A couple of weeks ago I visited Steve in New York. It was a nice, warm weekend, and though we didn't do much of note, we did thoroughly enjoy ourselves. We barely lost a game of pool to a hipster bartender, we bowled at a huge bowling alley in the thick of the city, we watched a game of pickup basketball (nothing makes you feel like you're in a city like watching a colorful group of guys play a game of pickup basketball, you know?), we walked around and talked and sat outside at a restaurant and drank as people walked by. It was the way a weekend should be every so often: comfortable and meandering and fun and just a little too expensive.

During the course of Saturday, we caught two particularly good sound bytes, and it has inspired me to start a list of good overheard remarks. Here are the first two (future ones will be on their own page):

1. "So what did the second guy in Wham do?" -- man in late 20s, sitting in a restaurant, overheard through a large open window.
2. "I'm drunk, and I'm calling you." -- man in late 20s, walking down the street around 6 p.m., speaking on a cell phone.

Also, I saw Television play on Sunday night. It was sort of strange. Part of me wants to romanticize all of the great music from the late 1970s and believe that it could only exist in a live form in that era. It felt almost like I was cheating, in the sense that any experience I have of great old bands reuniting to play their great old music can never equal the experience of having seen them the first time around. Good music is good music, but when it's good new music in an era blessed with and even somewhat defined by a lot of good new music, it carries more weight. Of course, I could be projecting a nostalgic energy onto the years just prior to my birth. There's no way to know.

Anyway, Television were good, and their performance of "Prove It" was a particular standout. I feel lucky to have been able to see them. Too bad I'll never see The Clash. Sort of too bad, I mean.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

Here's a list of CDs stolen from my car a couple of weeks ago. I haven't decided how to replace them. For awhile I was in denial, thinking that they would crawl out from underneath the driver's seat one day and surprise me. Of course, I had already looked underneath the driver's seat like eight times, and they weren't there.

So now the question is, do I buy new copies, or borrow copies from friends and burn them? If I buy new copies (I can't afford to do this right now, of course), I'll make an art collage out of the CD covers and title it "Loss." Because I'm a brilliant artist.

*These CDs didn't do much for me, so it's okay. Note: it isn't that I don't like Charlie Parker, but this particular compilation has some live songs on it that wouldn't qualify as "ultimate."

** Wah...

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM