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Archive
Untitled Document
Archive 14
greatest actor of his gen.
why sirius/xm will fail
the 2nd worst block in nyc
prod. tes: dentyne blast
the subaru
Archive 13
the decemberists
philadelphia
tokyo police club
acupuncture
the antichrist goes home
Archive 12
bubba's secret campaign
celeb sighting 8: steve schirripa
the police @ msg
celeb sighting 7: andrew mccarthy
puerto vallarta, mexico
Archive 11
kurt vonnegut: r.i.p.
worst boss ever
best purchase ever
ogunquit, me
bummer movies
Archive 10
pearl jam
dodge earthfucker
montclair: hipster central
24
halo 2
Archive 9
the cali roadtrip
celeb sighting 6: rupaul
product 1: diet coke w/ splenda
cell phone headsets
casualties of war
Archive 8
celeb sighting 5: max kellerman
booze experimentation
deus ex: invisible war
the weakest fortune ever
celeb sighting 4: christina aguilera
Archive 7
the six flags guy
celeb sighting 3: len berman
celeb sighting 2: christena pyle
max payne 2
celeb sighting 1: amber valletta
Archive 6
st. thomas, usvi
mr. hipster goes domestic
the danger of googling
halo
why i love whitney matheson
Archive 5
joe strummer tribute show
london part deux
london
new jersey state fair
lake george, ny
Archive 4
hdtv
kennebunkport, maine
the ponies
slow jams
the opera
Archive 3
ford motor company
look kids, parliament
tuesdays with morrie
snow
the blogger bash
Archive 2
freedom
the geniuses at fox
the blvd of porn & trinkets
the ugly bar
city kids
Archive 1
suburban cops
fat loss miracle
the free gift
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unemployment
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dinosaur jr. @ bowery ballroom
be your own dj
big apple circus

I finally got my chance, albeit
twenty years late, to see the now two album deep reunited Dinosaur
Jr. at The Bowery Ballroom.
I had seen one of the band's offshoots, Sebadoh,
way back when at the now defunct Tramps, where former and current
bassist Lou Barlow and his bandmate
Jason Loewenstein
basically played until nobody was left standing, calling for song
suggestions over and over again. Ms. Hipster still has arch-flattening
flashbacks of that night and probably lived silently with the fear
our Dino Jr. experience would be the same. I told her that this
would be quite a different time, but that our first stop on the
way to the venue should be at a CVS to pick up earplugs. Thank god.
The crowd was about what you'd expect for a band that's been around
for twenty-five years and has a lead singer/guitarist who majors
in guitar masturbation. Meaning lots of dudes, some of whom are
graying around the temples, and some younger dudes who heard their
cool uncle liked these guys back in his "skating days." I was a
relative latecomer to the Dino Jr. party, my first album being Green
Mind in 1991. By that time Lou had already left the band pretty
much to start his solo thing. Apparently head honcho, J
Mascis, could be a bit of a control freak! My personal history
aside, people were there to party. And from the first ridiculous
guitar solo, it seemed the boys where there to play their asses
off. That was until someone in the crowd decided to complain that
he couldn't hear the vocals. Barlow,
apparently off his meds, decided to berate the guy and asked him,
"What fuckin' show did you think you came to see?" Insinuating that
Dinosaur Jr.
isn't about singing and lyrics, a semi-slight towards his bandmate,
but kinda true nonetheless. Meanwhile, Mascis' guitar playing was
absolutely amazing, but he literally didn't talk or open his eyes
the entire night. Barlow, aside from his short tirade said nothing
and stood bent at the waist stroking his bass with his mop of hair
in his face. When your Presidents
of the United States of America-looking drummer has the most
personality in the band, you know you're in trouble.
As expected the tallest guy in the joint stood right in front of
us. He had to literally be 6'8." And while that would normally be
a bummer, he provided us with the first (and finest) example of
exactly what we wanted, and knew, would happen: air-guitaring. Trust
me, it's almost impossible not to, but sometimes you have to overcome
your desires to keep your self-respect. Big man sold out. He was
certainly not the only one, either, as we spied unembarrassed fellows
in the balcony, a dude with a ponytail "playing" the solo on "Freak
Scene" and several others basically playing Guitar Hero with
no controller. I mean, it's tough. Mascis is like the indie/college
rock equivalent of Eddie
Van Halen. He can tear the shit out of a guitar. And unlike
his hipster brethren, he plays the same ol' instrument the entire
show, tuning up or down between songs. No banjos, no Theremins,
no giant Stray Cats axe. The shit was crazy. My only issue with
the night--aside from having to keep my earplugs in all night to
avoid having my anvils bleed--is that with so many albums to choose
from, odds are they're going to leave out some favorites. I wanted
to hear "In a Jar,"
dude. But they did play "Wagon,"
so at least I walked away pretty happy. So I guess I'll see these
guys again in 2035.
It's amazing how a single iPhone
application can change your life. Okay, not change your life, but
allow you to do something you either never thought possible or thought
could only be possible by spending hundreds of dollars. I had originally
been looking at a Sonos
system several years back. It basically allows you to stream your
itunes collection to multiple rooms and control your collection
via a Sonos remote. Problem was, it's expensive and not guaranteed
to work seamlessly. So I put it off, my iTunes collection trapped
in my iMac
to only be played through my harman/kardon
SoundSticks or shared through my library on my MacBook
and rigged to my stereo via an RCA cable. That didn't allow any
type of control whatsoever, and I just had to run to the iMac upstairs
if some NWA
song came on when the kids were present. Not a great option.
And then along came the fortuitous theft of my Nokia
N95--giving me the perfect excuse to go out and finally purchase
an iPhone.
I've also owned an AirPort
Express for several years, using it to wirelessly network my
printer. And then, unbeknownst to me at the time, I completed the
full DJ experience by discovering the most useful iPhone app there
is,
iTunes Remote. Remote allows you to see your entire iTunes collection
(which in my case sits entirely on my iMac), make playlists and
basically control the thing as if you were sitting at your computer--all
from the palm of your hand.
And then it hit me. I could take the AirPort Express, hook an RCA
cable from it to my stereo, set my iTunes to broadcast to the Airport
Express and voila! So now I can broadcast to my harman/kardon
DPR 2005 and Paradigm
Reference Studio/80 speaker setup rather than relying on my
computer speakers, which are sequestered in an upstairs room, tiny
and not at all convenient for soirées. Beyond the convenience
of now being able to play all of my iTunes library in a public space,
I can control exactly what's playing, volume and everything else
directly from my while walking around, pouring drinks, making idle
conversation and telling other people's kids not to touch my television.
So every time that cool vaguely British kid in the skinny jeans
tells you he DJs at some hot club in DUMBO, you too can say, "Oh
yeah, I totally rocked my Christmas party this year! Went from Perry
Como to The
Smiths to Run-D.M.C.
all with the flick of a finger!"
iTunes Remote in action

