sort of a defense mechanism built into us – if you are to participate in my edification, what makes you think you are qualified? Once they pass that barrier of mine, they are the Law, and I tend to absorb their every word.

I won't disclose the name of my instructor, because I didn't really consult with him. He has decades of experience in the business. He has written for all sorts of singers – from R&B to country, and anything in between; for film, for commercials, for pro-bono purposes, for pretty much everything. He has written hits for Gloria Gaynor, and Alan Jackson and he is currently signed as a songwriter for BMG. He has a cool dude aura about him, but he speaks very articulately and eloquently, utilizing a very rich vocabulary, which usually appeals to me.

The first class was good. I was twelve minutes late, no big surprise there. We are eight or nine students in a small room. It is very personal. I missed the introductions. I heard the teacher later say that we have a lot of musicians in the room. I am curious about who plays what.
The class was mostly about general introduction and history of songwriting in America. Then we went into most common structures of songs (particularly popular songs) and towards the end we touched upon ideas of initiating the lyric writing.

I expected that a lot of the initial material was going to be a refresh for me, since I've read some Rikky Rooksby books, and similar material from the Internet and other sources. However, I got from the class exactly what I expected: among the piles of repeat material, I learned some gems of very interesting, basic songwriting knowledge, that was very new to me. This, in and of itself, is already worth it all.

If I were to find one downside to it all, it would have to be the extensive listening of popular songs, that the teacher enforces in order for us to recognize the patterns and structures that he teaches.
I am not yet sure that this is a true flaw. I will wait to see if it is really bothersome or not. We do have three hours in this class, every week, so I seriously doubt it.

One interesting find on a personal note is – although I generally stay away from popular music and tend to not believe that the commercially-acceptable patterns (in any genre of art) are nourishing to artistry - I accepted the fact that some popular patterns taught are necessary. In music, an artist has a mere few minutes to capture a listeners attention, and convey a message. Our minds, as listeners, have simply been programmed over the years to recognize patterns that have been ingrained in us and are more pleasing, recognizable, and we tend to favor them. With this, I agree. As much as we would all like to make our art be unique and stand out, there is also the duty that we have, that is: communicate your message.

We have some homework to do.
We have to: a) write no less than two verses of a twelve-bar blues song; b) write two or three (no more, no less) titles for future songs – these titles must be accompanied by a paragraph, each, explaining what the concept of the song is. The blues song verses can be just recited, can be sung, can be sung along to an accompanying instrument, or can be even pre-recorded and turned in to the teacher to play in class.
It is Saturday now, and the homework must be ready on Wednesday. I have some ideas for the blues song, but nothing concrete. I will use some time right now, and get started.

So far, I'm happy with this class.

Formulate Your Thoughts

I somehow crawled up into some sort of wellness blog limbo. 

By following comments, and their respective owners, from a friend's blog, I found my way to a whole world of self-proclaimed savants of mental, physical, and spiritual well being. 

I must admit that I found some inspiring blog posts and inspiring personalities.  However, one pet peeve that got down to my subcutaneous tissues is the formulated post title.

"Seven Ways to Covet Love Today" 

"3 Amazing Ways Sorrow Can Fulfill You"

"57 Angles to Lay a Brick"

"11 Ways to Wax a Dolphin"




Evidently, these titles above are fictitious.  But, what is it that makes people believe that their writing will be more attractive if they apply this formula to their titles?  Is it those lame, self-improvement books, the likes of which plague the shelves of Borders?

One of those lame books, I am reading right now.  Perhaps therein lies my real frustration.

And you shall rest warm...

The storm was escorted by her entourage of clouds.  The remaining vision at the dusk of Sunday was simply stunning.  The skies got scrubbed and a new, fresh coat painted.

While it was drying, I had to snap a picture.

Hypnotizing, isn't it?

Dilated hurricane pupils

As we expected, Irene was a bit of a let-down (no, we are not masochistic or ill-wishing, or jinxing, or nothing of sorts).  She dissipated into a tropical storm as she reached the NYC area.

We really did not feel much in our apartment.  The night was fairly calm. 

In the morning, we woke up in the eye of the, then, tropical storm.  It sped up significantly and moved out of the area within an hour.  We let the rain subside before heading out to assess some of the damage. 

What we felt was not indicative of what it left behind.

However, what it harmed in Jersey City was nothing close to what it caused in other areas.  Here are some examples.

