NIN in philly, PA

Lights in the Sky tour
29 august 2008

subhangi described NIN shows as a pilgrimage. if you've not experienced one, go. the band's toight, the lightshow's ridiculous and the music pummels you but rests sometimes too. if you're in the seats you won't get bruised, squashed or groped by strangers during Closer. but where's the fun in that?? floor's where it's at.

parked next to a car with license plate “haloeight.” mah peeps. dudes i hung with in line were pretty normal by NIN standards, whereas the chick i chatted with in jersey tried to convince me that the government's killing us off with poisoned contrails. i just put a video up on youTube as evidence – she told me – even though i know they'll come after me now. i guess right then the voices told her to do a snake-charmer dance because she did a rather nice one, and a couple people applauded. if that's what contrails do, i'll take some now kthxbye.

NIN.com presales go in first, so got front & nearlycenter squeezed beside a short guy on the rail, close enough to spit – as PK noted, and remained relatively anchored while the sea of bodies behind pitched & tossed.

Does It Offend You, Yeah was even better this time 'round – soundguy finally woke up and mixed the vocals higher. band still looked like kids in a playground onstage, hopping & cavorting, good-humored. DIOYY's one of NIN's better opening bands IMO – would put 'em just behind APC and saul williams. set could have been longer, which is high praise for an opening act.

[reason #811 why i love mac: despite crowd noise Shazam still tagged filler music between DIOYY and NIN.]

trent reznor said he spent 4mos in a dark room piecing together the Lights in the Sky stage show, and that effort shows. drums, mult. keyboards, a fucking vibraphone – all these sit on wheeled platforms so they can be pushed like satellites around a stage that changes 5 times in the course of the show. 3 sets of stage-wide hi-tech LED screens alternately hide & reveal the band, and PK says it's proximity sensors that allow reznor to wipe away the tapestry of white light as he moves behind the screen during Only, that choreographing such complex movement between performer and lighting beforehand would be impossible. if you're nikki sixx, you might fulminate against overproduced & ponderous visuals, but when you overlay that production with the raw energy that is nine inch nails, the reason you leave the floor exhausted and at peace, jeans drenched and leather belt soaked through, you get the pilgrimage thing.

after the 1st driving set of Slip tracks and The Frail/The Wretched, the band sans the drummer freese gathered at the veryfront of the stage before an LED screen as roadies hoisted up 3 sequencer & keyboard satellites. by the light of a glowing console on a dark stage we got to see reznor at work, setting up his shit to cue Me I'm Not. EVERYone was on a keyboard, not a guitar in sight, yet there's body-moving *music.* it's then that you derive the full appreciation of how much this man changed music since Pretty Hate Machine. yeah, reznor's great on piano and can find his way around a guitar, but where he really shines is in the piecing & mixing, and during Me I'm Not or Vessel YOU get to watch it. it's like being in the studio except instead of atticus ross & alan moulder you've got klorgon the tattoed wonder on one side of you and queen vampyra on the other.




NIN shows still draw a sizable goth contingent. they creep out of their hideyholes in whiteface with scars, tats and piercings; with buckles, corsets and 8” boots; with the vain hope that maybe this once they'll get The Perfect Drug live. they obvy didn't get the memo about HappySoberTrent.

HST's given to speeches on this tour, short 2min jobs where he sounds genuinely thankful, even smiles, and the philly speech after Echoplex addressed the change of his fan base:

Trent's speech 8/29/08


highlights if the vid upstairs doesn't load:

i'd like to thank our opening band Does It Offend You, Yeah. please, if you like them, go out and buy their record. you can steal everything i put out, i don't care anymore. take it.

someone asked me, y'know we've been doing this for awhile, and someone asked me, when you look out into the audience does it look the same as it did years ago? and there's one difference that i've noticed, and that is... like i went and saw Rage Against the Machine the other day at, uh...

[at this point klorgon loosed a primal howl that deafened me.]

where was it? - at Lollapalooza, and it was... we were on the stage watching out, and a million people, and it looked great and they kicked ass.

but i noticed, it was all dudes. all dudes, as far as you could see, just shirtless sweaty guys. and when we started out it was all dudes, you know like vampire dudes, and it was all guys...

and now a lot of... a lot of hot chicks in the front.

[a giant purple bra sailed onstage and dropped in front of finck, who picked it up and modeled it thoughtfully. klorgon bellowed again.]

i dunno whether that's a good or bad but... i've blown the mystique. let's get all dark in here, shall we.

let's kill the lights.

and then came Reptile.

set list, with differences from the East Rutherford show in strikes and green:
999,999 

1,000,000 

Letting You 

Discipline 

March of the Pigs 

Head Down 

The Frail 

Reptile
The Wretched

Closer 
(w/The Only Time breakdown)
Gave Up 

The Warning 

Vessel 

Me I'm Not
The Great Destroyer
5 Ghosts I 

17 Ghosts II 

19 Ghosts III 

Ghosts Piggy 

The Greater Good
Wish (w/ Pinion intro) 

Terrible Lie 

Survivalism 

The Big Come Down 

31 Ghosts IV
8 Ghosts I
Only
Down in It 

The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole 

(ENCORE) 

