Ragtag grab-bag
I adore the Midas Project, a not-quite-graffiti project in Barcelona where mundane objects around town are spray-painted gold. It looks amazing! It reminds me of Commutable, a great project from 1996 where the decrepit steps on the Manhattan side of the pre-renovation Williamsburg Bridge were covered in gold leaf. It looked strange and lovely, and was also a good visual cue to slow down on your bike before you went shooting over the end of your bike path to your doom.
(Thanks, FormFiftyFive!)
When I was glancing through all the submissions for the New Yorker‘s Eustace Tilley contest, I somehow neglected to realize that one of my favorite submissions — a brilliant riff on the classic Vignelli map of the NYC subway system — was done by one Alberto Forero, a fellow Regis alum (and fellow ephemera fanatic) who took over my old post as the school newspaper’s graphics editor back in the day. I also love that the print article about the contest winners shows Alberto’s illustration along with my other two favorites.
I never knew him that well, but like many of the remarkable, talented, trail-blazing guys I know from my Regis years, Alberto is — at the very least — a triple threat: he’s a designer, illustrator, and musician. Go check him out, and maybe send some work his way.
(Speaking of the school newspaper, someday I need to write about how it was working on the school newspaper that turned me from a compulsive doodler into a future typographer, due in large part to my fascination with using a VariTyper machine to set headlines using all the cool Avant Garde alternate glyphs.)
Just got back from a late showing of Cloverfield, which was lots of smash-em-up fun, if perhaps a little vivid for anyone who’s actually experienced a New York crisis or two. It’ll be interesting to see what tonight’s Sustiva dreams bring on.
Random pop-culture trivia about Reading that I learned today (with audio references):
Mod band Secret Affair played their first show at the University here in February 1979, opening for The Jam. (I would have loved to see either band.) Ten years later, I had a crush on a cute boy who introduced me to the first single, Time for Action
In 1981, The Human League‘s producer made them come to Genetic Sound in Reading to get away from the “unhealthy atmosphere” of the studio in Sheffield where they usually worked alongside their former band members who left to form Heaven 17. They recorded The Sound of the Crowd here.
Oh, and in my free time time this year I designed a book, too. It’s also my first design project to get its own MySpace page, since it’s about indy music stuff and the music folks apparently use the MySpace once in a while. It’s by my good friend Norm, and you should buy it.
Seriously, though, it’s a fantastic read, especially if you have any interest at all in hardcore and post-punk bands of the ’90s. (If you do, you probably know who Norm is anyway.) Anti-Matter was a zine he published that featured these amazing, insightful, totally natural interviews with a bunch of great bands. Norm had (well, still has) an amazing ability to get past the party line and get people to really talk to him, and that honesty is what makes these collected interviews so engaging, even if — like me — you might only be familiar with a few of the bigger names included.
And the photography! I haven’t seen the book in print yet, but if they reproduced the photos well then this is even more of a must-have for anyone into that era’s scene. Seriously, just buy it.
A couple of months ago I spotted those awesome rooftop tube trains and figured there had to be a story behind them. Sure enough, there is. An organization called Village Underground snapped up some old tube cars and installed them on top of an old Victorian warehouse for conversion into “affordable workspace for creatives”. (I put that in quotes not just because it’s a quote, but thinking about the cost of space in London and what happened to all that affordable space for creative types in Williamsburg over the years I’m forced to wonder how affordable that really is, or will be.) Naturally, I desperately want office space in an old tube car.
Now that my Christmas-killing cold has settled down into a manageable case of congestion, I’m lucid enough to string a few sentences together without needing a nap to recover.
I was waiting for a touch of cold to hit me. I’d gotten through two changes of season without one, so I was convinced I was in for a whopper. Apparently the climate here suits me. Either that or my seasonal colds really have been psychosomatic all along, and there was no need for one since I’ve been supremely happy ever since I got to the UK.
I celebrated the end of term with a brief weekend visit to Bristol to see the good Drs. Paul and Tony, who whisked me off for an afternoon tour of Cardiff to take advantage of the inexplicable burst of sunny weather I’d brought with me. Since I had never seen any episodes of the new Doctor Who series (and I only ever saw a few minutes of the older shows, usually while I waited for Blake’s 7 to be broadcast late at night on public television) or its spin-off, Torchwood, I couldn’t fully appreciate the thrill of being in locations featured prominently on screen, but I at least did my nerdly duty and took pictures:
The gents kindly indoctrinated me into the ways of the Doctor, Captain Jack, and their cronies later that night, so now I have a new avenue for exploring my not-so-inner geek. It figures the Doctor Who franchise would finally grab me once they figured out that cute leading men might be a good idea. If only I had a television.
The end of the term didn’t actually mean the end of work, so it was back for a few more days of productivity after my trip. Hilariously, it seems we’re supposed to have a direction for our typeface designs “locked down” by the time the next term starts in January, and I know I’m not the only one in the group who stills feels a total lack of confidence about being that far along. I guess I’ll have to think about that, too, in between bursts of work on the huge essay I have due the week after classes resume. (Bear in mind, though, that I am totally digging all this type geekery in which I have become so immersed.)
The flatmates and I threw a lovely shindig so we could celebrate the season with our classmates before everyone scattered for Christmas. (I can safely say “Christmas” because we were all raised with that flavor of midwinter gift-giving holiday.) That party set in motion a lovely string of coincidences that led to me hanging out in London a few nights later with some Brazilian and some Belgian pals at a phenomenal Brand New Heavies reunion show.