A knocked down tree ripped a fence of the Bergen Light Rail.

This is one of the many drains on a street intersection.  It is not doing its job well because the entire city drain system was overwhelmed.  Basically, we cannot drain the water in the streets if the drains are flooded.













Van Worst Park got smashed up a bit.  It is a miniature park.  There is debris all over the ground and the city blocked it off.


















One of the more interesting things to see is how the owners and inhabitants of brownstone-style buildings cope with the flooding.  The basements of these 4- or 5-story buildings imperatively flood when a rain snout passes through.

It seems that most of them are equipped with sump pumps and they begin dumping water as soon as they can.  Some have provisional piping for this temporary use, yet, some others have it built into their house entrance.

You cannot gather this from the pictures, but that water is gushing out aggressively. 

And after all that, nothing really interesting to add, but plenty of street flooding. 

Jersey City downtown has intersections that are like little pockets where flood waters tend to gather.










More flooding.
















And yet, more flooding.

This is Choo's old block.  Some poor car got stuck in the flood there.  Every building on this block got the basement flooded and they are dumping water on the street.








Zoom on the stranded car.  JC's finest are around.














One of the things on the positive side of the tale, that I particularly enjoy much, is the solidarity that comes out of people, in the light of a disaster. 

We saw people crawl out to the streets immediately after the rain stopped.  People gathered on street corners, people gathered in front of houses.  People helped people move debris, move the water, and people talked.  Behind the curtain of the remaining wind howl, chatter could be heard everywhere we went. 

Down the street, in Hoboken, a huge tree fell down onto the street.  In Long Island, more of the same, and much more flooding than here.  Somewhere, further North, a family had to be rescued from their own home.


Irene, August of 2011, people will talk about her.

The Harm Before The Storm...

Mass panic attack makes me laugh.

I cannot help this, it is a phenomenon of sorts.  For me.

Irene is at the door steps.  She is knocking.  She sent people into a shopping frenzy.  Stores ran out of batteries, flashlights, water.  They ran out of water.  
THEY FUCKIN' RAN OUT OF WATER.  I should come back to that some other time. 

They also hiked up the prices.  I paid $2.59 for a lame 1" candle.  J doesn't know yet, she'd throw a fit.

Back to the mass panic.

Things tend to slow down for me in these hectic scenarios.  As much as I hate people, I love watching people.  Oh, how I hate people. 

I am in the supermarket.  Shoppers scurry around paying no heed to others' faces.  They are on dire scavenger hunts for whatever it is that the store currently doesn't carry any more.  Outside, it is a sunny, warm, fading-summer day.  It speaks naught of the foreboding of the storm to come.  For that, you have to come into this supermarket.  Inside, you find a demonstration of the entropy theory with people for matter.  That's all we are.  Wasted heat.

People push through like a bee hive.  They are piled on top of each other.  Hearbeats are a-racin'.  Breaths grow shorter.  My claustrophobia is starting to kick. 
I am waiting in the neverending, serpent line now.  The back of my knee gets checked by someone's shopping basket, and the stranger is ten feet away by the time he utters the unwilling "Sorry".  I absorb the man in front of me and his cart heaping with stuff as I glance up to confirm that this, indeed, is the express lane with twelve items maximum.  What appears to be his daughter comes to him and utters something in Korean, all out of which I grasp only "Express!"  He looks around beffudled, searching for the mysterious Express sign.  I don't believe he still understood it.  An old Korean man, in a new Korean market.  Irene, you wretched succubus! 

I have been significantly desensitized toward disaster and panic.  Perhaps it's a number that War pulled on my psyche, perhaps I can tactically predict that I can handle a situation in an instant, but it is simply a disconcerting lack of care, and that's what it is. 

Here I get to the intent of this post.  There is a dimension of my ego that has gotten its jollies by always purposely inviting chaos into my everyday life.  Toyed with risk in most common situations.  I am not talking about taking up bungee jumping.  I am talking about making your car hydroplane.  I am talking about allowing yourself to be down and out.  There is an eerily playful aspect to knowing whether you could handle a situation, and how you would handle it.  It's like Kramer pushing the gas tank beyond "E". 

I am, obviously, not unique in this respect.  Men tend to have this quality more than women, as a stereotype. 

