When my Computer Was Attacked By Hideous Viruses...

I could not update FREEZE TAG for almost two weeks. Now we're Healthy and Good and it's Spring and my Mom is safe and my family back in Ohio are safe and sound.

Song Of The Day

Song Of The Day

NYC Observations (Cheap Phone Snapshots)

Worst Pizza in New York City

              The following statement lacks any sort of empirical data to back it up but I'm gonna throw out there anyway: For every good pizza shop in NYC there are atleast five bad ones. Earlier today I had the worst Pizza in my life. It was at a little shop called Figaro's on the upper east side in Manhattan. Two slices of sicilian with just cheese on top. It was awful. The dough was flaky and tasted like it had sat there for days. The cheese was a near tasteless and rubbery dry clot. There was barely any sauce. I heard it once said that Pizza was like sex. Even when it's not that great it's still good. There was nothing good about this Pizza. It was horrible but I was hungry. Hungry enough to make you cranky and cranky enough to settle for it and dig at it even though before I ordered, when I looked at the dim glass case holding the pies, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be very appetizing. It was atrocious. As I was leaving I noticed an article in a local newspaper hung up on the wall and a little blurb that read "Figaro's Pizza is known for their rice and beans"! Which, as I looked over to my left, was exactly what two other customers were eating. That makes sense.
Maybe that's all they should sell. Change the name to Figaro's Rice and Beans and get rid of that montrosity to all things edible they call Pizza. Not only do I want my money and my time back but my stomach wants its self respect back.

Sebadoh (Live at The Bowery Ballroom 4/9/11)

                      I took a trip down memory lane last night when I went to see 'Sebadoh' play at the Bowery Ballroom.Oh how they were one of my very favorite--most influential--bands from my high school days. I hadn't seen them in over ten years. It was nostalgic--I got drunk--and truly had a fun time. And by fun time I mean I had a fucking blast. Before they went on I saw Lou Barlow and gave him a big bear hug and babbled for a moment and thanked him for making my formative years so much better. Though in my Vodka fueled state I don't think I used the word, formative-- yet, I was sincere and it felt good to spontaneously express my gratitude to him in this way. As for the music, I was totally into it; singing along to what are now veritable indie-rock classics (though  I was prolly screwing up the lyrics,) bouncing and moving; at times hopping around much to the dismay of other stick in the mud cruds around me. A few of us actually had the gall to lift this eager younger kid up to try crowd surfing! I think he landed hard. So what! I got the feeling that a bunch of the audience weren't as emotionally invested as I was. Whatever. Let them grow old in any way that they choose.
 In my opinion Sebadoh's songs hold up very well over time. My favorite album, 'Bakesale' is now 17 years old! The thing with them is that their songs are so interwoven into a time and place in my life when I was teenager and still living at home that they can never loose value in my world. Even if I don't care for every single song as much as I used to, and even as my musical horizons expanded the older I became, it's refreshing to still enjoy Sebadoh in a live setting and rock out and be silly and have fun while I'm still genuinely moved by music and compelled to express myself without caring what others will think. However, to the majority of the crowd last night I humbly ask, "Have you no passion left?" I mean no one is expecting you to freak out or have some cathartic body and soul release but c'mon. It's a rock concert. It's ok to move.

In the News (Canada)

