"The truth is usually just an excuse for lack of imagination."

Bands whose music I like a lot because of the great drumming:

Sleater Kinney

Dinosaur Jr.

Blonde Redhead

LoveLikeFire

The National

Oneida

Wolf Parade

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My guitar playlist is now 39 minutes long. I want to make it longer.

Pearl Jam - Love Boat Captain
Eels - Beginner's Luck
Nicole Atkins - Maybe Tonight
Pearl Jam - Life Wasted
Pearl Jam - Wishlist
Pearl Jam - World Wide Suicide
Oasis - Don't look back in anger
Metric - Help I'm Alive
Eels - My Timing is Off
Metric - Sick muse

I've increased my body movement a lot since I began playing guitar. I now somewhat fling my arm around when I strum in a way that somewhat resembles the way Pete Townshend does...but it looks more like Carrie Brownstein's (Sleater-kinney). I sometimes have movements that resemble Stone Gossard's (Pearl Jam)- particularly when I am really digging a song and I do that head-bobbing thing he does. Sometimes I am as energetic as John Entwistle would be when he played any Who song.

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Lately I've been finding a ton of joy from just playing guitar. I know I couldn't make it professionally...maybe some coffee money while in a park and accompanied with a friend...but I have never seriously considered making a band just for the respite more than I have these last 30 days.

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In the last two weeks I have committed myself to doing covers to songs I really enjoy. They all seem to share a theme. Only two of them have tabs available. The others I will come up with something that sounds nice and mixes well with the lyrics. I plan to start forming melodies and printing the lyrics this Thanksgiving break. I will begin to record, edit and post them somewhere online during the Xmas break.

I already have the album cover.

I have no clue how...but my ProCo RAT 2 (made in USA model...no longer available to purchase) is somehow working again. I was really teary a few months ago when it stopped working but now it works again. I tested Saturday evening because I began to play guitar again and I was about to yell in happiness at the sound that came out of that thing.

Oddly enough...my Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo is not working right. The switch in this pedal seems like it is dirty, loose or somehow worn. I'll clean it up sometime later. I'd rather have the tremolo f-up than the RAT because it is just easier to replace and much cheaper too.

I need to buy a new pack of 9V batteries at some point and maybe a new jumper cable for the pedals of better quality than radioshack.

I'm so damn ecstatic!

I was cutting through the big fields near my house this evening to get home. Well, I was about to anyway. I stopped before the grass and rolled up my pant legs to avoid them getting wet in the grass. I saw a dog some 20 ft from me without a leash or owner. It looked at me too and I thought to myself: "Be cool man be cool and he'll do nothing". So I began to move like I normally do and suddenly I feel a bump on my calves. The dog was jumping up and down at me. It was sort of friendly but it also used its teeth. I started making soothing sounds and tried to keep walking away but it kept circling and jumping at me. I was also afraid that it was abandoned and I thought of how I could help it. It started using a lot of his teeth at this point so I had to distract it with my umbrella...it started play biting that but it also liked my right arm -.- Fortunately, the owner was somewhere and whistling and after about 5 mins. of the guy whistling (I could not see the owner or else id have walked toward him) the dog finally ran a huge circle around the field and returned to the owner.

All that time, in my head I was thinking: Okay how do I social work my way out of this one. I was thinking of how I would deal with potentially violent clients. Then I realized, "Dude this is a dog."

I had forgotten how good old school batman and even the Batman Beyond cartoon series were. I watched a few episodes on JTV and was quite surprised how well written the episodes were and how in depth they (mostly the Batman series)went into exploring human nature.

I went to play racquetball for the first time since last Monday morning.

I finally learned to get a good grip on the racquet and can now do some strong serves. Youtube videos didn't help to get that grip.

At some point the ball hit me in the leg really hard. The sting felt kind of good.

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I saw three military grade helicopters the other day. This morning I saw another one and this time I could make out the sniper's body sitting on the doorway. The chopper was too far for me to make out the gun without any visual aids.

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Maybe I should "check out" the counseling center.

Yesterday afternoon I went to vote in the Primaries. I was reading the Times this morning and they mentioned that Voter turnout was the lowest in history since world war 2. WW2? Really? damn...I can't believe that such a low number turned out even though we aren't in a full blown war and draft is in place.

