3.31.12 Fiona Apple Reminds Me To Think About Feminism

Recently saw Fiona Apple’s much discussed return show at Bowery Ballroom. As a friend said, she’s in fighting shape right now – just as wild and vulnerable and impassioned as ever.

Column write up here, in which I forgot to mention that there were a surprising number of drag queens in the audience! Secret fringe Fiona Apple fanbase, I guess?

3.05.12 What The West Village Really Needs


Walking to the bank this morning I noticed that the store front on the north west corner of Grove and 7th Ave is being taken over by yet another gluten free supposedly antioxidant packed sure to be exotically flavored and probably european yogurt shop thingy. Now, I’m someone who owns a juicer that gets hard use and takes tumeric and astragalus and lactobacteria every single day; I’m so the target audience for this place, which hasn’t even opened yet, and I’m sure I’ll go there. But, like, seriously?

Some things the West Village could desperately use instead of another self-indulgently bougy health-is-the-new-materialism establishment. And don’t give me that shit about how the average WV dweller is too posh for the below. I live here. I see all the swanky PhD parents in line at the bagel shop on Hudson on Sundays, hungover in Persols and asking for extra cream cheese.

1. Taco Bell: veggie double decker tacos = best hangover food ever. No discussion.
2. The return of Go Shushi. Everytime I walk by the tourist-packed, expensive-but-shite pizza place on Greenwich Ave and 8th something hurts a little bit.
3. A real dive bar with a real dive bar jukebox with real dive bartenders with real dive bar bathroom walls covered in graffiti but with clean west village style toilets. Everything but the smell of stale beer and piss, please.
4. A real book store. Three Lives is too snooty. Book Marc is upsettingly well done and the cute gay boys in there love my dogs but … it doesn’t count.
5. Some other stuff I can’t think of right now because I am on deadline and my aloted procrastination window (seventeen minutes!) has just timed out.

3.05.12 I Heart You, Alexis

http://read.mtvhive.com/2012/03/01/sleigh-bells-alexis-krauss-live/

2.28.12 NPR: Soundcheck

Sick at home in NM but well enough to ramble about current fave songs. Check it.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/2012/feb/28/pick-three-lizzy-goodman/

2.25.12 Do Other People Do This?

This is normal!

So I’ve been flying a lot lately. New Mexico. Park City. Miami. New Mexico again. And every time I get on an airplane I load a massive tote with the backlog of magazines I haven’t yet gotten. British Vogues and Vanity Fairs and Wired and oh god the New Yorkers, so many New Yorkers. The time you spend in the cocoon of that flying metal tube feels suspended, somehow – extra hours outside the bounds of the otherwise jammed 24 you get in a regular day. Invigorated by the idea that this is stolen time (and hopped up on overpriced airport Starbucks lattes) I tear through mounds of backissues. In regular life, opening a magazine is something I do with wariness – if I’m in the wrong mood, each piece can feel like one I didn’t get to write. But on the plane I’m able to read with joy, somehow. Quotes, books I should get, upcoming exhibits I didn’t know about that I want to remember to see, films that inspired actors I love, shoes I clearly need – this orgiastic collage of info emerges and, since I can’t use the stickies on my iPhone, my usual go-to means of jotting shit down, I reach for the nearest white space: those little subscription cards that come in magazines.

A sampling of recent notations:
- check out new adapdation of Great Expectations
- kate obenshain’s speech at Smith on the failures of feminism
- be the last person to finally see Bill Cunningham doc
- do Fast Company expenses
- “beauty reveals everything because it expresses nothing” – Oscar Wilde

When I get off the plane I feel all inspired, like I’ve gotten so much done, but after the caffeine + altitude high wears off I’m left with this sad and disturbing pile of mangled paper, which seems like it could only have been created by a deranged person in need of immediate institutionalization.

2.24.12 Date With The Night: GNR!!!

http://read.mtvhive.com/2012/02/23/guns-n-roses-new-york/