This, to me, comes confusingly coupled with sheer laziness.  I know I am lazy and everyone close to me knows it.  My mind is always working to find the optimal shortcut for carrying out a task - try to do it smarter, not harder.
So, you see, it is a vicious cycle.  When I've found myself in risky situations, is it because I am lazy or because I am not worried and believe that I can tactically handle that situation?  Consequently, with each iteration, does it make me worry even less, because now I have seen the most stress that I could see?


The panic that Irene caused reminds me of that day that I was sitting in the conference room with some colleagues and a manager stormed in, shouting "Someone just fucking flew a plane into World Trade Center", as he wielded the remote control, turning on the News.  As the room filled up with people, faces magnetically turned toward that television set.  They were all observing the horrors, I was only observing them.  Yeah, I love watching people.  You could see all five stages of grief pass over their faces like a shadow.  No one noticed that I am not looking at the TV.  I already made up my mind about what the TV was going to say, the moment I saw the thick, black smoke gushing out of the tower.  It wasn't until an hour afterward, that my boss approached me, saying "Hey how was all this for you?  You must have seen all this since you've seen war." I explained to him, then, my reaction to all of it.  And how I watched him and his open mouth.



Irene does not worry me. 

We can still see the statue.  The bridge is harder to see.  On a good day, you can see for miles.  For miles.

Somewhere, out there, Irene is brewing its ploy.  Bring it, you bitch!

Winning!

It is the bane of the male existence.  It is what builds countries and destroys them at the same time.  It is testosterone.  It is within all of us.  How do we measure this thing?  The "eye of the tiger".  Sizing your opponent.

Further, how about deciding when you win?

Some people simply draw a joy from running their perceived opponents into the ground.  They cannot halt their onslaught until they feel that the opponent is completely emasculated and has no chance of contriving a formidable comeback in a reasonable amount of time.  They are Hannibal.  They levelled Carthage so that it cannot flourish again.  They pity the dead and scoff at the resistance.

Then, there is another school of thought of winning.   There are winners that knock the enemy down to its knees just to be able to rebuild them back again.  It's like carving the twig into a toothpick.  It's wearing the sweater down to its last thread, then rolling it back into a ball of yarn.  The hat tip comes when the enemy is exsanguinating, but not dead yet.  And they give him a hand.

I am neither one of those.  If I were to apply my mindset to that of winning, here is where it would fall, more or less.  I am a lazy winner.  Perchance, I simply self-indulge in victory a wee bit early.  I am the victor to whom it suffices to see the gums of its opponent's jowls, the tear in the eye, see the lip quiver, see the hesitation in their voice.  If I get the faintest symptom that my opponent has recognized defeat, I sheathe mine blade.  I draw no particular satisfaction of seeing my challenger's agony.  I am simple.  I just seek a nod.  A tail fold back between the legs.  That is all.  That's my recognition.

Perhaps it all comes back to being a pacifist at heart.  Perhaps it all, also, comes inherently coupled with the mindset of always carefully choosing an adequately clever rival.  I don't know how much I care to defeat the Attila's and the Hannibal's of the world.  They cannot learn from it.  Perhaps Hannibal Lecter.  But not Hannibal, the original one.  Is it all about learning?

Sipping ourselves into pixelated nostalgia

Jacinta and I checked out Barcade last night.

We heard the rumor from the local eccentrics that it opened with quite a storm.  Allegedly, people could not get in, they were lining up in the street, it was crowded and uncomfortable, and there was plenty of immaturity in the crowd.  Allegedly.

So we had decided to let it go through its beta phase.  We had tons of fun last night.

Namely, the Barcade concept started in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY.  The place was opened to cater to the hipster, W-burg scene (craft beer, nostalgia arcade, come on!)

The place is very spacious and open.  Chairs and tables are spread out in a beergarden-like, "community" fashion - large tables where groups are to share space and interact.  The walls are lined with vintage arcade machines.  The bar has 20-30 craft beers on tap, mostly american beers.  I did not take photos, but here are some of their own:

We arrived around 7:30.  We sat down and we were quite cozy.  The crowd around us was comfy, unobtrusive.  The music was a bit too loud, and it got louder as the night went on.  I tried the Avery Reverend, which is a Belgian, Quadrupel-Ale style beer, from Colorado.  It is a formidable Quad.  I tried a few more, such as the Slyfox Royal Weisse, before I ventured into the Weyerbacher Hops Infusion in a Cask.