Where the hell were diddy and Bono to tell us to rock the vote or die?

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I really apathetic toward William C. Thomson. But I guess anyone, including a coat hanger, would be better than emperor blombie.

I REALLLY can't believe that the low turnout of votes will result in 2 runoffs in NYC this september 29. I don't think I have ever seen a runoff before. wow...simply wow.

I'm actually surprised Daniel Dromm won the city council seat for district 25. He ousted Helen Sears who wore that hat for what feels like a decade. I read a bit of his profile last night and it turns out he is a NYC public school teacher. I think he pulled the largest upset this district has ever seen.

I'm looking at the NY 1 primary election results for all of NYC and I am getting depressed at the numbers...I'm just going to stop viewing it.

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I've been going to play racquetball since Sunday and I love that sport. I have no access to a real rac court so i'm using one of the many handball courts NYC public parks offer. I think I rather love standing on my toes and running off to hit a wild ball I hit against the wall.

I didn't go play this morning because of the rain. I don't think I should risk getting cholera or tuberculosis right before I get a TB test.

more later...now I got to get ready for my second day of fieldwork...definitely more on that later.

I officially state my endorsement for John Liu for NYC Comptroller. As council member for District 20 of Queens, he bought a lot of positive change to the Flushing area. I laugh at Crooklyn's David Yassky's ads on how he will make a website with the budget posted...save some money on the NYC servers and just open a blogger account you tool.

I don't trust the other candidates. Several months back (early January if not last December) I wrote of all the talk around Queens politicians, unions and the UFT of how Liu should run for mayor and Liu turned it down because he said he didn't feel he had the experience needed for such a role. I will proudly vote for John Lie this Tuesday.

I have no clue who I'll vote for regarding mayoral candidates and public advocate. I am 95% sure who I want to represent my district (25) in the city council.

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Last night I wanted to remove photos from my ipod so I installed itunes...and itunes messed up my usb ports. AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi, from the itunes installer, is install so that the computer recognizes the ipod or runs better with itunes...HOWEVER...after installing it, I couldn't fully disconnect the ipod from my computer and the screen on the thing still had the "charging" or "connecting" icon where the power level bar is located. Whenver I did disconnect and unplug, my USB wireless receiver became disconnected/error frozen/usb stopped working properly.

I freaked out. And I wanted to hurt Steve Jobs or one of his 100 impersonators. I tried uninstalling the USB driver for the ipod and nothing worked...uninstalling and allowing windows to try and reconfigure just resulted in the same thing.

I was running out of options when I came upon Windows' System Restore. I knew nothing of it and some research seemed to show that it was meant to solve things such as this. Using the program I was able to remove whatever thing apple software did to my computer.

Lesson: I refuse to buy into this thing about apple. I will find third party solutions to things related to my ipod. Winamp and the ml_ipod plugin is still the greatest thing available for free.

I think the only thing the "apple mobile device support" driver does is turn the ipod icon on My Computer to a small icon of an ipod in place of the standard portable harddrive icon.

Screw you Justin Long.

Monday I cleaned squid for my mother who wanted to make pseudo paella. The squids were a tad small and much smaller than those I learned to clean with a year ago. My hands were trembling as I held the small animal. It was difficult to find the animal's spine to make the incision. I butchered the first one.
My hands were less shaky and rather stable by the time I finished cleaning the third one.
I had finally regained my knowledge and confidence when I bean to clean the seventh. The eighth and final squid was my best work but I, unfortunately, made the incision right on the ink sack.
The pseudo paella was tasty.

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I had my second full day of classes today and I liked it. The first class is on clinical social work and the professor led me to further analyze why I am a social worker.
The supervision course (2nd class and with a professor I had in the spring) seems to be a course on how to legally cover my ass when I am given a supervisor hat at an agency.

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My only Friday class is child welfare (elective) and I am really looking forward to that one. It looks to be an interesting course but there is a lot of work for that one.

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From my Ipod's alphabetical coverflow,
A few music albums I can't stop listening to are:

Dinosaur Jr. - Farm Amherst, Mass.

