Life with Lou in Japan.  Good times.

Tonight was the night that I designated as the farewell evening. this means I would close down a bar and not feel bad about it Jesse, the most fabulous friend in the world came over. we packed up my belongings and then made a way too involved dinner. afterward we went out to trivia (we too 2nd place) and then to a good local bar, dba.

After a couple of hours indulging our drinking personalities Jesse headed back Manhattan. I stayed and chatted up a musician or two until my writer friend arrived. Overall it was rather surreal.

Perhaps I will have another going away on Friday in Manhattan. one can never tell.

It appears that my time here in New York has come to an end.  It’s been 3 years and one month since I rolled into this town with nothing more than what would fit in my car.  Now I’m packing up and heading out; destination unknown.

I’ve been finishing up some business here in the city which included the last two shows that I already had tickets.  This included Citizen Cope and 2 Skinnee J’s.  For both of these shows I went all high class and checked my coat.  It was fancy.

Citizen Cope put on a good show.  The guest vocalist was amazing; her name was Alice something.  Otherwise it was a show at Music Hall of Williamsburg; too many people way too drunk to be enjoying themselves and people who won’t dance unless the really have to.

The J’s show was totally different and not just because it was at BB Kings (interesting side-note this is the first venue I saw a show at in the city).  This show was set up as a dinner theater, which I hadn’t anticipated.  I hung back behind the sound board where I usually am in that venue.  I saw I swear to god John Cho’s younger brother.  It was as if he walked right off the set of American Pie.  Anyway the music was good and the stories were interesting, but it was an odd experience.  The guy next to me had interviewed Buzz Aldrin on NPR that morning and had played the J’s song Pluto.

Next up is packing up the Brooklyn apartment and heading out.  It’s time for a new adventure.

This evening I got together with dome of the cool kids from my former place of employment. we caught up on all that is new in 2010 including one of the kids being on SNL. Sure it was only one skit and you could only see part of his face, but it was SNL for christsakes!

After multiple adult beverages at HiFi-a bar in the East Village that the last time I entered I felt too unhip to stay-Baby Michael, She Who Will Mot Facebook and I headed out to get a slice. As you may know there is forever an argument on who has the best pizza in NYC. Well, add another one to the lust because one slice actually filled me up. In fact, I couldn’t even finish it, which gets mad props in my book. We went to Artichoke on 14th street between 1st and 2nd Ave. It’s a bit pricey, but well worth it. I got the namesake slice and was not only pleased, but impressed by the amount of food.

Well it’s Thanksgiving once again which means I’ll be hanging out watching my favorite terrible movies and possibly getting up dreadfully early for a run and watch a parade.  More importantly I’ll be finishing up my apartment.  It takes me so long to move in, but only 18 hours to pack up & move out of places.  Last weekend included an Ikea run over in Jersey.  Not the Jersey Shore part, but I did see some people who looked a lot like those kids in line for the interstate.

Anyway I finally got stuff to create a desk and live like an adult.  It’s all fancy.

Also some time ago I went to a Peter, Bjorn & John show with special guests.

This week I saw the Pixies in concert at Hammerstein.  Hammerstein smells exactly like Liberty Hall in Lawrence.  I guess once you have that many hippies in one place the smell never leaves.  It was truly amazing as it was just like it was 1998 for me–except that everyone had swollen.  I was up in the second balcony.  Can you see me?

The past week has been just one thing after another.  First off I was finally invited to prom (again).  This time it was a fund-raiser for a theater troupe and had more than just the prom theme going on.  That’s right it was Zombie Prom.  I don’t know why the boys wouldn’t dance with me.

Halloween struck and I ended up at a party in DUMBO.  It was fun and I met some interesting people.  Did I repeat the zombie costume?  No.  I went as myself from 2006.  That took a lot of effort, or perhaps I’m really just that kind of asshole that will claim something like that because I was too lazy to do anything else.  You decide.

Sunday night I was off to see The Get Up Kids.  It was the 1990s in all of it’s glory.  There was a crazy mosh-pit with crowd surfers.  One guy scrambled up on stage to dive back into the crowd.  The crowd so thoughtfully parted and he landed on his back on the floor a la Jack Black in School of Rock.  It was fun…for that kid from Eudora.

Monday night led me to the Bored to Death event at the Paley Center.  Jonathan Ames, Jason Schwarzman, Ted Danson & moderater Jonathan Hodgman (better known as PC) were all there for a quick Q&A after watching the season finale.  It was magical.  Not just because Schwartzman makes me feel all funny either.  Ames is amazing and reminds me that I will never be as awesome of a writer & Danson…well hello: it’s Ted Danson.

Next week will bring Peter, Bjorn & John show at Webster Hall, the official start to basketball season and more importantly me with cable television again.

Oh the trials and tribulations of living the Rock-N-Roll lifestyle.  I picked up and moved to Brooklyn last week.  It’s actually a pretty sweet apartment and if you want to be a nozzle you could call my neighborhood East Williamsburg.  This move required 17 boxes, three trash bags, and a few sweaty muscle-bound friends as well as a handful of neighborhood kids.  That’s right I used child labor.

She Who Will Not Facebook was in the truck pulling out stuff when a bunch of kids ran up wanting to help.  She thought, “why not 4 floors sucks.”  So then all the neighborhood kids ran in and started helping.  That move was done in 45 minutes.  Pretty sweet.

