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Modern Love

Seen Around Town

A few images that have been sitting on a 16 GB SD card in my Canon G10 for the last month--I've been so busy working on Embury Cocktails I haven't had a chance to download anything for a while.

Taken during that halcyon period between election day and The Inauguration. I still find myself giggling a little when I hear or see the word 'change' after watching South Park's irresistible satire of Obama mania (clip here, full episode here).

I've been watching this giant ramp as it's been built in the East River Park in preparation for a giant snowboarding/sledding/X games demo/Red Bull marketing opportunity this Saturday, February 7th. Shot this from the J train while crossing the Williamsburg Bridge.

Friday Music Cue: Stand Back (Eli Escobar Remix)

Now, I post this 80s classic without the detached, ironic, blank posture that afflicts the hipster community as described in horrified detail in Adbusters here. These hipsters have helped keep all this 80s music in the cultural mix long past when I, who was a teenager the first time it rolled around, would have imagined. In 1984 there was a sharp divide between bubble gum pop and hair metal, and the cool stuff like Bowie, X, The Smiths and The Talking Heads. Pop was a guilty pleasure at best, insipid and grating at worst. Sometimes those two aspects overlapped, of course. See: Madonna. But the synth heavy hits that MTV persuasively sold with narcotic visuals felt trifling even if they were catchy, and I figured history would soon discard them, along with my adolescence. But after a brief respite in the 90s bars and parties welcomed Corey Hart and Pat Benetar and post-Fleetwood Mac Stevie Nicks back with open skinny arms, creating a bizarre musical Groundhog Day for those of us who lived through it all the first time around. A lot of catchy tunes, to be sure, but the layer of froth on top relegates much of it to mere nostalgia. Then I discovered Eli Escobar, who may be rewriting musical history and redeeming an entire decade.

DJ and remix artist Escobar strips these glossy pop concoctions of that synthesizer pulse that, too me, dates the material badly, and he brings the beat forward, crafting a more timeless, and certainly a more funky version of the original. I first heard his work on this insane mix of Janet Jackson's 'The Pleasure Principle', where he used the existing beats like a weapon against the keyboard hum that undermined the radical edge that drove the Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis produced jam--making it harder, stranger and certainly funkier. On Stevie Nick's 'Stand Back' he's outdone himself--the 7:46 verion here is tight, driving, fresh--he keeps the signature synthesizer hook but anchors it with a tighter, angrier beat and bassline. All these 80s artists should just commision Escobar to go back and remix their stuff, peeling away the sacharine icing and revealing the true song, and the true beat, beneath it. Escobar DJs Wednesdays at Bang! on Rivington Street in NYC; his website with other cheese--and irony--free remixes is here.

Man Walks Into A Bar, The Sequel

Roommate Kyle (above, after shaving his head this weekend) and his 15 minutes of fame that came after his accidental overnight stay in Trophy Bar was chronicled in the New York Times has a second act. Well, Act 2.5 is all the blog coverage was Act 2. Maybe blog coverage was 1.5, come to think of it. Anyhow, New York Magazine honors Kyle, sort of, in the annual Reasons To Love New York issue. (Do ignore the inexplicably sour review of Trophy Bar that the story links to--one wonders just how bad the writer's day was.)

Oddly, along with the morning batch of e-mails that included news of this was the invite for my next DJ gig with Samo. The last time we DJed together at Trophy Bar was the very night Kyle got locked in there. We return to the scene of the crime Sunday, December 21st.
 
 

Bedford Streed, Post Marathon

The runners drink-and discard-a lot of Gatorade.

Unsettling

I descended from the J train the other evening to discover that my corner deli taken over by a very dramatically lit construction crew.

Two And A Half Months With The N95: Part Two

N95 isn't at its best in low light situations, although it did alright with this party on  a roof under the Brooklyn Bridge.

I thought I was being very cool and arty with this one; it's a stack of sheets of glass inside a big empty space off that rooftop. Pretty obscure-that low light thing is a big consideration with the N95. Lorenzo got a better picture of me taking shooting this than the photo itself:

And this one of me getting our location on the GPS function:

But in twilight, diffuse light and daylight it's right on the money.

The Hudson, near the helipads.

Ollie at his photo session with Lorenzo.

Terribly chic.

The N95 has super sweet video as well; here's something I shot at the Yoko Devereaux Memorial Day BBQ.

Two And A Half Months With The N95

Nokia let me try out the N95 for a couple of months. I could go on and on about what a tricked out fantastic piece of machinery the thing is, but it’s just too painful, as they actually just made me give it back. While the rest of the world is going nuts for the iPhone I'm just mourning my N95. So I won’t go on about the awesome web functionality, the speakers that are so good that the thing doubles as a boombox (I’d strut down the street holding it to my ear like an AM transistor radio circa 1975-only the sound was BIG and stereo) or the GPS and mapping features.

Instead I’m just going to post some of the images I captured using the N95's 5 megapixel camera over the past couple months. All pics are untouched; I find they expose a little hot, but tinkering with the contrast and brightness in iPhoto or any photo program makes 'em pop. More tomorrow. (Above photo courtesy Lorenzo di Flaneur.)

Memorial Day BBQ in the backyard of the Yoko Deveraux store.

The hunter becomes the hunted.

Discovered that onions need to be roasted over coals that are actually hot.

Got To Give The People, Give The People What They Want.

Typepad blogs list the referring address for visitors, and I’ve discovered that the single biggest tag that drives search engines to Meerkat is 'Joseph Gordon Levitt'. Closely followed by 'Prison Porn'. The combo of Gordon Levitt’s predominantly underage body of work and that factleaves me a little uneasy, but I’m not above exploiting a little light pedophilia for traffic's sake.

The posters for JGL's new film The Lookout caught my eye on the Bowery yesterday. Looks promising, even if the trailer casts it in a way-too backwards narrative light, the most overused trick in the quasi-indie playbook. Director Scott Frank did write Out Of Sight, however, a movie so good that even Jennifer Lopez came off as a credible Fed, as well as delivering the most gorgeously narcotic cinematic pas de deux in recent memory.

JGL looks soulful and raw entirely without cant in this one, as is usual for this anomaly in glossy young Hollywood. Good chin, too.

Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year

Shot from a moving F train on the Williamsburg Bridge this afternoon, using the Nokia N73.