Femi Kuti - Day By Day Nigeria

Havalina - Junio here and here Spain somewhere.

The Low Frequency in Stereo - Futuro Norway

The National - Boxer Crooklyn somewares.

Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous...but I like most of the songs on under the black light...they are an LA outfit.

Land of Talk - Some Are Lakes Canadians

Richmond Fontaine - We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River Portland, OR.

wintersleep - welcome to the night sky Canadians

The Sunday Drivers - The End Of Maiden Trip from Spain, here and here.

I need more rocking out albums on my pod.

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I have written 1.5 songs and I plan to record them this week before classes really start (IE: my eyes start twitching from stress, anxiety and overdose of caffeine).

I'm going to try to add a drum track to the mix from this website. I have a good idea what kind of beat I want for the first song but not for the second.

The first song took somewhere between 2-3 weeks to complete because of procrastination and general life interference. The second song is, so far, clocking three days.

If I feel up for it, maybe I'll record a cover of a Buffalo Springfield song or a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young one...but I'll likely pick a song by Alejandro Escovedo (something from Thirteen Years...maybe Baby's Got New Plans).

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Just as I finish this entry, I am reminded how uncomfortable I become when listening to Jeff Buckley's album "Grace". The artist and that album hold a very special meaning to me because of the context in which I was introduced to the artist and the memories I have attached to it. In my second relationship (back in high school), I found out about Buckley and my girlfriend and I loved that man's music. Even though several years have passed since she and I broke up, I get a really strong sinking feeling in my stomach and my mood changes when I hear any song from that album. I find this rather incredible since for other relationships I have eliminated the association of certain songs, artists or albums. I still talk with her and we are still friends...but I have never shared with her how Jeff Buckley makes me feel.

Yesterday I went to buy earphones.

I went by train. I went to J&R and got out at the Fulton Street station. I was able to see the gap in the downtown skyline, closed streets and traffic detours.

I saw an unmeasurable number of tourists taking photographs of New York's greatests shameful moment since the blackout of '77.

There were several cranes and support beams holding up air. I saw contruction workers scratching their armpit hair.


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Monday morning, I found a broken tree limb in a park near my biking route. I thought it was rather cool looking. This morning I went by and found that someone removed the Caution tape. It must have recently fallen with the thunder storms of last Friday...so I wonder when the city will get around to fixing it.

The park is very popular among families.

( Three other photos of tree. )

This past Saturday I reformatted my computer and now my USB problems are fixed. I still have the problem of loosing internet after disconnecting my camera from transfering images...but that can be solved by just transfering all my photos before connecting my wireless adapter.

I didn't loose any of my passwords, bookmarks, preferences and add-ons on firefox thanks to the add-on "FEBE" which backed up everything.

Things appear to be running smoothly.

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I was starting to type a question on google when the google suggestion box gave me some funny answers:



t-hee t-heehee...though some suggestions weren't funny.

My question to it was: why can't I use one finger to bend notes? (guitar notes...bending strings). I got my answer from google but that isn't relevant to anyone reading this.

Google also showed me a forum in which I found a solution to my ipod's cover flow problem of showing multiple covers for multi-artist compilation albums. Solution: mass edit the album and under "album artist" put "various" or "various artist". Good stuff.

I didn't install itunes since i reformatted and I am still using winamp with an ipod plugin i found online. It is so great. I also found a top notch equalizer plugin for winamp...of which i found a full version online with a serial on the webz. There just isn't any profit for programmers these days.

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Today, I'm going to go to J&R at Park Row and buy myself new earphones. I'd rather spend some extra $3 dollars and have my earphones now than wait about 3-5 days and pay shipping for it and whatever. Also...I need to take a long trip to make the most of having an Ipod...so i'll be going by bus.

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I forgot I have Friday classes. So my first day of my second and final year of gradschool is this Friday at 9am. Fuck.

Sometime last week I received an email from my fieldwork supervisor stating that there is a meet and greet/paperwork/introduction event on September 9th in the main offices in manhattan. This meeting will involve: "finger prints, PPD test [tuberculosis skin test] and the submission of the State Central Registry form". That is a lot of things...and more legal paperwork than I had to do for my first year internship and even my volunteer work (also had to do with children) some two years ago.

crap...sometime this time next year I should be in a real job and have either passed or still preparing for my licensing exam. I think my heart skipped a beat.