Echoplex 

Reptile
God Given 

The Good Soldier
Hurt 

In This Twilight > Zero Sum

Down In It was introduced with “here's some really REALLY old shit” and it was balls.to.the.wall blinding force – one of this show's highlights IMO. an intrepid soul scrambled onstage in front of JMJ, ran over to reznor and bowed (one song early, bro), then made his way to finck before being tackled by security. took 5 guys to get him offstage. you gotta give the guy props for having balls but like the battered housewife, NIN fans fear anything that might set reznor off, like the lighter toss that prompted him to end an aWitha Teetha show in the middle of Hurt. HST was unfazed, however, and didn't miss a word.

another nifty use of those LED screens is the encore segue from dark stage into Echoplex. if you've seen the rehearsal vid you're familiar with how freese uses a Lemur to build the background drums; in the live show, the rear screen becomes a 16-step sequencer on a digital grid from which freesinator builds the drumtrack by touching a series of blocks... slowly too, so people like me who don't know a C-note from a centavo get the gist. the song ends with freese pulling beats away.


pix don't do it justice: check out this vid from the Toledo show.

in philly, as the 3 guitars wound down into silence, an errant, off-drumbeat rang. reznor glanced offstage, motioned “enough” and looked a little grumpy. the occasional fuckup isn't a bad thing, however; you derive more of an appreciation for what makes up a show.


missed Burn, Dead Souls and Suck in the set list, but In This Twilight // Zero Sum // exeunt still prickled the skin. and of course the savage beastie's been soothed and i won't need to kill anybody for at least a couple weeks.

NIN in east rutherford, NJ

Lights in the Sky tour
27 aug 2008

much WorkToDo so this will be a quickie micky. setting it down in verse to remember. no proselytising.

opening act Does It Offend You, Yeah looked like they were having fun, even when some asshole lobbed a cup of beer onstage. if you don't like the opening act just sit tight, it's a short set. don't scream YOU SUCK and don't throw shit. have a modicum of fucking respect. when DIOYY jams it's a bit like the Beastie Boys' The Mix-up. funk groove. not bad.

then 2hrs and 15min of NIN. oh.my.god, can it go any faster??


we got kinder & gentler trent, who thanked his fans, introduced each band member (1st time i've seen that in 13 tours of duty), thanked us again, thanked his road crew and DIOYY, and thanked us once more.


we got the thrash -- oh fuck said the guy alongside who was trying to protect his girlfriend when freese tore into Gave Up -- and we got Ghosts interludes. The Frail -- which featured reznor @ keyboard at the back of the stage, where a bright LED screen set in bold relief the drip drip drip of sweat off his shirt and forehead from Discipline/MOTP/Head Down -- bled into Reptile for a change of pace.


band took a break, LED screen dropped for The Greater Good but you gradually heard reznor's live voice take on "breath.us-in.slowly.slowly" and he curled around the screen onto far stage right whispering to a not-rob cameraman just inches away from his face then slipped back as oozily as he arrived, left hand trailing across the screen, consummate showman.

toys: first time we've seen TR w/a vocoder -- wanna say it was Head Down? -- inspired by MJK perhaps, and Vessel featured a crazy flat-screen sequencer from which reznor summoned all the shit that comes down at the end of the track, plus some. what you think is a static-y percussion loop isn't a loop at all, it's TR stabbing at that screen with one hand while smearing a finger around like an old-skool dj with the other. sick. want to see that again.

nice to have robin finck back -- prefer his loose-limbed grace to his predecessor's monkey acrobatics (sorry travis) -- and tho he is no lohner did warm to the new bassist justin meldal-johnsen when he took up a cello for Ghosts (idea for which inspired by Bridge Concert success?). freese abs killed it on Piggy, dude has 9 arms, and during In This Twilight didn't look at the drumset once, just worked by feel. In This Twilight -- and the show -- ended w/the band members exiting one-by-one, leaving reznor noodling a bit on the keyboard to flirt with and finish with an approximation of Zero Sum. just purrfect.


NIN is loud, brutish and bruising but he's also subtle and artful. while there's trent there's hope. (okay a little proselytising)

setlist, AFAIK:
999,999
1,000,000
Letting You
Discipline
March of the Pigs
Head Down
The Frail
Reptile
Closer
Gave Up
The Warning
Vessel
5 Ghosts I
17 Ghosts II
19 Ghosts III
Ghosts Piggy
The Greater Good
Wish (w/ Pinion intro)
Terrible Lie
Survivalism
The Big Come Down
31 Ghosts IV
Only
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
(ENCORE)
Echoplex
God Given
The Good Soldier
Hurt
In This Twilight

3rd & 10

a beautiful day yesterday. slept in instead of swimming and in the afternoon blew off a RBRBRBR BTW workout to watch delcastle scrimmage against howard & st george's. i'd sidled in on utter whim but immediately became part of the scene, folded into a mix of siblings, parents and teachers who'd collected in the stands on a perfect day in august to watch a bunch of high school kids score a touchdown every 45min. a girl who melted me with her marion jones smile rubbed her little brother's shoulders while he squirmed with pleasure. the fathers of squashed and spindled players tromped heavily down the risers to confab with the physical therapist – we wrapped the ankle, just ice it tonight and we won't run him tomorrow/it's just a jammed finger, nothing to worry about/he's a tough kid, he'll be fine tomorrow – and smiled at me on the way back up, relief smoothing the corners of their eyes. a big, big man who to this day holds penns grove school records in the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100 relay railed against clewless assistant coaches and the questionable wisdom of spending money on computers instead of hiring quality coaches who would “get those skinny fuckers in the gym and put some meat on their bones.” we held our collective breath when another boy crumpled on the field and the players went down on bended knee, and we clapped when the trainer resurrected him.

i didn't intend to sit there for 2 hours, didn't intend to be there in the first place, but it was an unexpected pleasure and i left reconstituted.

it is good to be free.

