"Oh, same thing."

Enzo brings us records as part of his regular UPS duties. Fun guy, Italian or, don't wanna offend anyone, possibly Sicilian or hey. Good guy either way. Just look at him:


When he got to the store today, somehow navigating that awesome brown truck through all the TV people and gear choking us for days on end




he found me playing Minor Threat at volume and jumping around like a fucking idiot young hardcore kid -- menacingly, looking for a fight -- which I am not. TV people irate me, is all.

Enzo: "You musta got laid last night."
me: "No, I just [what? ...] -- I'm just well-caffeinated."
Enzo: "Oh, same thing."
me: "?!?"

Then he just left! Now we've got a TV cop out front directing real traffic.

Bombogenesis: 6.3 times per year in the USA, twice in a month just on First Ave

Bombogenesis: because "thundersnow" has already been beaten into the ground, as is the way of things today. (I think it happened around midnight. You're already playing yourself if you say "thundersnow" — like how your eyes can't roll far enough when someone says "snowpocalypse," and you can't beat them severely enough if they say "snowmageddon.")

Seconds after the dramatic, increasingly less rare results of bombocyclogenesis

Haven't sorted out exactly how it works yet — "bombogenesis" being derived from "cyclogenesis" (naturally) and both, I think, describing the set of necessary conditions rather than the event itself. Whatfuckingever. I know it's rarer than radium, reported on average just 6.3 times per year in the whole US. I know it's said that a guy in Bucks County, PA got hit by snowlightning this evening (all in all, my guess is lightningsnow is more survivable — either way, this is less dramatic than both double-rainbow…). And I know that for the second time this winter I was walking down First Ave and I saw, then heard, lightning and thunder, while snow blasted around us. Figuring the world is dying and/or my luck is changing I bought lottery tickets immediately. On First Ave, of course. I'll cut you in, don't worry.

The 25th Frame

"…brain can't make sense of it…or stop it."

Went to the Kitchen tonight for the second of three performances of The 25th Frame, the new dance/theater work from Brooklyn's Alex Escalante confronting the way manipulated language and the ceaseless swarm of messages we live in and under completely fucks us up. The piece was performed by Escalante, Nancy Garcia and Jon Moniaci, and it was a 55-minute jolt.

Escalante, doing things on a ladder

Dark and funny, The 25th Frame opens with Escalante and Garcia up on stage-bookending ladders engaging in rapid-fire tag-team psychobabble, peppering the room with repeating syllables that bleed and morph into others: "buy-buy-buy-buy-buy," "true-true-true-true-true-truth-truth-truth-truth-justice-and-the-American-way," mimicking/mocking the way we're hypno-bludgeoned by advertising, polit-speak and propaganda. This went on for 10 minutes or so and was set off crisply by the next movement, with the pair descending for a long, elegantly expressive dance, struggling on the floor under the crushing weight of invisible forces and slipping in and out of symmetry and synchronicity. Excellent choreography (by the pair in collaboration) and the silence in the room made the sweep of arms and legs across the Kitchen floor all the more dramatic — that is, until Moniaci's live electronic score crept into range, eventually growing into prickly presence as Garcia and Escalante, upright now, vibrated around the room, caught up in the manic energy field that's replaced our old atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen and other useful stuff. Watching Nancy Garcia the performer vibrate like that made me think of the way Nancy Garcia the musician's still-pretty-new album, Be the Climb, vibrates out of the same frustration and with some similar tactics ("I wanna make something clear — I-I-I wanna make something clear — I wanna make something clear"). The rest of the piece moved briskly and pushed the commentary (as the performance itself already was) into true artfulness, utilizing video, animated Soviet prop-films (though an eagle that gobbles a steroidal diet of money and weapons could be labeled as objective reportage, too) and an ending meta-auction conducted brilliantly by Moniaci, involving more vibrating and the piece itself being sold for a nice five-figure sum.

It was great to be reminded by smart people that the very nature of this society (kind of all of it) is corrupting and corroding…regardless of whether there's fuck-all to be done about it on anything but a personal level. Do we not talk about it because it's already so suffocating?

One more night of Escalante's piece tomorrow (Saturday the 20th), which could be a nice lead-in to gigs by Evangelista and Zola Jesus back on the LES, if you know what's good.

"Where did you learn your TRADE?"

Like a comet that swings into our orbit every so often, this fire-in-the-night-sky of a scene. The actual best line: "I'm gonna be with you in a second."