So pops and I had cooked some things using a grill, charcoal brickettes and wind. We didn't expect to see any rain so we weren't at all rushed to finish cooking. We were almost done with everything when it began to drizzle. The rain wasn't the biggest issue though.

A backyard home on the other block owns a pool and it seems that it might have burst since a river of water came rushing down and flooding the driveway in the back. It was rather cool to see water rushing toward me. Even though the water height was about as threatening as a woolly mammoth attacking me at gun point inside a bus on a Spring day; I felt a bit of uneasiness when I saw the water coming toward me while I looked at my digital camera's screen.

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My skull candy earphones broke today--that isn't exactly true. The right phone has a loose or crushed cable somewhere and it isn't easily making contact. If i fiddle with it, I get sound through at 100% but most often it'll pass 80% with some slighlt reverb effect added on.

I tried to give the stock Ipod earbuds a chance but I couldn't take more than 2 mins of it. They really suck. I know many people complain about them but I don't think they can effectively express how terrible the stock headphones are! I will wager that I can go into any discount store and buy a VERY cheap Made In East Asia earphone set and they will sound dramatically better than the stock Ipod set. The stock earphones provide no noise isolation and I think I can actually hear outside noise better with those put on. The sound could be improved if they came with little earphone covers...that alone could provide a dramatic boost in the quality of the stock earphones.

That being said, I'm really happy I didn't buy an Ipod because I would be very furious at the fact of having spent over $200 to buy a music/"media" player only to find out that the earphones are almost close to loosing a quality test with a broken down set of earphones.

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Under the cut are photos of the Great Flood and backyard animals.

( Water and bird )

My ProCo Rat 2 might have died sometime in the last two weeks without any chance of recovery/resurrection.

I sent an email to ProCo Sound company but I have little hope for having it being repaired for a reasonable price or for a price that is less than buying another used Made in USA rat.

This rat was the first pedal I ever bought through craigslist. It bought me a lot of good sounds and I am sure I could have treated it better. I think I know how I killed it so that is also making me feel really bad about it.

I feel really attached to this pedal and a part of me feels that it is strange that I am so connected to this pedal--almost feels like the connection between a person and their pet.

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I already put up an ad on craigslist for a pedal but I think I won't get another good price for a pedal like I did for this one. I am really sad about this.

I wanted to play guitar today (out loud...as I've been playing quietly on my electric late until the night/sunrise) when I suddenly heard the most awful noise coming through my amp. I thought one of the pedal jumper cables broke somewhere but I found out that my Rat was the problem.

RIP rat...I don't know enough about you to Frankenstein you.

Can I stay awake for 24 hours or more? Stay tuned for this afternoon's evening news.

I made survilist type of coffee and I like it. The brewing is something similar to making Vietnamese coffee but without any course grind, a cool looking vietnamese filter or condensed milk. I also use a regular coffee filter to strain the grind. I find it tasty. I think it may also have the same effects as regular drip coffee or french press...but I can't really judge that since I'm at the point that I need an IV full of 200CC caffeine to wake up in the morning. I usually take my black tar right under the bags in my eyes.

Why am I staying up so late? Well...my sleeping habit has been shot since the middle of last month.

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I spent Monday sipping margaritas with a friend in sunnyside. We also played guitar and we sang some Bob Dylan songs as well as some Byrds. The margaritas were tasty.

My cousin (who works in promotions at a radio station) had an extra VIP ticket to see the movie District 9. Apparently VIP means we don't have to wait in line for several hours like hoi poloi do in the hope of getting one seat or two even after they received a ticket (either by contest or some random such). VIP also meant that we got to seat in full leather seats in the best viewing rows of a Lowe's Theater on 34st. Sweet.

Before I begin, I should state that I had been looking forward to this movie for a while now. The ads were appealing to me and that alone made it interesting. It is a new movie and not a remake, reboot or westernized film. When I found out that the setting was in South Africa and that the Aliens in the film are being separated from human interaction...I grew even more interested. Honestly, I would have actually paid a ticket to go see this movie. YEAH I WAS THAT EXCITED!