LC du worlds, or Accomplishing the Preposterous

a month ago i was moaning to fatmammycat about the preposterous conceit of running 16miles at worlds when i could barely manage 3 on the treadmill. preposterous is just another fancy arsed word for ludicrous - she responded - and we KNOW ludicrous is easily bitch slapped senseless when up against reservoir deep. she was right.

long course du worlds
18k run – 78k bike – 9k run

if you're a cyclist, you can't do much better than belgium. there are usually smooth, glass-free dedicated bike lanes and when there aren't, drivers yield to you instead of firing invective and anything else they can find behind the passenger seat.

and the belgians know how to put on a race. the day before worlds, the local organisers treated us to an escorted pre-ride of a bike course that zigged and zagged through downtown geel before shooting back and forth between a couple roundabouts. we were in a rolling enclosure the entire time, protected by motos that would stop traffic along sidestreets, drop back behind and then zoom to the next intersection in a finely-coordinated dance. i felt like i was in the Tour. and nobody crashed or made any bone-headed moves. if we'd been triathletes there'd have been bodies all over the road.

one thing the race organisers couldn't do was control the weather, and when i woke before dawn on race-day morning a fine mist was falling from the sky, and it continued to fall off & on over the next 6 hours, just enough to keep the roads wet and the corners & cobbles slightly treacherous. but at least it wasn't hot!

after a short warmup i hit the loo for one final time and had a panic moment when i emerged to find transition empty and the start not where i thought it was. but it's not a proper race unless you almost miss the start, and once i was there standing behind the line cares and anxieties vanished. racing is the reward for all the BTW workouts, the packing, the visualising of bike in's and run out's, the 8th nervous poo; and once you're on the start line, you can relax because the hard stuff's done. fisch and the Oracle had laid out my race strategy so i didn't even have to think, just execute.

the first run was 4 laps of a 4.5k course that offered a couple out & backs so you could track how many people were in front of you -- and there were a LOT. the women's field wasn't big – about 50 – and half of them were ahead of me after the first 5k. the 40+ men had started 2 minutes ahead, and the fields began to mix halfway in. oh great - my pal bob had lamented before the race - i've got 2 minutes before all the estrogen in the world comes up my ass.

i ran with a couple other Team USA women for the first 2 laps because they were running a relaxed, loose pace. whatever you give up on the first run will more than come back to you on the second – the Oracle said – long course is very forgiving of a slow start. every couple k's i did a reality check to make sure i wasn't running 10min miles and looked for my teammate rich from NC, because his big happy grin reminded me how very cool it was just to be here in the first place.

i ran up on a german dude in a skinsuit and pulled alongside to pass. he was having none of this, however, and sped up a little. klaus the german was tall, and we were turning into a windy section, so i slotted behind and nestled in his draft. klaus was awesome. everytime i thought we were going a little too slow i'd run abreast of him and he'd speed up again. klaus was very accommodating, and he pulled me almost all the way to a clump of women just ahead. hooray for klaus.

in T1 i sacrificed some time stretching a couple talkative ITBs and then took off on the bike. the course was never boring: there was always something to do, like corner on cobblestones, wend your way through the feedzone and exploding waterbottles, and finesse a 180 on a 2-lane highway. at race pace, that 180 was an entirely different animal from the pre-ride, and on the first of the 4 laps i had to unclip and tap my way around it. oopsie! - i sang to a course marshal who seemed disappointed by the lack of drama. the second time around that 180 i was more bold, but the 3rd time i creeeeeeeeept around it like the bike and i were made of fine china. there was someone hot on my wheel as i came into the turn, someone who had to stutter to a crawl when i slowed down to minus-70mph inching around the barricade. when we straightened out the suffering soul shot by on my left – none other than klaus! oh, how he must hate my very bones.

the bike felt good, however, and i passed some women out there so i knew i was making up time. in my head were many voices: fisch, the Oracle, slick rik, fatmammycat and eileen the YMCA lifeguard who oversaw my snail-toils in the deep-end with the AquaJogger. you're going to do great, i just know it – she'd declared, as though all my bones were properly knit together. this host of voices nearly drowned out the irish washerwoman jig on the mental jukebox but not quite.

in T2 i nearly toppled over because my legs were so racked from the bike, but i decided to go with my flats instead of the trainers i took out for the first run. might as well give that mending metatarsal a test! i craved sugar too, so i rifled through my transition rucksack for a bag of jelly beans (Brachs, brah), stuffed them in my singlet pocket and shuffled into the second run. my feet felt like inanimate blocks, and i ran like frankenstein... but at least i had jelly beans. i rummaged in my pocket, cellophane snapping so loudly that a dude ahead of me flinched. i stuffed a handful in my mouth, oh the licorice ones are the BEST, just as the man turned around to see what all the commotion was about. i grinned at him, a big black goofy grin, and he shuddered and turned back around. jelly beans are great, see, because you can mash them to the roof of your mouth where they'll stay until the engine room calls for a little more gas, and you swirl your tongue up there and get some.

