I spent Hallowe’en in Brooklyn, NY, (as one of the crew members of the Methinks Presents NYC Roadtrip #9) at this non-descript warehouse in the middle of nowhere, seeing some amazing bands. It was probably one of the Top 10 shows I had ever seen in my life, not because the music was so amazing or because the sound was so killer, but because the setting was so cool and the crowd was so damn good. Good people, good music, good vibes, good show.
I originally saw Child Abuse open for The Locust, and they were pretty weird. On this night, they were fleshed out from a two-piece with a bassist added and a much heavier sound. Frenetic.
The Homosexuals were sexy as hell, and the leathery lead singer (I think it’s safe to say he was the only original member) strutted like Mick Jagger on a speedball bender.
I have seen AIDS Wolf at least a half-dozen times, probably way more. Every time, they kill it. This night was absolutely no exception. As far as I’m concerned, they owned the night. Sorry to all the other bands, but nobody can compete with Chloe’s manic caterwaul and the band’s absolute fucking abrasiveness. They’re like a book bound in sandpaper that destroys the other books on the shelf, just by existing.
The music press hype machine has made Ponytail seem a bit like the second coming. But they deserve very blog post and every drop of ink spilled for them. It was trascendent, it was ecstatic, it was sweaty, it was love. And singer Molly Siegel’s Kool-Aid Man costume busting through the paper brick wall provoked a crazy amount of applause. And then she opens her pipes. It’s not so much singing as it is glorious joyous sticky beauty.
Th photos turned out pretty interesting. I used a straight-up flash with my favourite open-shutter setting. But since there were a lot of other people snapping shots, there’s a lot of double and triple exposure that got picked up. Pretty cool effects, I reckon. And don’t ask me why, but most of these shots ended up as vertical / portrait.
Is it just me, or is everyone taking crazy pills? ‘Cause I sure am.
I was waiting for the critique… Waiting for it… But since I’m not hearing it anywhere in the mainstream, I’m just gonna come right out and say it:
Colin Powell comes out this past Sunday with and endorses Barack Obama for president. This is a big deal, because he’s a prominent Republican, he’s a military guy, and he’s got a raft of experience. Today, I read that, not only has he formally accepted the endorsement, Obama has hinted that Powell will serve as an advisor, and may even have a job in the higher echelons of his administration, were he elected.
Here’s where my synapses snap and I feel like I’m short circuiting: Are we talking about the same person here? The same Colin Powell who went before the UN in 2003 holding a vial of fake anthrax and a bunch of totally fabricated slides of “mobile weapons productions facilities”? The same Colin Powell who unequivocally supported the invasion of Iraq, an invasion that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis? The same Colin Powell who said “We must not shrink from whatever is ahead of us. We must not fail in our duty and our responsibility to the citizens of the countries that are represented by this body,” knowing full well it was a bunch of bullshit?
I know he’s since gone on record to say it was one of the lowest points of his life, and rightfully so. The least he could do is feel some remorse. But offering this man a job in politics again is psychotic. I appreciate that he feels bad, but as far as I’m concerned, once he participated in a concerted campaign to invade another country, actions which resulted in piles and piles and piles of dead bodies, he veto’ed himself for a second chance… Unless the job he gets is being a land-mine defuser. Then, maybe.
Read the entire transcript of Powell’s 2003 UN speech here (beware! this link takes you to the official White House webpage!). Then decide for yourself what his endorsement is worth, and what it might imply.
Saturday this past weekend: I discover the spot all over again. It’s not that hard to find. In fact, it used to be much more difficult. You used to have to stroll on past a big office building, and squeeze yrself through a sketchy fence hole, then rappel down a stone wall just so you could walk through a bunch of thick brush. But now, there’s construction. Two huge sets of tracks carve a path right down, and the only thing to negotiate now is a bunch of loose soil that gets into yr shoes.
We go there once in a while, for no reason in particular. It always feels like a celebration but there’s rarely an “occasion” to speak of. Wait, no. The occasion is life, I suppose, if that doesn’t sound too Hallmark. G brings a bunch of scrap wood, someone always brings musical instruments, and we construct makeshift seating arrangements out of whatever we can find. Tonight, we make a bench out of a long 4×10″ balanced on a car tire. Put an equal weight of people on one side as much as the other, and you’ve got yrself a bench with some bounce, and good support to boot. Some others sit on the bare ground, or use some local plant life for cushioning. A song starts up and the instruments trickle in. Voices bounce off the concrete supporting beams with a sweet reverb that would rival any expensive club. And we’re all the main attraction.
Also, tonight, someone brings a little over a dozen vegan biscuits, infused with dill. So fucking tasty, I have to eat three, which isn’t very generous of me, I know, but it’s been a long night with a lot of biking. Though twenty minutes ago there were only four of us, now were approaching ten, maybe more, and the circle is spreading. Greetings are made without the usual awkwardness reserved for social functions. Hugs are the order of the day. We’re all friends here.