In music news  I went to see Everclear, The Bravery, The Dodos, and Mika in the past two weeks as well.

I’ve been busy.  I had my week of music, followed by a week of crazed apartment searching.

First the week of music:

Sunday evening I went to see Streetlight Manifesto.  If you have never heard of them and enjoy a good third way ska tune you should check them out.  I got there just as the first band was finishing up.  Overall it was a good show.  My only complaint is that a lot of the Streetlight fans tended not to bathe and insist on dancing next to me.  Dude! I’m in the back for a reason seriously stop sweating on me–you smell like a yeast infection.

Monday night I went to see the filming of Elvis Costello’s Spectacle at the Apollo Theater.  This was my first time at the Apollo and it was pretty awesome.  The Apollo is much smaller than I thought it would be–television definitely makes it look bigger.  Since this was a filming you had to get there fairly early to get your seat assignments.  Being a loner I got a great seat–4th row!  I seriously doubt you’ll see me in crowd shots as I’m over in the corner, but still.  The episode featured Sheryl Crow, Neko Case, and a couple of others.  It was really quite fantastic to listen to all the music.

Tuesday night was Snow Patrol at the Beacon Theater; another first for me–a show at the Beacon.  The Beacon was really nice and much bigger than the Apollo. Snow Patrol, well, I don’t know if it was technical difficulties or what but that show just wasn’t up to snuff for me.  They were on for the normal 90 minutes but 45 of it was banter and it just wasn’t that witty.  They were the band that keeps saying the name of the town they are in to get the crowd to yell.  Oh it was a long evening.

Wednesday night I went to check out an apartment and learned that there is an Australian restaurant which serves eggs cooked in whiskey.

Thursday night was U2 at Giants stadium.  This story is a two parter.  The first part involves the parking situation and the second is the actual show.  So I believe that the staff at the Meadowlands can actually handle 80,000 people showing up.  They do it every weekend for football season.  Why did they freak out on this particular evening?  It took us an hour to park.  Now, that is not an hour of looking for a place to park, but rather an hour of sitting in traffic inside the complex headed to the gates to park.  There weren’t enough people with orange glow sticks directing traffic.  It was a bit ridiculous.  While sitting in traffic I went ahead and had a beer because it wasn’t like we were moving.

After we did park we headed to the stadium a good 20 minute walk from the car.  Good times.  The concert was impressive.  At least the stage design was.  I personally think it is a two day breakdown for something that size.  Oh yeah U2 was pretty good too (just not the new songs about deleting porn from your hard drive or the one about how vampires are cool if your 12).

Friday was more apartment hunting.  Note to self: people in Williamsburg are strange.

Saturday Jesse wanted to have people over for a bit of a BBQ and a going away party for one of our co-workers.  So there was beer:

And cheesy poofs:

I don’t remember a whole lot of the afternoon due to the beer and partly the cheesy poofs.  And yes those are Halloween Oreos-they are so much better when super fresh.

The next week was a blur of going to different apartments and late night craigslisting but I did find a place.  More on that later.  Because Saturday I completed the Mud Run.

Saturday’s race was the RunAMuck 5K mud run.  Um…yeah.  So the course map that I did look at is below.  Notice it doesn’t appear to be a hardcore hike now does it?

Yeah.  So it was a lot of fun and hurty at the same time.  I’m actually quite proud of myself for the finish time: 52:05 and the fact that I didn’t get lost.  A lot of people did–mainly the hardcore let’s go run 6 miles before we start people.  The water portion of that was billed as no higher than your calf.  Ha!  That was crotch deep water.  I threw away the shoes I wore.

I have a new favorite band.  I was in Kansas last week hanging out, watching the home opener, and going to the Replay Lounge when I discovered them.  Everyone and their dog should check out Capybara.  In fact they should do it twice.  Live they sort of reminded me of Vampire Weekend, but after repeated listening of the album I’m going to go with Grizzly Bear/Sunbears! mash-up.

Seriously go see them.  They are headed out West.

This summer has been bookended by two shows that was re-living my 15 year old self.  It started out with The Dead Milkmen and it finished up with Nine Inch Nails.

Let me tell you about the Nine Inch Nails show.  First of all, it was a ticketless show, which means no souvenir for me.  Terminal 5 actually did a pretty good job getting everyone inside in a timely manner.  I was accompanied at this show by a friend and we got a fairly decent place on the floor.  The opening band was The Horrors.  What can I say about The Horrors besides the horror, the horror.  Let me just quote some of my text from that time:

Dude, I got this great idea for a song: what if we play the whole thing semi out of tune?

And during our shows we can use the strobe light to make the audience think we are something other than the love child band of The Cure & Marilyn Manson-the child noone ever wanted.

Was the opening line of this song: I want to have sex with Jews?

It’s as if Trent decided, “I suffered for my art, now you will too.”

Nine Inch Nails came on stage promptly at 8:45pm just like the flyer said they would.  It was loud.  It was crazy loud.  It was so loud I could feel the bass blowing my arm hair.  At one point I could feel my ear drums vibrating.  It was also hot.  Crazy hot.  Crazy lots of muscle-dudes jumping on each other and sweating towards me hot.  The mosh pit did pretty much wipe itself out after March of the Pigs.  Guess I’m not the only one who just isn’t 15 anymore.

The video below is pretty much the view I had.