Home Renovations, Remodeling, Etc

Last week was, as my friend Ben from Maine says, a corker!

I was away for five days in the BVI on an edit/sales meeting with my company and when I returned, I came to my new home! Jen and I are the owners of a 1 BR coop in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Right now, as the pictures above illustrate, we have lots of boxes and little furniture. But alas dear reader, orders are being delivered from Room & Board, West Elm, and the Door Store. We are painting, replacing the base molding, and giving the place a general spruce up. It’s in excellent shape already; just needs to feel like home. I will have fortnightly updates here…

Yikes

I've not only traveled at least two weekdays over the last four weeks, I am in the mix of coop business and preparing to go away yet again for an entire week... will post soon.

Warner Herzog, Filmmaker

Warner Herzog has been called many things, most of which are derived not from viewing his films exactly, but how he makes his movies. Eccentric, mad visionary, twisted genius; names like that. It just so happens that he makes films about those types of 'mad' characters, particularly the ones that star the reportedly volatile Klaus Kinski like Aguirre, Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. (The great Irish band The Frames have a song called "Fitzcarraldo" that was inspired by the movie.) There's even a documentary about the two men's love/hate relationship. While he's been held in high esteem for years by film geeks, it wasn't until 2005's superb Grizzly Man did Herzog emerge from the art house, albeit a latent one. I was introduced to Herzog's work while a undergrad thanks to the Rutgers Film Co-op's weekly screenings of films that were not being shown anywhere other than New York and LA. Recently I was trying to figure out when exactly would we see the US release of Rescue Dawn when I discovered that one of his old films, 1987's Corba Verde (starring a wild-eyed Kinski) is being released in NYC today. BTW- if anyone knows the deal with Rescue Dawn drop me a line. Also see the April 2007 Esquire column "What I Learned" that features Herzog.

Coltrane's "Equinox"

The vernal equinox was yesterday. 12 hours of day-12 hours of night. Days are just getting longer from here, friends! I like to listen to John Coltrane’s “Equinox” (from Coltrane’s Sound) on March 20-21 and on the autumnal equinox as well. Because Trane has recorded so many records that people consider landmark recordings, records like Coltrane’s Sound often get overlooked. It’s a shame. Another example that instantly pops to mind is Crescent, a superb date that is not ignored, but overshadowed by critics of its day because it was released in the same year as A Love Supreme, 1964. Anyway I digress: “Equinox” is a great tune—as surmised by the intricate breakdown it received from Lewis Porter in his book John Coltrane: His Life and Music—as are the other tracks on the record. I have never walked along Central Park West in the last decade without thinking of Trane’s song of the same name. And he’s got McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones on the dates, so ¾ of the classic quartet is in place for the sessions. Enjoy.

Yer Blues

PBS again rewards me. Last week I was watching Frontline and it was excellent as usual. Then afterwards comes The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. I’ve only seen segments of the concert and this is one of the best on the program (the Stones killed and it’d be silly to put ‘em up here because everyone knows they killed that show.) The segment here is John Lennon’s band The Dirty Mac (the name’s reportedly a play on Fleetwood Mac, who were huge in 1968) consisting of Keith Richards on bass, Jimi Hendrix Experience member Mitch Mitchell on drums, Eric Clapton on guitar (Cream had just disbanded), and Lennon. “Yer Blues” is the tune. The show was filmed in December of 1968.

Jim Harrison, Amercian Artist

I discovered Jim Harrison while working in the advertising department of a magazine where he was a contributing poet. It wasn’t until I received a copy of The Beast God Forgot To Invent that I recognized a true American artist. His prose is often called muscular or masculine—this description does nothing for one reading a review of his work. Simply put, he’s in the top tier of American writers working today. His novellas and books are often set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula among the sturdy, hard-living folk who inhabit this region from all levels of society. Harrison’s work is infused with a love of nature and his own kinship with animals and the outdoors. I feel like to go on about an artist is like trying to explain comedy; check out his collection of poetry, novels, and the food columns that he wrote for Esquire, etc… at Amazon.

This American Life

“That’s our show, unexpected stories that happen to be true.” That’s how host Ira Glass describes longtime NPR weekend staple This American Life. After 12 years of radio shows from WBEZ-Chicago Public Radio, the show comes to Showtime this month (3/22 at 10:30 EST). I am looking forward to it, judging from the material that the show has covered in its lifetime and from the trailer. It’s going to be interesting to see how these types of stories transition to film. I often go to the Web site and listen to past shows, and have had several people gathered around my Mac, listening intently to the “First Day” episode Squirrel Cop; it’s available streaming from the Showtime Web site.

Ban 'Em! SF to ban plastic grocery bags

San Francisco is a vanguard city in myriad ways. And the latest from this environmentally minded city makes me ecstatic in the hopes that the rest of the country will follow suit: a proposed ban on plastic grocery bags. Not only do these petroleum-based bags use up precious resources, they also cannot be recycled. They end up in the landfill to outlive our children’s children. According to the article, the bags have already been outlawed in South Africa, Taiwan and Bangladesh. Ireland imposes a plastic-bag tax. Will it lead to people bringing their own reusable cloth bags, or to the use of recyclable paper bags? That remains to be seen, but man, what a great idea to reduce the use of these eyesores.

Play the Matrix

New York is consistently a good read. I discovered this by accident, sort of. Several years ago a friend of mine was complaining that she had asked her mother for a subscription to The New Yorker and her mom got her New York instead. I found by reading it each week that there’s a stable of good music and film critics on staff, they’ve executed a great redesign over the last two years, the front of book and regular columns are solid- particularly Kurt Andersen’s Imperial City column, and the crosswords are a Tuesday- or Wednesday-level NY Times degree of difficultly. My only complaint is the hit-or-miss features (my bias is based on my interest level). Funny- as a NYer now, I turn right to the Approval Matrix. And I do my own online as well- see how you score. The Web site is constantly updated a la Gawker with media news and its restaurant-industry blog Grub Street is interesting as well.