I had been skeptical about cask ale for some time, especially because most American cask brewers tend to do hop-heavy beers in cask, and I am not a hop fan.  However, much to my surprise the Hops Infusion (which I've had in a bottle and regular keg, before) was quite balanced with the hoppinness.  Served warm, the flowery aroma of the hops dissipates softly up the palate and through the nose.

J, not being a beer person, stuck to vodka-seltzers.  Being objective, I'd have to admit that I wish the place would cater more for non-beer clientele, perhaps with a more diverse wine selection.  I wouldn't request anything great, but all we saw were three wine bottles at the butt end of the bar, standing there open for who-knows-how-long.

We tried playing some Galaga, but neither of us was a Galaga person.  We opted for some games that we could play 2-Player.  Two that hold special places in my heart were Golden Axe and Contra.

Golden Axe quarter intake was broken so we spent most of our quarters on Contra.

All in all, a good spot - the likes of which Jersey City needs more, especially on Newark Avenue.

Ghosts of towns past

This past weekend we were invited to spend it with our colleague Srdjan, and his family, in Asbury Park, NJ.

The entire weekend I felt completely out of place due to my lack of lore about this town.  It is an abashing finding to realize that we have lived in New Jersey for so many years and have no real knowledge of what Asbury Park hath been, in different stages of its turbulent life.

Luckily, both our hosts as well as my good friend Paul knew quite a bit of the history of this town.  Namely, both Paul and his wife, Marcia, had grown up a good part of their respective childhoods not far from the town. They have seen its decrepit state first-hand, and then learned of years past from tales of older generations.

I will begin this by stating the most important of thoughts, before I lose it.  Whatever Asbury Park may have been at any other, given, era, it is certainly not it now.  This came as an exponential amplification to my amazement with this town.  As a first encounter with it, I was in deep disbelief that we could find such a gem at only an hour's drive from our house.  Then, learning the baffling past, and the tales that these old streets might tell, it intensified my liking for it to a level that is hard to describe here.


Back to what we found there...

Firstly, Srdjan welcomed us to his magnificent duplex where his brother and a friend (Bojan, and Zoran) were preparing some pljeskavice.  His condo is truly marvelous. 
We spent a wonderful afternoon on his balcony, sharing beer lavishly with our new friends, and exchanging stories of each one's lives as the sunset bathed us with crimsons and chimney reds.  When Bojan finished his meat masterpiece, we all recharged.  He even dared to bring somun.  Oh, cursed nostalgia!  How heavy your blade!   
As the dark veil came over the ocean, we were depleting our deposits of effervescent conversation-lubricant.  Just in time, some fireworks lit up the sky from a handful of miles away.  Paul guessed that it might have been Belmawr.  They lasted for over a half an hour.  The night was brewing an early potential of being magical.

With meat and carbs still in our esophagi, and out of beer, our clock rang the time called "time to hit the town".
We hit the streets.

The charm or downtown Asbury Park, at night, came to shine.  We visited several places that served good beer and good food.  Srdjan, being a foodie (besides his wife, Annette, being a 5-star restaurant chef) knows the who is who of the local gastronomy scene. At the first place we went, the owner was still in the midst of opening the establishment.  The official outside banner had not, yet, been propped.  In its stead, a plastic tarp hung with the logo of the place.  The owner came out to shake hands with Srdjan.  Then he tucked himself behind the swinging door of the kitchen, just to come out 5 minutes later with a large oval plate with a heaping pile of smoked meat.  He dropped the plate on the bar in the middle of our seven-member party and welcomed us to a treat on the house.  The hospitality!  The meat turned out to be short-rib meat smoked for sixteen hours straight.  Succulent is an adjective that falls short of how delicious this meat just was.

We kept hopping door-to-door in a whirlwind of beer, meat, conversations, faces, laughs.  Whenever our pint glasses were reaching bottoms, Srdjan would raise his both arms and point his fingers towards the door.  It all became a blur.  In my inebriated state it became very difficult to process this quantity of information.  I cannot recall names of establishments, but perhaps one or two.  It all became some euphoric nirvana.  I just remember that the overall feeling was very cozy, with hipster characters surrounding us.  I did not feel threatened at any point in time, something that is an easy pitfall of any town's night scene.   Instead, we painted the night with craft, draught beer like Chimay and Stone IPA.  Asbury Park has all the makings of awesome.