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The movie has a very strong political statement that illustrates the inadequacies of military control and outsourcing military/governmental work to corporations. The purpose of the film is delivered in such a manner as to not sound overbearing, talking-head documentary or even bland.

People that view this movie should be somewhat familiar with the history of South Africa and other nations in the continent in order to appreciate it in full. A person somewhat familiar with some of the history of Africa or South Africa will really appreciate this film. Someone familiar with apartheid South Africa, Nelson Mandela and the human rights violations throughout the continent will be overwhelmed with how well this movie portrays events that occurred some thirty years ago. At the very least, those who have viewed the movie Hotel Rwanda will leave the theater with the majority of filmmaker's purpose.

That being said...historical knowledge is not required in order to view this film. As a stand-alone, it serves as a good analysis of human nature and portrays aspects most people do not want to see in themselves. It leads the audience to question if humans are capable of some of the acts viewed on screen. What would really happen if aliens came to Earth?

On a side note, it provides a much needed relief from the typical "aliens-on-earth" scenarios in which extraterrestrials come and land in one of the major cities in the planet. A laughable moment of those types of scenarios are those in which aliens decide to land in Central Park. To think...of someone--ANYONE--doing anything in central park and not get a permit first...could you imagine the ticket the alien ship would get?

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This was also the first screening I ever attended and was surprised by the extremes regarding security. I had to leave my cellphone outside of the theater (though, honestly, I could have just walked past the security there since they were really busy and didn't check to make sure people with cellphones checked and left the phones outside the theater with security personel. Inside, there was a two security guards dressed in suits standing right outside the exits to the theater. Those two security personal had night vision binoculars. Some common rules were lax despite this security. People had contraband Quiznos sandwiches and one couple (a hoi polloi pair) didn't even bother to hide their food and even bought a supermarket plastic bag full of snacks and food stuffs.

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In sum, good movie...but people should not expect to see Transformers-type of fight scenes, explosions and random fighting...and I'm thankful it didn't have any of those characteristics.

So speaking of music,

I think I am tired of my guitar playlist. I have memorized all the songs except for "don't look back in anger" (but that is only because I don't really put an effort into memorizing it).

I think I'll make another list with some more Metric songs.
I tried to find tabs for songs by Masha Qrella and Sarah Blasko but I only found a few songs for the latter and none for the former.

I'm going to look for other band's tabs. I also tried to find tabs of any song by Femi Kuti but found nothing. F.

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In other music news, I found myself really digging the music by the band Sugarland ever since I saw a performance of theirs on the PBS show Soundstage. Their music sounds like it could be really fun to play on guitar. I will state it now that I am likely to find a ton of tabs for their songs just because they are more well known.

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I feel my machismo is going to take a beating in a little over 24 hours.

Sunday, 2:00 AM: I continued with a boring dream I had some two hours earlier. I was a third person observer viewing two department of transit workers who were arguing about where a light post was supposed to be placed. They called in their supervisor who then got in contact with a city planner and figured out where to place it. The dream ended with them making the hole and putting up the streetlight.

wtf?

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I am torn between using Pidgin and Digsby for third person messenger clients. I really dig both simply because they have spell checking options, clean and lean looking interface and are very resource friendly. Digsby holds a better chat history option and looks pretty. I like Pidgin's really simple look since I like things to be useful than full of luminecent lights and buttons that do nothing.

Pidgin has been giving me trouble these last three months. sometimes I don't receive any messeges sent to me when offline. Pidgin does have a superior idle-making feature--this alone is worth the download.

I think I'll continue using pidgin for the time being.

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I still want to play frisbee. I miss playing cut-throat frisbee with foreign students in the field area behind the college terrace. I learned through trial by fire how to throw, aim and make it dangerous. Those were fun times.

I cannot stand to listen to much of David Bowie's music. The music sounds very dated to me and although innovative it lacks causing me to feel interested.

HOWEVER, I love covers of Bowie's music. A compilation called "The Best of Bowie Covers" has managed to maintain my interest in Bowie's music.

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In other news...Seems the gobment's workers are made of genius.