after a couple minutes the things at the ends of my legs started to feel like feet again... and look, here's klaus! hello klaus, how happy you must be to see me. would you like some jelly beans? no?? klaus did not have a good second run. i hope this is not because i bullied him too much in the first, being a chick and all.

i caught a couple more women and from the out & backs determined there were about 5 more ahead of me as i neared the finish. what i didn't know was that i was first in my age group until i crossed the line and the PA announced me a world champion. way to go, delaware! - deepak called from the stands and high-fived me as i headed toward the post-race eats, difficult to get down because of the shit-eating grin on my face.

and thus began a 10 or 12hr "recovery" period which FMC has already described. 'tis good to have friends.

reason # 1010101 why i love mac

it's for this simple line of code:
rsync -Cavz --delete ./Volumes/backup/music

enter that in Terminal from a directory you wish to back up (that folder with your 250G of toonz perhaps), and the hamsters behind the scene will sync (not just brute overwrite) the second directory with the first, spitting out a verbose output so you know exactly what's going on.

next step is figuring out a chron job to run that sync whenever both drives are connected.

- you're such a loser - laf said when i confessed i'd spent my friday night with a double-shot of jameson and 2 unix manuals - it's no wonder you're alone. but there was fondness in his voice.

thursday earling morny at the YMCA

went down like this
eats
1 doubleshot latte
handful of jelly beans
NO advil!!!
20 min on EFX
Canterbury Tales on ipod
jackshep rowing.
eep
4 miles on treadmill
Tool on ipod
1 mi ez
2 miles @7:19
lovely to open up (a little).
window reflecting
jack's 4 sets of pullups.
nearly fall off tready.
finished w/6x30sec @6:20ish
repercussions
so far just
happiness.

[note: pic is Not My Fault. must have happened when i was cuing up the Knight's Tale on the iScrotum. oopsie.]

alternatives to running, pt 4

the 4th alternative to running is.... running!!  hooray!  for this morning i ran 4 miles on the treadmill and the foot held up.  even better, a 7:30min mile felt gratifying easy after pushing through water for 3 weeks.  and after a week's absence, jack shepherd was back on the treadmill this morning.  oh frabjous day.  i am happy like a meerkat, like a marita.  this cannot last.  

but while it does, here's some good stuff off the beaten path. song titles play; thumbnails download.

The National - About Today

live from the White Sessions. a simple song, rich vocals, and violin.  heard this song in the car on the way back from burying grandmother.  wept.  thanks heather.  

El-P - Flyentology (Cassettes Won't Listen Remix)

could also be called the "Tom Cruise You Creep Me the Fuck Out" remix.  cutting lyrics with special surprise backup vocals which teho will ID in 2sec.  i don't know about the rest of you. 

Puscifer - Sour Grapes (Late for Dinner Mix)

danny lohner's been a recluse of late (kidz stay in skool) but he still makes an occasional appearance. on this one, he even sings.   

NIN - RIght Where It Belongs

Ever wished for a version of RWIB with full, stereo vocals before trenty comes out from behind the treez? here you go.  thx PK.

HAPPY.  MFBT.

headlights on dark roads

after a shittyshitty day, my faith in man and good will toward most was restored multiple times yesterday after i was rear-ended at the signal behind pep boys on kirkwood highway.

first restoration of faith: it wasn't a hit-and-run. the guy who hit me dutifully followed me into a parking lot where we did the necessary bizness and waited for the cops to show. the snow continued to fall and a kid walked out of pep boys to a car next to mine. bundled up in a hoodie, only his face was visible. a cluster of scratch hairs on his chin was desperately trying to be a goatee. he looked about 15.

- yo'sup. youse all have a bender? - he asked us. i nodded. where at? - he wanted to know. i pointed to the signal.
- it's really slippery there. be careful.
- fuck yeah. he walked over to the other car, surveyed the crunched front bumper. radiator cracked? he pronounced the word with an emphasis on RAD as in dude, and he addressed me, assuming the young chick had run into the sad-eyed man in the ratty overcoat and not vice-versa. i shrugged, and he crouched and scrutinised the bumper.
- you kin go to a junkyard, git a bumper for 200 bucks. you know Big Daddy Autoparts? - i shook my head, playing along because the man with basset hound eyes was now taking notes as eminem drew us a verbal map to Big Daddy.
- i wuz there last week. my girlfriend drove into a tree, fucked the bumper, cracked the RADiator. she call me from the acme parking lot. "my chin is bleeding" she say, and i'm all like what the fuck, how is the car? and she driving with my daughter! - he shook his head in mock disgust. i take it his daughter's fine, because there wasn't a bit of rancor in his voice.
- and she's still your girlfriend?
he looks me in the eye and for the first time, smiles. his smile is perfect, genuinely bright and captivating, a renholder smile. i fall in love a little.
- yeah, she still my girlfriend. he ducks his head shyly then begins to clear the snow off his windows with his sleeve. this the ghetto way - he explains to me, then stops and examines a handful of snow, packs it together and hefts it experimentally. goddam - he exclaims - PERFECT.