We closed the party at Bond Street Bar.  I should have mentioned that Srdjan had bragged about the burger at this place, earlier.  He called it the best burger in the World.  He also stated that Annette, with all her culinary knowledge and prowess, loves this burger more than many.  I thought he built it up too much.  The truth is: he couldn't build it up enough.  When Srdjan mentioned to the bartender that we were looking for some burgers, the bartender said the kitchen is closed.  Almost contiguously, the chef came out of the kitchen, recognized Srdjan and came to shake hands with him.  He did not want to hear it, he quickly went back and cooked us the best burgers that I had in a long time.  Sincerely, very few burgers compare to what this guy cooks. A patty of quality beef and perfect seasoning is smothered in cheese and mushrooms.  I just made my mouth water typing this paragraph.
Jacinta and I kept our own conversation by the bar as the rest of the group played some shuffleboard.  What a perfect way to wrap up our party.

Back at Srdjan's place, Paul and I picked up the guitars.  Srdjan took the tambourine.  We strummed some classic tunes for a bit.  I was too drunk to carry on, so Paul had the torch.  Good times.

I wanted to see the sunrise.  Srdjan said he will walk Moby, before 9AM because no dogs are allowed at that time, onward.  I made a promise that I would join him.

------


In the morning, I failed the keep my promise.  Surprise, surprise!  The beds were very comfortable and we slept in.  I went downstairs and drank 5 glasses of water trying to get back to my senses.  The house was quiet.  Little did I know that the Serbian contingent had already left for coffee.

That day we were joined by Annette and the lovely Mia, their daughter.  We hit the beach right away.  Much to my (and apparently, everyone else's) surprise, this beach is splendid! 

Our biggest regret of the weekend was to not bring the camera or to walk around with our iPhones, to be able to take photos.

At the beach, Paul began telling us the tales of this town.  It seems that, chronologically, Asbury Park went from being a ritzy weekend destination, pumped with attractions, to being an abandoned lot that opportunistic rock-and-rollers sought to raise noise, to just being an abandoned plot, then to (again) being a wonderful weekend spot.  This chronology, evidently, spans multiple decades.

Walking around the boardwalk in daylight, it is still evident that this town has seen some low times.  Most of the places on the boardwalk are sporting their fresh coats of paint, but there are still some flagships in town that paint a different picture.  The outer shell of the casino is still so horridly dilapidated that the Casino itself looks like it's feeling out of place and wants to just pick up and walk away from it all.  The Convention Center is halfway renovated, but its walls still tell tales of sumptuousness, decadence, atrophy, then putrescence. 

Srdjan explained some of the struggles that the new developers have with the town and its government.  Local corruption is only a speculation on my part, but one that Jersey is quite comfortable with. 

Paul later showed us pictures of Asbury Park from seven years ago.  I asked him for copies.  It is not recognizable.  The decrepit buildings offer a post-apocalyptic impression, to the extent that it's laughable.  It just didn't belong on a U.S. coast.  The lonesome boardwalk longed for the merry shuffle of some flip-flops.  It was a Sunday and Paul and Marcia were the only people there.

Coming back to our Sunday, we turned ourselves into kids in some tall waves, then caught a bite and a PBR with Srdjan at a bar that opened inside of the Convention Center.  We tried to get into the Watermark, the Wonder Bar, and they both had private parties.  Later, Srdjan found out that the Boss had played an impromptu 45-minute set at the Wonder Bar that night.  Wretched fate!

We ended up at an opening of a beer hall, right behind Stone Pony.  It is called Porta National Park.  Annette and Mia also re-joined us there after Mia's nap, and we met some more of their local friends.  The place has bocce ball and they just installed two brick ovens so they were serving free pizza to all the tables.  We washed it down with some Sam Adams Summer Ale and the girls played bocce.  We welcomed the evening there, by listening to a blues jam band bust out some of Jimi's finest tunes, and drinking and conversing with all the friends, new and old.

We closed our weekend by going for another BSB burger, and then some gelato. 

I think Jacinta summed it up the best, while we were at the beach, when she said: "I feel like we went away somewhere, for a weekend vacation!"  It is true.  At just an hour away, Asbury Park takes you many, many miles further, and you let loose.

We can't wait to go back.

I also wish I brought G here instead of Coney Island.  Oh well, we know for next time someone is visiting.