The fire gets bigger to accommodate the swelling group. Someone makes a speech about the recent election and a fresh flag is thrown on the flames. The story goes that the flag was stolen from a police station just outside of Ottawa, one where I myself was harassed by cops for hitchhiking. I laugh at the symbolism, and the gutter poignancy. We are good people, trying to do right by our words and our actions. The polyester bubbles and melts, and we laugh at ourselves for not predicting it: In a way, the flag is “burn-proof.”
I leave close to 3am, with a smile on my face. I know you might say that it’s easy to romanticize, but there are so few romantic moments like this left in the city, it seems. If I can’t romanticize this, what’s left? As I walk away, back up the bulldozer ramp and back into the world of taxes, political simulacra and joyless jobs, I wonder if that’s really the real world. Maybe the real world is under that bridge, singing and hugging and sharing whatever we have, while the imagined world is the crust over it all, the world of paperwork and e-mail and racing through the game of life.
Or maybe I’m just romanticizing. But when I get home on my bike, my hoodie still smells like campfire. And that’s real.
[click on the horizontal photos to see larger versions.]
It’s kind of hard to make a case for a friend’s band without it sounding like payola. It’s rare that I don’t like my friends’ bands, because I like them as people, and I understand them as musicians, I reckon. But this is different. I only know one fella in Whale Tooth, so my opinion of them is (relatively) untainted by the filter of friendship.
So believe me when I say this: Whale Tooth is worth every penny. They sound like lemonade and soy ice cream on the last day of summer, right before school starts again. And you get on yr bike and you pedal over to yr buddy’s place and you both decide to check out the abandoned warehouse down the road, one last time before they demolish it. So yr exploring this abandoned warehouse, there’s light pouring through cracks in the windows making beams in the dusty air, and you hear barking. Holy shit, the guard dog. So you and yr buddy run like the dickens, running and running and laughing. And just as you get over the fence, the guard dog gets there, unable to reach you through the chain links. You both laugh, panting. Tomorrow it’s back to work, but for now it feels like freedom.
Inspired by a recent experience at Nuit Blanche 2008, here are some photos from Smash Day 2004 in Ottawa, with my friends Neil and Jesse. After throwing around various broken electronic equipment (including an old playstation), and setting the remains on fire, it was back to work for the lot of us.
INFO: This is a short made of photos taken on my way home from a hospital check-up. It features three of my favourite things: stop-motion, looping, and color processing. I decided to make a quick and dirty film using some familiar techniques just to get the juices flowing as I wrap my head around a longer claymation short that I’m working on.
The musical track features an interpolation from “Field of Dreams,” starring Kevin Costner. The Talking Heads quote on the sidewalk was found by accident, but goddamn, I love that band.
shot on location at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Toronto
photos taken 09/22/08
edited on 09/22/08 & 09/25/08
If you go to Vimeo (via the link above), you can download the video in high-res. I highly recommend it, cause compression washes out some of the sharpness. When you get to the vimeo page, scroll to the bottom-right, and there is a link that says “Download Quicktime Version.” Do it.
It’s kind of my fault. I usually give myself more than enough of a good angle to clear street car tracks, especially when I’m on the road bike. And I thought I did this time as well. But I guess not. Pump, pump, pump, get ready to turn, signal, splat.
I’m not sure how fast I was going, but the spill was bad enough that, once I managed to collect myself and drag the bike off the road, there were already people there asking me if I was okay. A woman with wetnaps in a ziploc bag gives me her stash and moves on. I sit down and start cleaning my wounds, still reeling and crazy nauseous. Trying not to think about it.
Thanks to a quartet of girls headed for the Polish Festival, I place a couple of phone calls. R tells me not to go home, but to “get the fuck to the emergency room.” L arrives on the scene within ten minutes, and a few minutes later, the paramedics make their entrance. I’m fitted with a temporary sling, and escorted into the ambulance.
The paramedics are hilarious, and make me laugh more than I am already. Did this really happen? Am I actually in an ambulance right now? Weirdness. I’m feeling giddy. Is that a good thing?
As reality starts to fall into place, I start to notice things: the wounds on my hand make me look like Wolverine; I’m sweating; There’s a guy in the emergency room lineup wearing handcuffs, escorted by two cops; The emergency waiting area feels a lot like a greyhound bus station; There are clocks everywhere, to accentuate how slow time goes.
I take that back. Things are moving quickly. Between the time that I arrive at the hospital and the time that I get to see a doctor, it’s less than an hour. I’ve been asked whether I have any allergies to medication about 20 times in 45 minutes. “Not that I know of,” is my stock response.
L is doing an amazing job as photographer, getting up close and shooting the strange surroundings with aplomb. She takes multiple shots of everything, and works quickly.