bassetman and i are freezing and retreat into our vehicles. my windows fog immediately, for i've a thimble of gas remaining and don't want to waste it idling. 15min later a tap on the window rouses me in my igloo; bassetman reports the cops are still a dozen accidents behind, Nationwide doesn't need a police report to process the claim and am i okay with taking off. i am and so is my wee bladder.

now clear of snow, eminem's car is still parked alongside. i scan the parking lot for the 15-year old man with the world-winning smile, and i spot him lobbing snowballs over a chainlink fence, dodging returning fire from another child-at-heart seduced by the perfect snowball snow.

- i made a snap judgment on him with the first 6 words he uttered - i told my mom last night.
- sometimes you have to, finn - she told me.
- but there wasn't any meanness, or darkness that i saw in him. he was just HAPPY.
i get a marge simpson growl in response. she's not convinced, but she didn't see The Smile.

that was Restoration #2. #s 3, 4 and 5 were delivered from FMC, brian and laf, whose concerns were palpable in their emails and text messages as i shot off brief narratives from the igloo (reason #911 why i love mac).

finally, #6 came compliments of Liberty Mutual rep david spielvogel, who in the process of taking my claim information treated me like a human being and ensured the reporting necessaries were painless, nay, enjoyable.
- spielvogel - i tested the name he'd spelled out for me at the end of our convo - does that mean something? -spiel, like talk, vogel like... person??
- i think it means songbird - he answered.

am i dead?
am i bruce willis wandering amongst the living with a Quest i'm not yet aware of?
and, can i drink a bottle of jameson without any liver-y repercussions??

reason #1225 why i love mac

iphone brrred in my pocket yesterday afternoon. text from laf.
- where ru.
- xmas shopping. bestbuy.
- stop drooling over the macs.
- im looking @ cameras.
which was a lie. i'd just finished drooling over a Kapple™ and was now watching two kids play on a 15" Macbook Pro. i'd ventured into Best Buy looking for a digital camera for D but shortly found myself the Apple zone, an oasis of peace in a sea of rudely short-tempered people. i might be one of those people i used to ridicule for their lack of rationality and balance. i may have become a mac addict.

last week we pitched a multi-channel CX strategy that proposed texting to connect a radio station and its listeners. the Dreamer was in zazzly fine form.
- see finn, when you're shooting down 95 and you hear a song you like, you send a simple text to WMAC and get one back with the name of the band and the song.
- sure. and it should also have a link to more info about the band -- a discography, maybe. and a link to upcoming concerts. and maybe you could wifi-connect to itunes and buy the song right then & there.
the Dreamer sighed and looked pained.
- YOU could do that.
- whaddya mean?
- you could do that with that microcomputer you carry around in your pocket. my phone doesn't let me link to the web, or itunes, from text messages.
i paused and considered.
- is it broken?
i was only half-joking. after you use an iphone, even "smart" phones seem dumb. prehistoric. like D's camera. which reminded me why i was there in the first place.

- eagles r beating dallas - laf alerted me.
- b there in 5.

then iphone's Contacts and Google Maps teamed up to give me directions to laf's new house. oh apple you are taking me on the highway to hell but i do love you so.

night swimming

3 days back to work and a week in st. john is already fading to mist, though i'm still lightly toasted and there are still 4 bottles of Cruzan in the liquor cabinet. they are not nearly full, as i've discovered that Black Strap dark imbues cookies, pancakes and double lattes with depth and mystery.

- what was your favorite part of the vacation? - laf posed last night at the track, as i creakily eked and he fluidly spun out 400s. i thought for a moment.
- i loved running the trails, for one.
- because you were flying solo?
he knows me too well.
- but the best i think was when we went night snorkling.

night snorkling is a different experience entirely. we rented lights, which are like alien ray guns that you carry around and point at the new creatures that emerge from their hideyholes when the light bleeds out of the water. black sea urchins come out in armies and ease across the coral, while the more colorful sea cucumbers inch slowly across the sandy floor. since your field of vision is limited to a funnel of light without peripheral vision it's a bit of a wake-up call when a stingray undulates into view beneath you.

- but that wasn't the best - i explained to laf - the best was when D's light died after 20 minutes.
we were swimming off the edge of a state park, so the only lights we saw were distant points in little maho bay and the constellation of st. thomas 5 miles away. if my light failed, we wouldn't know if we were swimming toward shore or into the caribbean.

since D's the naturalist, i offered him my light and shoved the dead one in the back of my suit. i took a couple experimental strokes into the dark: i was tired of veering away from D's flippers that always seemed dangerously close to my face. the beauty of the salt water, i thought, is that you don't NEED flippers. the water just holds you and multiplies any effort expended so you feel bionic moving over coral reefs and schools of blue tang and swirling sergeant majors protecting their egg spreads.

so i was tired of dodging and i struck out and with the first stroke into the dark was rewarded with something utterly unexpected: an explosion of sparks, an s-curve of fireworks tracing on a second's delay my catch and pull, and my whipping kick behind. THAT, that was the best, swimming straight into the dark, flying solo, striking out into a shower of phosphorescence. there was no temperature difference, air merged into water and i felt free, light and so pregnant with possibility that i could have swum all the way to st. croix.

but heavy with reality i eventually returned to the light, and later, in silence, we emerged clumsy and oafish from the water at maho bay. i was the ungainly 150lb penguin tottering toward my sandals with a sad nostalgia for the water's grace. D was shivering and yanking a fleece over his wet body. a couple walking along the beach stopped.