It's about plankin' time!

I broke down and got meself a blog.

After many discussions with other interesting bloggers, such as my friend Raam, my interest kept growing.  Perhaps more for the reasons of solidifying my life's and thoughts' posterity than a mere thought that someone out there in The Cloud could potentially find my blabber remotely interesting.  Intently self-induced flashbacks can be more appealing than those incidental ones.

After all that, the fun events of this past weekend pushed me to document a few wedges of this pie of events.

Let me tell you a bit about all that...

It all started with my cousin Dragan coming to visit me from Louisville, KY.  He flew into LGA about 6 hours delayed (courtesy of American Airlines, but that's another story of itself).  As soon as we picked him up, we dropped J off at home and the two of us hit the town.  It started off by drinking at Fat Cat.  It ended by drinking at Fat Cat.  We drowned our airline anguish in some Allagash Tripel.  Listened to two jazz quartets, and some randoms.  Played a bit of ping-pong, drank some more Tripel.  Got wasted quickly.  On our way to get some falafel, we couldn't help but notice this mannequin in a store window, that displayed disturbingly disproportionate nipples, so a picture was in order. 

We closed the night by relaxing at Fat Cat until the buzz wore off, then finally made it back to Jersey City around 4AM.



The next day it took us a while to get up, but we started off with a long walk into Liberty State Park.  Jacinta was at work and we walked to sweat out the hangover.  G posed for some digital memories.

It's amazing what an iPhone camera can do.  So we drank a few beers and ate lunch in JC, then headed off to Williamsburg.  We were to hang out until Jacinta came out of work, and then we were all to go to some music venues.  We passed the Brooklyn Brewery.

G said I resembled a "retarded squirrel".  I told him that it's by design.  Traces of alcohol effects are notable on both of our faces, of course.
We pounded a few brews around W-burg before J came to meet us.  Then we all ate, did a shot, and headed to watch some bands in a quasi-underground venue, curated for all of us by Todd P (if you've never been to one of his parties, you are missing out).  The abandoned warehouse did not breathe well, so after a half an hour, the place smelled like humanity.  The bands rocked it, I believe Beach House was one of them.  I also believe it was the lead singer of Beach House that said "It is like performing a gig in a sauna!"
The abundance of sweat, whether from your own body or someone else's, as well as the fact that it felt like the average age was half of ours, we left the Burg and headed back into the Village.  Caught some blues acts, got more falafel and headed home to devour it.

This is where all the true trouble of this weekend begins.
Namely, on our way home, in the cab... the screen in the cab showed a bit from Jimmy Kimmel Live, where Rosario Dawson did an impromptu plank on Kimmel's desk.  My cohorts, not knowing what it was all about, required my Meme expertise to do a thorough explanation of it (*brush shoulder*).  We all started falling asleep in the cab.

After we got home and refueled with the marvels of the garbanzo bean, all of us got a good boost of energy.  Jacinta got it in her head that she wanted to plank (don't forget she just learned the term all of 20 minutes ago, that is how awesome the mindfuck effect of the cognizance of the plank is).

Instantly, without much hesitation all three of us got into our own separate mind trips of where, in the house, the best plank would be.  I thought the loveseat was a formidable opponent, J thought the combination of the two sofas gave for a more interesting spot, and G... well... G... hhhmmmm.
Now, I don't know how exactly to explain this, but G got it in his head that the perfect plank involved the actor to make effective use of their face, for the said plank, instead of another more convenient part of the upper body.  The result caused much amusement, as one may expect.  See for yourself...

 WTF?

That cannot be comfortable!

This is my attempt:

 And J's:

  

G, then, observing the potential comfort of the sofa, agreed that he should make an attempt there as well.

 

WTF WITH THE FACE AGAIN, FFS???  You look like an angry gopher, trying to dig into the couch.

 

 Epic fail.

That might just be the complete opposite of a plank.


Here is J on the bar stool:

That concluded Saturday night, actually at 6AM Sunday morning.  We woke up really late Sunday and Jacinta did not have to go to work.  We were up for more live music.  However, it was sunset before we even got ready to go.  Here is a pic (iPhone again... amazing!)