File Sharing Leaks Sensitive Federal Data, Lawmakers Are Told

among the best things revealed: including FBI surveillance photos of a Mafia hit man, lists of people with HIV, and motorcade routes and safe-house locations for then-first lady Laura Bush, a congressional panel was told on Wednesday.

These gobment people should probably be smart enough to set up what folders they want to share instead of checking "C:" drive box...I'm sure other things are perfectly safe...like the favorite restaurants of our elected congressmen.

The issue is so pressing that the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), said he would introduce a bill to ban such software from all government and contractor computers and networks.

Greaaaattt...so in about a year and a half--after several committee and subcommittee votes & vetos, fact-finding missions to Greece and Tahiti--we can finally sleep comfortably knowing that people in the FBI aren't downloadingz teh pr0n or the latest Kanye West single while "hard at work" taking down America's enemies.

I LOATHE writing cover letters.

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I can't google an answer as to why I loose internet (I think my netgear program crashes/fails disconnects) after I eject ONLY my cannon camera or my ipod from the machine. I hate having to first disconnect my usb wireless device before I unplug those other two items...or having to transfer files, disconnecting usb items and then plugging in my usb wireless adapter.

It is so annoying...

Mehbe it is a hax somewhere...who knows...I have entirely too many things on my C: to actually reformat (in other words I am too lazy to back up things and make a list of programs to reinstall later).

So a construction crew demolished and, I assume, will repave the streets in my neighborhood. Some 10 blocks are broken down and await fixing. I never saw how the DOT did the breaking down of the streets and I found it so fascinating.

The two men operating the machine were smoking cigarettes as they were breaking down the street. There was some moderate noise from the machine but the destruction it made was outstanding. some six inches of pavement on each block was taken off in about 60-75 seconds per block. That is an amazing display of force. The sight of the big machine, the noise and the cigarettes was the embodiment of testosterone.



I took videos and more photos of the thing, but they are under the cut.

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So my colleague and I were having lunch at my house when we came upon the movie, Stone cold. It was playing on Telefutura (an OTA Spanish language channel) so the title of the movie translated to "Duro y Frio Como un Iceberg." We were amused by this title and it was her idea that the title would make a great name for a song. I took a bit further and said it would make a great band name. It has the sound worthy of a band living on Wythe Avenue.

Damn...that is a really good name...at least I think so.

VOTE:

What sounds better? Duro y Frio Como un Iceberg should be: The name of a song. The name of an indie band from Bklyn. Both. view results

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( The cut )

(Or How We Failed to get Tickets for Shakespeare in The Park)



On Sunday early morning I went with a friend to wait in line for Shakespeare in the park tickets. We arrived at 4:50AMish only to find out that we had lost the game long before the sound of the first whistle. The line was extremely long. It seemed that a good portion of people arrived sometime Saturday night at 7PM and by midnight there was a huge crowd in line...enough to warrant thought that there weren't enough tickets/chances for people anymore. The entrance closest to the line is at 79th street but the end of the line was located somewhere near 90th street when we arrived.

Once the whole exodus from the outside of the park to the inside was completed (the over-night line is apparently outside of the park...likely for safety reasons and to avoid breaking, "no sleeping in the park" laws) we realized we were much farther than we were two weeks ago. I kept mumbling to myself and to my colleague that I'd seen shorter lines for Metallica back in '91.

One thing that I hated was the fact that the pseudo homeless theater people left a ton of garbage once the line began moving inside. I saw two empty bottles of wine and several bags of empty food receptacles. There were countless amounts of discarded clothing, blankets and bedding. Several wet cardboard boxes were left behind on the sidewalk when a good trash bin stood at each corner--it was the upper west side after all.

For all the hate that the ritz of Park Slope have for hoi polloi, why aren't the residents of the West side complaining about this rubbish?

Many of the regular patrons arrived at 6AM-6:30AM and were astounded by the tremendous number of people. They had never seen it this way before. I still cannot fathom what ended up rallying such a crowd. Was it the hollywood factor? This play (She's the Man...er I mean Twelfth Night) is arguably not the greatest or most famous work of Shakespeare.

I just hope Liam Neeson draws 50 Blocks worth of people for next year. It would be sad that an actor of his caliber is outshone by lowest common denominator famed Anne Hathaway.