- we wondered what that light was in the water - the woman said - we thought it might be someone night-snorkling. it's a beautiful night. i looked across the bay where i imagined i still could see traces of my journey - did you have fun? without hesitation we answered simultaneously. NotReally. YES.

february is come early.

my iPhone cost an extra $200

when the MyCo lunch crew returned yesterday, quasar shuffled back to his desk and with all the righteous glory a man who wears slippers at work can realistically muster, fired
- so, what do you think of Apple now?!?
- whaddya mean? - quasar loves to bear bad news and deserves to be toyed with.
- did you hear they dropped the price of an iphone by two hundred bucks?!? - he's puffed with indignation and doesn't even have an iphone.
- yeah well, i won't feel so bad when i lose this one.

he's visibly deflated and disappointed that i won't play the Hating Game. sure i'm taking the piss with him a little bit, but i am so enamored of Apple right now that steve jobs could take a shit on my head and i would hand him a wetnap and ask if he wanted a coke.

this isn't to say i won't avail myself of the $100 apology Apple's purportedly offering, but if Apple products were *5* times more expensive than its competitors, i'd still pony up the cash. because my nano, Lapple® and iphone make me THAT happy.


Happy MFBT and have a great weekend, all.

maine, in numbers

days in maine: 14

read by finn
books: 3 ¹
magazine back issues: 9 ²
newspapers: 0

consumed by finn
fifths of gin: 1 gordons, 1.5 tanqueray
liter bottles of tonic: about a quarter
gargantuan ice cream sundaes at Gillmores: 3 ³
six-packs of Redbridge gluten-free beer: 2.5 ⁴
12-packs of coors light: 0.75 ⁵
bottles of wine: 8 ⁶
lobsters: 3
tablespoons of butter per lobster: ~4
1-lb bags of skittles: 1.5 ⁷

activities performed by finn
early-morning swims: 0
skinny-dips: 5 ⁸
times D said to me you can read ANYwhere: 5
times i told him leave me alone i'm reading: 5
BJs: 2
fish caught: 9 ⁹
keepers: 0
kayak trips to pickerel cove: 7
times i considered not kayaking back: 7
times i kayaked back: 7
bear, moose and mink sightings: 0
dead, skinned beaver-hanging-from-a-tree sightings: 1
flicks watched on the Lapple (cos u kno i had to bring it): 3 ¹⁰

in summary, aside from kayaking to molest pickerel (many bites; none hooked), i didn't do much in maine but read and drink. 'twas a far cry from L's june visit, which included water-skiing, mtn biking, running and flinging off the rope swing; but it was exactly what i needed.

¹ the last Harry Potter book (HP and the SomethingSomething), Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, and I am Charlotte Simmons. Hannibal Rising doesn't figure in because the writing was so atrocious i was skimming after page10, snuffling for the salacious truffly bits, of which there were too few to justify this book IMHO. i don't know what exactly happened to thomas harris, but sometime after Red Dragon and Hannibal the firstust, dude lost his muse.
² Running Times, Runners World, Inside Tri, Tri-geke and The New Yorker
³ or, everytime i got dragged to walmart.
⁴ made from sorghumyum.
⁵ for lunch, yo. i know CL doesn't count as beer.
⁶ i had help here.
⁷ kept me awake at the wheel for the 15-hour drive.
⁸ not counting baths in the lake.
⁹ small-mouth bass.
¹⁰ American History X, 'Pocalypse Now, and Fight Club.

more pix on flickr.

*his* soundguy is competent

[posted to nin.com tdy. meep. pant pant. starVING.]

UPDATE -- ooooh, this helps.

breakfast

1 orange
2 plums
1 BIG peach
cluster of grapes
3/4 pint blueberries
handful of strawberries
1 apple

clean fuel, homies. if you're a fruit bat.

3-week anniversary!!!

tomorrow iPhone and i celebrate our 3-week anniversary. i'm not planning anything big: cocktails, a just-the-two-of-us dinner at home, and then a romantic video like Pitch Black or The Perfect Storm. i can't say what the future holds for us, but i'm not exaggerating when i say these past 3 weeks have changed my life. i can't imagine life without iPhone.

granted, my previous relationship history was rather grim, and those of you with partners who give you email, web browsing, calendaring and contacts will think me awfully naive. my ex didn't even have a camera! so, part of this may be me maturing as a person, becoming more empowered and confident so i can say, "i SHOULD have internet access at home, on the road and on the floor of the Sovereign Center in Reading!! why? -because i'm worth it."

i don't want anyone to be jealous of my and iPhone's relationship. it's not all sunshine and unicorns; we have disagreements, and sometimes it acts in ways i can't begin to fathom. i'm sure it would say the same about me. but we're still learning about each other, and i believe that with honest commitment on our part and support from others we'll be together for a long time.

