Oh, wicked, bad, naughty, evil Linus! I’ve been playing Pepper hooky for days. And it felt pretty good. Oops, did I say that out loud? Well, I figure it this way. If the President can go A.W.O.L. for months at a time or more, a mere few days over here are child’s play.
I’m picturing explaining something like that to my boss. Somehow I don’t see it flying, exactly. Kind of like the President.
What I want, though, is a Time Turner like Hermione‘s from the Opus Tertium of the Potter stories. With deft application, one of me could sit around playing computer games and watching DVD’s and generally being a relaxed squirmy lump, while the other of me would blog industriously away, help puppy dogs out of trees, put out the dishes, and console the lonely hearts of Brooklyn with rakish flair.
And go to the gym. Did you know that if you don’t go to the gym for a couple of months and don’t renew your contract, they cancel your membership? What is that about? Winter is for eating; March is for panicking and realizing you haven’t seen your abs since October. Ever was it so. Hmph. Pass that haunch of wildebeeste, while you’re up.
The big news: our Ethan Lipton album is the #4 best-selling title on CD Baby this week, CD Baby being the main drag for indie music cruisers. Pierre and I, along with the silent Seth, have been trudging endlessly after this odd tinkery music dream for seven years now, trying to keep a perky upper lip in the face of every kind of foolery, tragedy, irony, nuttery and forked-tongue thievery you can imagine. It’s a thrill to have something actually lift off and fly for a bit.
This tremble in the ether isn’t exactly feathering the old nest, but A New Low is getting happy attention so far. It’s a wonderful feeling to open your hands and let loose a creation into the world. It’s wonderful whether anyone notices or not, but it’s wonderfuler when people come to love what you’ve done, and when some commerce commences. Because somebody has to pay the rent around here, and it looks like I’m the one stuck with it.
Last night I exercised the Brooklyn Option (we’re allowed to ignore Manhattan and proceed directly past Go without further explanation) and burrowed further into the borough for a spicy set of Americana by The Jack Grace Band over a splendid bowl of Smokehouse Gumbo at Two Boots Brooklyn in Park Slope. Jack Grace does a notable Johnny Cash when the spirit moves him, and follows it up with music that Johnny would have understood - dark and boisterous, moping and sly, eager and truculent and finely coined.
Jack’s soul patch has migrated down and become one of those bushy little conical beardlings that extrude from the point of the chin, as if someone took a shaving brush and stuck it on there as a cheeky bit of physical metonymy. Normally that’s an automatic foul, but Jack wears it well. As if the music were not enough, he also does about the best emails in town. You should sign up on his list for both reasons.
I had to split before the end of the second set, anticipating the usual siege campaign with the bus back home. But as I rounded the corner of 2nd Street and 5th, there was the B63 trundling past The Gate and easing toward my stop … that never happens.
Have you caught Billy Nayer Show at Pianos yet? Tomorrow (tuesday) may be their last show for a while. SF’s loss is NYC’s gain - Corey is so the man. Marisa will probably be there. #~>. If you can, say hi to Bobby Lurie for me (he might remember unicyclerecords…)
Might make it down, Deano, and if I do I’ll pass on regards. If Marisa’s there I’ll count it as a happy accident indeed.