I hadn’t been to a circus
in many years prior to attending the Big
Apple Circus with Hipster Jr. But I seem to recall it being
a grand event in a giant tent that included elephants and zebras
and tigers and stilt walkers and 50 clowns piling out of a VW Bug.
In other words, spectacle. The Big Apple Circus was more like a
Black
Cat firecracker to your more typical M80 bigtop event. Some
might even call it quaint.
The first thing that struck me is just how small the “big”
top was. I’ve seen elementary school auditoriums three times
the size. While some circuses have three rings, this circus has
one—one very small one. It was about the size of one of those
round beds from the 60s that my aunt in Vegas sported until they
stopped selling sheets that fit it. At one point the guy who balances
on horseback came out with his two ponies and they proceeded to
essentially turn in circles and look bored. Those beasts weren’t
the only animals under the big top, though; there were also two
dogs that came out at one point to dance with a couple performers.
And that was the extent of the animal acts. There was a dude who
spit ping pong balls out of his mouth and caught them, which was
a pretty cool trick, and a pair of tiny Chinese twins in matching
body suits who shoved themselves into what were essentially trash
cans with no bottom, and a Russian woman who did acrobatics of a
sort with ribbons extended from the ceiling. While all of these
were impressive in their own way, I couldn’t get past the
fact that it all lacked a certain oomph. There was a group of young
male acrobats who did an abbreviated trapeze act for the finale,
but they ended up falling into the safety net more times than they
succeeded in completing a trick. And, once again, the tiny space
made for a pretty lackluster performance.
That said, none of these folks were the main attraction. That honor
goes to Bello
Knock the clown. He sports a sweet Kid
'n Play sheaf of hair (to which Hipster Jr. asked why the guy
was wearing a paper bag on his head) and looks bulkier than he probably
is under his wacky clown outfit. He’s not so much a clown,
really, as a goofy acrobat. There’s no seltzer bottle to the
face, giant floppy shoes or even a squirting flower. He does, however,
join other performers in things like the double
hamster wheel of death (or whatever it’s called), the
trampoline of ultimate bounciness and various other not-so-death-defying
apparatuses of death. He was joined in his celebrity by Grandma
the Clown, who was a stout dude in an old lady wig and face paint,
and a ringmaster who reminded me of a kind of inexperienced Jerry
Seinfeld. Grandma was especially odd, as her/his one talent was
apparently doing flips, which he showed off after 90 minutes of
doing nothing particularly funny. And the ringmaster was like the
CIT version of a camp counselor or the starting JV quarterback—almost
there, but not quite ready for the big time.
Overall the kid liked it okay, but was more into the weird lightsaber
looking things and wacky lightup glasses being sold by the random
carnie freaks than the show itself, and the overwhelming noise of
the live band almost drove him to a five-year-old nervous breakdown,
but the flying Vodka brothers finale brought him back from the edge
just a bit. But, honeslty, the best part of the night for him was
the crowded ride on the E train up to Lincoln Center. It would have
been a lot cheaper had I known…

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