Fucking road rash. Burns. But I have to say, it’s an almost exquisite sort of pain. Like, it’s amazing that something can sizzle like that… seemingly endlessly. And the way it aches… not enough to drive me crazy, but enough to let me know I’m alive. I kind of like it.
The resident doctor is named Michael. Both L and I will remark later that he’s a damn good looking and well-built man, but for now we’re just happy that he’s easy going, confident, kind, and willing to be photographed.
He performs an array of visual and touch tests to try to diagnose me. He’s not convinced that I’ve dislocated my shoulder, so an x-ray is ordered.
And then I hear the refrain, that no one in the medical sector seems to want me to forget: It could have been a lot worse, buddy. Yr smart enough to wear a helmet.
Ouch. Yeah. I didn’t hit my head. I could have. I was close. But I didn’t. And if I had, I would’ve been wearing a good helmet. Michael is the latest person to remind me of this, after the paramedics, the receptionist, and the first nurse.
“We’ve seen a lot of bike accidents this year with people not wearing helmets.”
“Really? More than other years?”
“Yeah. Even one of the members of the Canadian national cycling team… Well, not anymore.”
“Hmm.”
Sling time. It’s excrutiating to even think of taking off my shirt, so L and I tell Michael to just cut it off. He obliges, laughing at L and I while we photograph the whole thing. To cut it off, he uses this pair of cutters that are ominously chained to the wall. At first I’m not sure if they’re chained there to keep people from stealing them, or to keep people from using them to hurt themselves or someone else. Regardless, a scalpel sits next to them on the table, ready to be stolen and used later, or stabbed into someone right away.
Okay, sling time for real now. Michael tells me he’s never tied a sling before - ever - but he manages to do up a pretty good one. Later on nurse number three (names are difficult at this point) will remark at what a great sling tying job it is. Apparently, Michel is a natural.
When the sling is slung, Michael parts to go prepare a “room” for me. While he’s gone, the sounds of the hospital begin to be come into aural focus. As he shows L and I to my bed, it’s a veritable smorgasbord of comforting, terrifying, and confusing noises. People cry. Nurses and doctors speak in comforting tones. A small child is screaming her guts out. No really, it sounds like she’s being tortured into divulging national security secrets. I find out later that she’s just arrived with a broken arm, and - because of the pain - is inconsolable. Her parents and the doctor try to comfort her, but she’s having none of it. Bloody murder.
L remarks to me that she’s amazed by the sheer amount of stuff everywhere. So many things are literally just strewn about the hospital: piles of linen, medical supplies, old people, rooms… It seems awfully chaotic, though there does seem to be a system to it all. Whatever the system is though, we can’t decipher it.
I arrive at my new digs, and nurse number two - a somewhat crabby man who makes it clear that photography in the hospital is prohibited - hooks me up with an I.V. for later. For now, it’s just a needle inserted into my vein with an open end taped down to my arm. It’s like a USB port of a computer, but for drugs to go into me. Plug and play.
Nurse number three arrives and shows me a good time. She’s in so much better spirits than number two, and after hooking me up to a machine and taking some metrics, she takes me for a ride to the x-ray room. On the way there, my drug port gets put to good use: 5mg of morphine straight to the vein, and I gotta say, holy crap, what a rush. Don’t get me wrong, I would never get into intravenous drug use as a matter of principle, but it is quite the experience. It’s like having a limb fall asleep, and then getting pins and needles, but without the pain. That being said, though, it doesn’t feel entirely pleasant either. Kind of like a rollercoaster, except you actually feel like your heart could beat so fast that you die. Yikes.
X-rays get taken, and Dr. Michael tells me that the results are - as he expected - negative. No fracture, no dislocation, and nothing to be said. I have to come back to see the orthopedic surgeon, who might need an MRI to see if I have torn ligaments or soft tissue damage. And I’m sent on my way.
L and I grab the next cab homeward, and stop at the Shopper’s to get me some painkillers. The total bill for the ambulance ride and the hospital visit is $0*, which makes me thank Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Zoroaster, Krishna, Shiva, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I don’t live in the United States. I know, I know, Canada’s system is plagued with problems and there are gaps all over the place. But still. Wow.
So I sit at the Shopper’s Drug Mart pharmacy, waiting to get my T3s, and the take home message seems pretty clear: It could’ve been a lot worse. I could’ve bashed my head open. A car could’ve run me over after my accident. It could be my right arm that’s fucked up.
But thankfully, by some odd stroke of luck, I’m still here. I’m not a smear of pus on the road. I’m not in a persistent vegetative state. And even though I have no idea when I’m gonna be able to use my arm fully again, it seems okay. It all seems okay.
*Incidental costs: $20 for the cab, $15 for pills, $10 for a new sling
These are some high-ISO shots from a show I went to this past week. My friends in Orca put together this bill, and it was loud as all hell. Wickedness. No Flash, No Booze, No problem.
Okay, okay, so it was a bit of a sausage party. Most metal shows are.
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