Fatcat and Kath, my heart goes out to you both. i wish you too could experience this kind of happiness, but in this world each of us has to find our own way. maybe i can offer this as your Virgil, guiding you to a place where you can envision your possibilities and move toward personal fulfillment: the DIY cut-n-fold iPhone:


if you want, you can put it in a blender and see what happiness. i mean, what happens. freudian slips LOL.

best of luck my friends!!
(if it don't work, there's always jameson, and valencia.)

tool at boardwalk hall - 6.9.07

saw tool in atlantic city this weekend. probably if i had gone with someone who really wanted to see the opening band, Melt Banana, i wouldn't have gotten stuck in traffic on the AC expressway, i would have found parking faster, and it wouldn't have taken me 15min to find my way out of the ballys casino, where the parking elevator conveniently disgorged me. but i did, didn't and it did, so when i arrived at boardwalk hall and began to wend a way toward portal Q i heard the thumpingness of Jambi. motherfucker.

so much for an interminable passage of opening bands.

so what to say of my first tool concert? well, it wasn't what i expected. it wasn't a Nails show, for one. whereas some people go to NIN shows hoping to hear the fuck-you-like-an-animal song, this audience seemed comprised of hard-core fans. tool likes to arcanely noodle their way into songs, i think as a kind of fan jeopardy, but as soon as the event horizon's reached and the song's identifiable, a collective roar rises to the ceiling. everyone around me knew the words to the parts of songs that were obviously the germane parts – and we're not talking simple stuff like the FIST FUCK part of Wish. this is deeper, darker stuff.

though i was on the floor, there was no moshing, and little thrashing. true, our space was constrained by folding chairs, in part a consequence of several deaths at a tool show years ago; but when i asked the veteran josh if there were mosh pits at other tool shows, he frowned at me and asked, "why would you do that? how could you enjoy the music that way?”

here's the AC setlist:
Jambi
Stinkfist
The Pot
46 & 2
Schism (the kickass LONG version)
Lost Keys & Rosetta Stoned
Intension Intro/Right In Two
Wings For Marie parts 1 & 2
[a little break while the 4 guys sat onstage and talked amongst themselves.]
Lateralus (w/ Melt Banana guitarist and drummer)
Vicarious

that's a total of 11 songs spanning 2 hours. do the math. while trent strings together 20 songs that collectively tick out a sine wave of energy, from March of the Pigs to The Frail/The Wretched, to Gave Up and Hurt and back again, the tool set list seems more a basket of polished gems handed out with delicacy, tact and musical mastery. and mastery's key. look, i love NIN and trent's a genius and all, but nobody in the history of the supporting band could be accused of being a musical virtuoso. josh freese probably comes closest, but i think that's more out of sheer insanity than talent. stack him next to tool's drummer danny carey and there's no contest.

a Nails show – if you're where you should be, on the floor – is a cathartic experience that exorcises the demons leaving you drained and at peace. (YMMV, of course.) a tool show is an appreciation of musicians. the dude next to me was a drummer and danny carey devotee. “just watch this,” he advised as guitarist adam jones deftly began to pick out the opening notes of Lateralus, “the drummer from Broken Banana is gonna come out and duel with danny, or at least that's what they did in baltimore last night.” several minutes later, the Melt Banana drummer and guitarist took the stage, the drummer beating out a bassline answered in snare and tabla by the man in the Bruins jersey behind the barricade of drums. “wow,” i said to josh. “no, wait” he said, “they're just warming up.” three minutes later danny fell in with his entire setup while the crowd stood motionless, just soaking up the feeling of thundering, rolling drums. i had goosebumps. “see?” said my new drummer friend when the guitarists took over. i nodded dumbly.

'taint just danny, though: justin chancellor, the brit who hammers out tool's characteristic rippling bassline is mesmerising as well, making complexity look deceptively easy. he and adam attacked the bridge of Schism, sped up to double-time live, without breaking a sweat it seems. nobody showboats, either – no one leaps into the crowd or dives into speakers; and for a lead singer, maynard's remarkably content hanging at the back of the stage next to his drummer. and yet the crowd's transfixed and 100% invested. tool seems to be a musician's band.

some highlights:
-- Lost Keys and Rosetta Stoned, which i ho-hummed through on the album are excellent live. armed with a vocoder like a tracheotomy patient, maynard alternates between two voices as the chosen one divulges his story. i've new appreciation for that song, esp now that i've seen the light rings approximating spaceships above the stage.
-- the light show, the LAY-SERs, the video screens – all of this is tight stuff, but honestly i need to see the show about 4 more times to fully appreciate it because most of my attention was on the band...
-- but i did notice that during Wings for Marie, part 2 the lights fanned out over our heads, from the stage to the back of the hall and...
-- the crossing, flitting lines that formed and reformed the Tool Army symbol were projected on the american flag hung at the back of the venue.
-- some tool fans just Know. as Wings part 2 wrapped up with maynard singing of his departed mother, judith marie, “hallelujah, it's time for you to bring me home” a guy several rows in front of me pressed his palms together and lifted them over his bowed head, standing quiet and motionless while applause rumbled.
-- with Wings complete, the band took a break, the four of them sitting onstage in a cluster, talking amongst themselves like the cool kids at the high school lunch table. they chilled for 5 or 10 minutes while the crowd murmured its own conversation; then justin raised a lighter and boardwalk hall lit up like white and yellow lights climbing a christmas tree. the band sat for a little while longer, looking out at the crowd, then spread across the stage and noodled toward something we eventually recognised as Lateralus, which has been playing non-stop in my mental jukebox ever since. small price to pay, though. i gotta see these guys again.

reasons number 10-12 for Why I Love Mac

12. because i love the touch, response and sound of the keyboard.