                 So just the other day was the sentencing for this 23 yr.old girl from Canada, Ashley Kirilow, who shaved her head, waxed her eye-brows and pretended to have cancer, eventually scamming over $20,000 from kind, unsuspecting folk trying to help. Did she do it purely for the money? Did she do it because she desperately craved attention and sympathy from others? How many screws she had loose is hard to tell from the little I know. I saw the story on gawker.com and it sorta got me thinking about Canada in general and it reminded me of how Canada is rarely involved in anything on a global scale. Rarely in the news. Whenever there is a war, Canada is either totally isolated or offers mere tokens of background support virtually out of sight--like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
                What news comes drifting down in big bleak clouds from Canada and sets the world on fire? What's Canada known for besides cold snow and ice?What do people in Ottawa do? Do they have Taco Bells in Calgary? Once when I was in a cathedral in Quebec City I was moved by how they hung small wooden ships from the ceiling inside above the pews as a way to pay reverence to the treacherous journey their kith and kin made across the north Atlantic. Where are the youth of Canada today? I have no idea. Wait, of course there's Arcade Fire and bunch of great music blooming in certain Canadian Cities.(They actually won a Grammy award this year.) Do they care about the Grammy Awards in Canada?
                Is anyone in Canada starting new software programs in spare bedrooms? Of course I know they have hockey (the NHL must be huge in Canada) and maple leaves and John Candy and Tom Green. Do they ever have any natural disasters? Do they have any seriel killers? I don't think so. Do they have an equivalent of P.T  Barnum? Montreal is a beautiful city in many ways. What else? I used to laugh my ass off reading this Canadian guys' website called dontshakethebaby. Anyways I'm sure Canada is filled with tales of adventure and romance, of high stakes action and inherent drama--But here in the U.S. we don't really ever hear about it. It's like Argentina or something. I say let's be better friends Canada because we already are friends. And we know you like to be left alone and that's ok too.You are not like this girl in the news at all--no way. The girl who pretended to have cancer in order to rip off a bunch of people was sentenced to 15 months of conditional detention with 10 of those months being on house arrest. She also has to do 100 hours of community service. I could think of a few jobs for her.

Public Submitted Poem For The Day

 'The Oilers Star'

Warren Moon's Pool is angled against missing rings
and bat-shit reflections down down down
in sunny Texas where my country tis of thee
powerhouse crumble briefing
Warren Moon rides the wave long gone
Flattened throb of crave.
Faded Gridiron.

           -Jack Fowler
   (Houston, Texas)

Song Of The Day

Recent Recollections

          Recently I saw two hispanic speaking teenagers kissing on the steps leading to the 7 train in Long Island City. They looked turned on by eachother. They looked happy. Last night on my way to a variety show in the West Village, after I got off the subway, I saw a crack pipe next to the bottom step of a group steps leading above ground at Christopher St. I just glanced at it, verified what it was, and kept walking. I saw a man playing the saxophone on the platform of the subway station at 42nd st.
I remember the pock marked face of a heavy-set man on the train back to Astoria in Queens; his bulbous nose, his pudgy cratered cheeks.
          Recently I saw a blind man sitting on the train with his trusted guide dog underneath the seat; the man wore those big dark glasses most blind folk wear; his golden canine buddy rested comfortably with its chin on the floor waiting for his command to lead.
          I saw photographs of Steven Seagal on the walls of my favorite pizza shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn where I order two slices of sicilian and a pepsi and am forced to sit through Bon Jovi songs on the radio polluting out from multiple speakers high up on the wall. But I keep going back. Earlier today I saw an old grey haired lady running to catch the bus--which she did--and I was impressed.

Song Of The Day

The Film, '3 Backyards'

From the writer and director Eric Mendelsohn whose only other film is one of my favorite movies of the last 10yrs or so(Judy Berlin) comes this humble charmer of a film, '3 Backyards'. Here we have in the span of a single day in a mildly upper class neigborhood on a bay in Long Island, three stories unfolding at the same time but that never directly touch eachother. The movie is beautiful, humble, small-scaled, well acted, and refreshing. Though it may be disceptably simple, it never decieves; the moving camera being just as intrusive as we want it to be as it floats in on the scene, the characters or the clouds or the leaves on a tree, the somewhat old fashioned dissolves used liberally yet tastefully. Three little gems; three little peeks into the lives of these folks on this particluar day.  My only complaint, if you can call it that, is that at an hour and a half, the movie ends too soon. I wish it could have kept on and on. One story is about a man (played by Elias Koteas)  having marriage problems who when his business trip gets cancelled while he's at the airport, instead of returning home, hangs out near the airport hotel and begins to follow a mysterious woman. One is about a little girl who on her way to school loses an expensive bracelot of her mother's and who must retreive it from a seemingly dangerous backyard before she can return home. The third story concerns a lady (played by Edie Falco) who is given the honor(much to the envy of her neighbor) of driving a local, semi-famous movie actress to the waiting ferry. We go back and forth between each tale seamlessly and by the end, though the characters do not literally ever interact, there is some heart-pumping, unnameably agreeable cohesion to it all. Now that I realize this sounds awfully similar to a mundane movie review, I will stop and simply encourage anyone so inclined to go see it. It's playing now at Cinema Village on 12th st. near Union Square. Here's the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4esd8aYO3vs