I have been waiting for over a decade for a chance to see these folks play, and I was relieved that this wasn’t just some half-assed walk through their back catalogue. They were on fucking fire as they funked their way through old singles, gems off their new album, and even an amazing cover of Seven Nation Army. I have never seen a band coax so many white people into dancing so much. When I went back to crash at my friend Tim’s place afterward, he chided me for never mentioning my love of the Heavies when I visited him back in their heyday, because at the time he probably could have arranged for me to meet their drummer via a mutual friend. Sigh.
I was hoping for some quiet down-time in London for the next couple of days, but I wound up walking for hours and hours again, getting to know a bit more of the city. I finally have the bearings to get from certain key locations to others without a map, or without worrying about following a particular route. I also developed magnificent, firm legs and slightly sore arches from all this exploring. The robust condition of my legs was offset by the achey back I developed from sleeping on Tim’s teeny couch for three nights in a row, but in a city that’s even more expensive than New York I was happy to have any lodgings I could afford.
I finally dipped my toe into London’s gay nightlife, as well, tagging along with my pal Jonathan, who can’t go ten feet without running into someone he knows. We spent most of the evening at a pub called the King’s Arms where I felt really young and slim, but yet still invisible since neither of those things count for much in a roomful of bears. Since I don’t really like drinking, smoking, bears, or crowded rooms it was kind of a long night, despite some very enjoyable company. By the time I left I could feel my cold coming on, so the die was cast for Christmas to cast its usual cloud over my spirits.
After a long, long morning of last-minute errands in London and lots of public transportation filled with lots of holiday travelers, I wanted to crawl under a rock with a bottle of cough syrup and a pillow. I was pretty miserable by the time I got back to Reading, so I was double-extra-happy to discover a long-awaited package from Dave that was filled with three months of comic books. Plus the Super Pets!:
Streaky is the only cat I can love. I mean that.
Leave it to my bestest pal to find a way to provide me with exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it most. He’s spooky like that. As I was passing out from exhaustion and illness, at least I knew I would have Krypto and Yorick to keep me company if and when I woke up.
Now that I’ve been lucky enough to catch Kiki & Herb, it finally feels like Christmas. It was a fantastic show, naturally, but it was interesting to see how the crowd reacted to it. In some ways, it felt like the run they had in the West Village a few years, where a lot of the crowd didn’t quite understand what they were getting themselves into. Like then, there were people in the audience this past Friday that seemed to think this would be just another campy drag show for the gays. As I’ve said many times, calling Kiki and Herb a drag act misses the point entirely: they are a dark, cathartic emotional roller-coaster ride. I’m not sure exactly when the first people walked out of the show on Friday night, but it may have been during the big cancer medley (but definitely before the eco-disaster/suicide medley). Obviously, the theater’s favorite aging, monstrous, heartbreaking showgirl is still doing something right if she’s making people that uncomfortable.
Much to my delight, London felt like a small town this weekend, in a way that New York often did at the times I loved it the most. At Friday night’s show and then walking around on Saturday, I saw a bunch of familiar faces (and considering why they looked familiar, it just goes to show that I look for portraits instead of cock shots on the internet) here and there in the crowds. I saw Herb/Kenny Mellman himself strolling at one point, although I didn’t get a chance to compliment him on the previous night’s success. At the Design Museum on Sunday I ran into my pal Dan from Germany, who I’d also seen earlier int he week when he was in Reading to check out the MATD program for next year. As I learn my way around town, it’s very comforting to feel myself becoming a thread in its fabric a bit.
I also finally got to see Shortbus, and was again surprised to see people walk out in the middle. So are people in London just more squeamish than in New York, or are they just less likely to read about what they’re about to see? Seriously. This is supposed to be a challenging movie, but I guess some folks were just there for the sex but not the emotional one-two punch.
Shortbus was fantastic, and reminded me an awful lot of the small-town vibe I often felt in New York, not in the least because it was littered with people I’d met, performers I’d seen, and streets I’d walked along over the years. It was a fantasy version of the Bohemian life in New York, granted, but still one I’d tasted from time to time over the years. The last few years in New York were often frustrating because so much more of my energy had to go toward surviving in New York rather than living in it, so it made me a little sad think about how much community and fun had come to feel like a fantasy for me there, instead of the reality it had once been. But there I was, sitting with old friends in a new place, working on another stage of my eclectic, adventurous life once again. So who knows?
One of my final farewells will be at this month’s WYSIWYG Talent Show next Wednesday night at the Bowery Poetry Club. (Yes, they’ve moved to Wednesday nights — make a note!) This month the blog kids will be talking about getting shitcanned at “Pink Slips: You’re Fired!” I’m performing at this one, too, so it really will be my last hurrah as I take the stage with Liam McEneany, Jon Friedman, Peter Hyman, Stolie the Funky Brown Chick, Chris Alonzo, and my fellow former Trusty Sidekick Drub. We will rock you.
We’ve been kinda pokey about getting out all the details (let’s just say your favorite all-blogger reading series is run by people whose lives are generally busy and stressful), but next Tuesday night is the long-anticipated Prom Trauma edition of the WYSIWYG Talent Show. Shame! Nostalgia! Hilarity! Fashion! All this can be yours for 7 lousy bucks, this upcoming Tuesday, May 23, at the Bowery Poetry Club (doors at 7:30, show at 8:00).
With performances by:
Come! Wear a corsage! Find out if any of us put out after the dance!
(P.S.: That’s me in the picture up there, obviously. I’ll share my one prom story next week.)