A predictable lonliness

Gloomy old new york. You never seem to change. Other than the sweet, new Whole Foods downtown with the conveyor-belt sushi bar upstairs. Everyone here seems to hate it. I don't mind the delicious cheese and the salad bar filled with forbidden rice. The building however is an affront to modern architecture. It's basically a shoebox turned on end and covered in saran wrap then filled with organic produce. Shocking.

It is raining today. This is what I left behind.















Last night I went to see Placebo at Roseland. I like the band, but thought the show fell flat a bit. Maybe they had the wind knocked out of them after playing to arenas in France then being poorly recieved at a 3/4 full ballroom on a chilly night in NYC. Who's really to say?



























My friend Tim was doing sound for them, and seems to be enjoying it as well. I have had a rash of shows involving friends lately. The Mars Volta was a good one. Last week I went to go see The Killers at a sold out (9,000 people) Bill Graham Auditorium in SF.
















This is a few too many live shows for someone who works in music. It's like a doctor hanging out in a hospital on their day off. That aside, my old friend James is their sound engineer. Everyone I know calls him the Big Baby. It started a few years back when I took to calling him 'Baby Huey' because of his spot-on physical resemblence to an over-size toddler, and his often infantile fits of rage that he is prone to. He is also a pretty big boy who has had a food-related catastrophe or two in the past. There was the time he nearly bit his finger off thing that it was a french fry, and the time he ate 2 bowls of mushroom gravey in Milwaukee because he thought it was soup. He also once ate a piece of cucumber that I removed from a salad because there was a bug on it. He ate the bug too. It was good to see the old man. It was a pretty good show for what it was too, I suppose. I still think the guitar player looks too much like Dave Mustane for his own good.
















I'm sitting in the first day of rehearsals in NY today. It's great to see this band so well rested and sober (for a change). They are playing like beasts. I'm looking forward to this tour. The new songs are darker than black, and verge on the slow and moody at times. It is good to see some familiar faces, and some new (er) ones as well. Farmer Dave, the new keyboard player is one of the most blissfully unaware, yet totally earnest people that I have met in ages. We had a conversation earlier about the hazards of producing your own 'spicy nuts,' as he does. It seems that these days he simply can't find enough 'roasting time' in the day. It is amazing to meet somone so unconcerned with the mundane details of life like paying the rent. I mean, who can think about such things when there are nuts to roast? I love it. It's also good to see that the crew penchant for fashioning dicks out of damn near anything is alive and well as always.
















This is interesting. I got passed this note, asking me to get a pair of t-shirts made up during my day off. No sweat says I. I'll just go downtown, buy a couple medium shirts, go to the iron on place on Broadway and ask them to print...wait, what?














Really. This is the easiest way to become the center of unwanted attention in a retail environment, just ask for something crude to be custom emblazoned onto a t-shirt. It seemed that my pleas of 'it's not for me, I swear,' made little difference. The only thing that makes this all ok is the fact that
A: The shirts came out looking pretty ok.
B: Everyone who came within 10 feet of one laughed until they nearly fell over.
C: Rumor has it that someone wanted it made to wear on stage at Coachella.
















Let it never be said that I live a boring life. To further illustrate this point, P.Diddy is filming his TV show about amateur musicians down the hall from the rehearsal studio. I just walked between him and a camera filming his private thoughts, it seemed. No big deal. We also had his limo moved 2 blocks down the street so that we could park our bus out front. I guess I'm not going to be getting a new Sean John track suit for Christmas this year. So it goes.