Our favorite Italian restaurant in the Village, Malatesta, had just opened a second, "sister" joint called Malaparte.  We ordered pizza and seafood pasta there.  The overall feel of the restaurant, including the food, fell just short of its big brother.  Oh well...  We headed into the Bitter End to watch some acts.  I never thought I would say this, but I saw the best ever keytar player that night: Mr. Delmar Brown.  This cat was an entertainer in his blood.  If George Clinton, Jimi Hendrix, and James Brown had a kid, it still wouldn't have been as cool as Delmar Brown.  

Bitter End then opened the night to an open jam.  If you've never seen that open jam, it is lead by Mark Greenberg, and I highly recommend it.  Some real talent shows up there.  If there were only a way they could keep the enthusiasts (who want to use the jam band as their own backyard karaoke) off the stage, it would be even more enjoyable.  But that's just some of my own rant there. 

Back to the good stuff... after Bitter End, the planking bug bites again.  It's like an instant euphoria that engulfs you and reverts you back to an infant stage.  This time it hits us right on Bleecker Street.  Here are some captures.

I think G completely redeemed himself with this photo above.  It's just epic.  He's perfectly parallel to the stairs and the colors just came out beautifully.  Also sporting the cool new kickers acquired earlier.  I think the planking Gods wanted to give him his chance of redemption, for last night.

Another night that ends after 5AM.

Besides my cousin visiting for the weekend, it was also the last weekend our buddy Choo was in town.  He's leaving us for greener pastures (literally, bumfuck Wyoming), and we were all a little down about it.  We spent the day in Coney Island (bad choice - hotdog eating contest on 4th July).  

At night, we made another run for the city.  This time we were to conquer LES.  It became quickly evident that live gigs were not so popular on the same eve that the largest Fireworks Show is.  Struggling to find live acts, we strutted our way down to Arlene's Grocery.  It is one of my favorite places around.  Always good music, always good beer and bourbon, and never a dull moment.  We caught the butt end of some band from down south's gig.  They rocked it.  Then, much to my surprise, we got to see the Arlene's Famous Rock and Roll Karaoke.  Some of us contemplated signing up, and I am glad we didn't.  Incredible singers lined themselves up on stage one after another, singing R'n'R classics that we could all sing along.  I was appalled at the amount of talent around.  

However, towards the end of the show, that itching got my legs twitching again, and quicker than I could believe myself, I found my body propped up on top of the back rests of two bar stools.

My co-conspirators saw immediately what time it was and wasted no time in pulling their snappy phones and cameras:

Dragan agreed that it was a really good spot, and he got a better shot - immortalizing Arlene's Grocery in our memories:

The funny part was that I don't think anyone in the joint even noticed us planking in the middle of it.  

Now the interesting part begins.  We have a new recruit!  Choo is joining us in our infantile endeavors and he must be broken in.  He begins by rejecting the idea at Arlene's, but curiosity was oozing out of his eyes.  We could smell the blood.  However, a celebration of the planks was in order, so here is a nice mugshot.  Jacinta snapped it so she is not in the pic.

It almost looks like a random girl in a bikini is hanging out with us.

It didn't take anything for Choo to fall prey to the magic of the plank.  As soon as we exited the joint, we started talking him into planking a newspaper box.  Choo replies "No, I wanna plank the chair", pointing somewhere across the street.  Surely enough, there is a random office chair in the middle of Ludlow Street.  So there he went...

From that point on, our planking onslaught took charge through LES, East Village and who knows where else.  We loaded ourselves with enough bourbon, beer, and vodka-seltzer that it all became one, big, suspended blur.

Here is some of what all we could capture.

Choo?   On a TV set in the garbage?  Epic, IMHO.

 Well at least he's not using his forehead.


Double- and triple-planks! 

 An assisted plank is still a plank!  If you notice, that's pretty high for her, it is above the height of my head!

  

After this admirable feat of Dragan's to climb up to the traffic signs, two guys noticed us and one of them queries: "Are you guys planking???"  Nothing like meeting strangers over some common ground, at 2AM, while completely wasted. We talked our new friend into joining us for a good plank like that.  Here is his attempt. 

  

 

 Good job, brother.

Finally, after all this nonsense, we could not end the weekend without attempting the plank of Choo on top of my and G's heads.  That didn't work out quite well, but here is a capture of the attempt.

 

Well there it is.  It's hard to recover from all the liquor and all the bruises from planking (I am seriously too old for this shit).  

Now you know how to plank around NYC.  Let me see your planks!