11. because yesterday i trucked the Lapple^TM between desk and conference rooms all day and where there was ethernet, i wired in and where there wasn't, the Lapple auto-reverted to backup wireless. it figured this out on its own because it knows i don't want to dick away my time configuring location-dependent net access.

i had been with windoze for so long i forgot that a good OS makes your life easier without demanding an arcane intimacy with its anatomy. that said, when the moment's right, i should still be able to dim the lights, pour a double jameson, load up some Broken and stick my hands thru the cage of this endless routine. which brings me to #10.

10. OSX i love your sleek and swooshy interface (like the transition between Preview's index sheet and individual shot views; jesus give me a cigarette right now) but i adore your unix brain even more. i love the fact that i can bypass your GUI and root through your innards with a “cd ..” here and an “ls -al” there, grep-ing and pipe-ing and man-ing [because i'm hazy on the “chmod” options and don't want to de-access my drive (more on this shortly)].

- what are you up to?? - D asked bewilderedly as he came down the stairs i was galloping up with splitting smile and lolling tongue like J-dog when he's chasing the B-A-L-L.

- i'm fetching my Unix in a Nutshell book! - i sang happily as i skipped into my office.

i am transported back to nights in grad school, when instead of gathering with my department to engage in FUN i'd spend hours huddled in front of my Mac Classic, dialed into the university's Solaris composer machines and up to my ears in C shell prompts. this is when D flashes me the L-sign because he Loves me so much.

but i digress. the point is that i can't do shit with a c-prompt but a bash shell makes me schoolgirl giggly. thank you OSX.

finally, i can't resist a big fuckyou to windoze, who's rendered most of a 250G hard drive read-only. congratulations – i can't chmod my way out of this one. and unchecking the “read only” option in windoze-properties only has me sit and wait as it chugs through each gig “resetting” permissions that are never truly reset and yet i continue unchecking the box and dumbly waiting like a lobotomised monkey pushing the shock button expecting a banana.
push push push. pzzzzt. pzzzzt. pzzzzt.

there's life beyond vista peeps. can i have a witness...

you make this all go away...

if i can't have nails i shall settle for tool, BRMC and BLB. bring in da joon.

[i find it ridiculous, btw, that the ticketmaster "convenience" charges nearly conveniently exceeded the base price of the black light burns ticket.]

meanwhile please to cross your fingers that this afternoon rudy finds only tight bits in my hamstring, and no tears. xxxNOTEARSxxx.

reason #603 for Why I Love Mac

shhhhh.... my mac is sleeping. know how i know? cos the snooze light is softly pulsing.

my mac is snoring.

<3     <3     <3

and here's why my happiness is good for business, and why Inscrutable Chinese Man is shooting himself in the foot every time he allocates another crappy e-machine POS:

In multiple studies, Isen, a professor of psychology and S. C. Johnson Professor of Marketing at Cornell University, made subjects feel happy through a number of means, including gifts of candy and words or pictures with pleasant associations. The subjects were then asked to perform tasks that measure creativity; over the course of 20 years, Isen and her colleagues regularly found that subjects exhibited much more creativity when they were in a good mood.

And conversely, Norman says, when you're in a bad mood, when you're tense, you tend to be less creative--and less patient with the tools you're using. "Someone in a positive mood," Norman says, "faced with something that doesn't work, might say, 'Oh, I'll get around it.' But someone in a negative mood will get frustrated and have a 'Damn it' moment." That's where design comes in. "Studies tie attractive design to positive attitude," he says.

read more about the beauty of apple here:
The Secret of Apple Design
The inside (sort of) story of why Apple's industrial-design machine has been so successful.

and on the fourth day...

i just finished tweaking this afternoon's Performing Monkey presentation in OpenOffice Impress on my Lapple^TM, instead of grinding through PPT on my e-machine. intermittent burbles of triumph and joy may have erupted,
causing loucypher to moan
how long are we going to have to listen to you orgasm over your mac? get a ROOM.

and prompting mr. twisty to email
Reason #503 for Why I Hate Windows…
It likes to rearrange my Desktop icons, just to fuck with me. Where’s my shortcut to the TCC folder? Why, it’s where it was 2 months ago. Oh Windows, you crazy kid. You’d switch up Helen Keller’s furniture, just for shits and giggles.

i need a case, cover or sleeve now. any recommendations? does someone make a version of the ipod & nano clear-skin cases for a 17" MacBook Pro?
of course, there's always this.
halliburton. Z series. Gun Metal.
unalloyed sex appeal. safe enough for eye-raq. w0rd.

Lapple^TM is a licensed trademark of FoxMammyCat/Paramour, i think.