All hail the camera phone!

I like my little phone. It has a touch-screen, a keyboard, it is small, it usually works, it cost me less than a hundred bucks. It has a pretty bad camera. I'm not going to carry a real camera around with me, so most of the pictures I'm going to take in 2008 are going to be horrible.

I've also mentioned to to fellow blogger Gordon that personal blogs seem to have different purposes. I envisioned this thing being one-third diary, one-third keep-in-touch-with-friends-that-don't-live-so-close-no-more, and one-third things that I think are deep/cool/observations that other people have noticed for along time but I just realized and now I think I'm special and clever.

This entry is going to be mostly diary, unless other people enjoy blurry pictures of things I've seen without much in the way of context, explanation, or conclusions.

Let's get to the pics -

Care Bears on Fire were fun.



The 19-piece Jersey-Metal band later in the night at Otto's Shrunken Head was fun.



The last band at Otto's was surprisingly good and even had a few fans.



The Loved Ones, who opened before the Hold Steady, rocked the shit out of the crowd during a insane storm.




The Hold Steady did not disappoint, and it was nice to be in the first two rows of people the entire show.


And oddly enough for the area (Williamsburg/Greenpoint) the crowd was really good.




Frightened Rabbit (below) and Oxford Collective at Southpaw were both fun.


Live music is fun.
Unfortunately, I probably won't go to one of the best free NY concerts, the Siren festival, this weekend because God is going to make it really hot again this year and my jerkface friend Stefan is having his awesome, shitty birthday party that night.

Bad pictures, Bad band

Here's a link to their music. Remember, this is how they sound in the "studio." Their voices are a billion times better recorded than they are live. Let that sink in.

http://www.myspace.com/evermacaque

Here's a CentroPic of them destroying my will to live -




Another from the second level of the Billyburg venue (approximate temperature of second floor: 121 degrees).




Thankfully, Andy D (the rapper-singer-songwriter) and Lord Midnight (rocking the hair, silver outfit, and guitar) came and saved the day -




And here's a macaque that looks really pissed that Macaque is sucks so hard and his sullying his good name -



Macaque better watch it, this little guy looks like he's ready to throw down and ruin their shit.

Absolutes

Hey blogosphere. A few people have told me "hey, you should have a blog." So fine, why not? Don't look for a theme here, there isn't gonna be one (at least not by design). Let's jump right in.

At thirty years of age, I think saying anything is the best or worst of anything is tough. My memory isn't that good, I've experienced a lot of good things and a bunch of crappy things and it makes comparisons difficult. I ate at Peter Luger's a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. Was it the best steak EVER? I don't think so. I also don't have a clear memory of eating a steak somewhere that was definitively better. So maybe it was. It was at a social outing tonight that helped me stumble on my mini-epiphany about bests and worsts.

See, I saw the worst live music show of my life tonight. When I realized that I let it wash over me. It helped me appreciate the moment even more. It was an experience. It was in Williamsburg (of course), right by the water (but without much of a view), and not near any trace of civilization. I bet the hipsters fucking love that. Two girls in this band. One with a MacBook and some small synth device, one awkwardly dancing around. Both couldn't sing for shit. I'm definitely a better singer than these girls and I'm *terrible*. Off key, no discernible point to any song, atonal, terribly annoying, and generally painful to witness.

They were the worst band I had ever seen.

Worse than the loud craptastic Andrew WK opening acts. Worse than that guy I saw who dressed like it was the 1920s and made gutteral, mumbling, faux-hillbilly attempts at old-timey music while stamping his foot on stage for 40 minutes. Worse than Porno for Pyros at the end of freshman year. Luckily, Jaime's friend came on stage after the two girls were done bludgeoning our souls and played guitar (while dressed in all silver) with his friend who techno-rock-rapped about drunk girls and Vikings. Much better.

The walk back to the subway (JMZ, Marcy) reminded me that I don't like Williamsburg so much. Real ugly, pretty expensive, completely random, barbed wire, construction, light industrial zoning randomly near apartments. Just a haphazard mess. I don't need to write about rich hipsters who love it there - I have a feeling other blogs may have covered that already. And I live in a similarly despised 'hood, so I shouldn't talk.

Randomly:
I got excited about 4+ innings of no-hit ball thrown by John Maine of the NY Mets. Fun to be a Met fan these days.

Firing Willie Randoph was a good move. He brought nothing to the table. Nice guy though and should have been handled a bit more carefully by Mets GM Omar Minaya.

Omar Minaya. Confuses me. He just signed Andy Phillips. Andy came up through the Yankee system, played a bit with the Yanks and sucked pretty bad. Now he's 31 and got released by the Reds. He's had around the equivalent of a full season of major league At Bats in his life and has hit 11 HRs and posted a .252/.294/.381/.675 (Batting Average, On Base Pct, Slugging Pct, OPS) line. That's bad. Roughly, that last number should be over .800 or so to be above average, depending on what position one plays. Look, we all know Carlos Delgado needs to be partially platooned with a right-handed hitter, but why Andy Phillips? I wish the Mets had some guy in their minor league system that can step in and provide some punch from the right side once or twice a week.

Wait for it.

Valentino Pascucci. Val. He's a beast (6'6", 260) and he isn't terribly young at 29. But he hits, if only in the minors. He hit another home run tonight and his numbers aren't updated to show that, but his line for the Mets AAA club is - .296/.420/.587/1.007. Add the homer and it'll be something like .300/.420/.600/1.020. For reference, if that last number is over 1.000 you're awesome. Usually only like a half dozen guys a year in all of baseball manage that. What's even better is that he punishes left handed pitchers to the tune of .404/.522/.865/1.388. That's a better line than anyone has ever put up in the history of the game (except a juiced Bonds in 2004). Now, do I expect he does this in the majors? Hellsno. But if he can only face lefties, I don't see why he can't hit .240/.325/.475/.800 for us (yeah, us - I'm with the Mets) this year. Better than Delgado's .224/.267/.388/.655 vs Lefties this year, right? Right. Let's do it.

Someone tell Omar.