Balloons, Roses and Scum

Matmos played the Whitney Museum. Here are some blurry pics:


That's Kiki from Kiki & Herb reading from SCUM Manifesto while the Matmos dude blows up a balloon and then plays it.


That's SO Percussion playing with the Matmos dudes, and yeah, that guy is playing with roses.

The show was pretty packed but the crowd was really cool, friendly arty types. Except for this dude:



You know this type of guy? Shows up 5 minutes before the show, pushes his way in front of you, spends half of the show on his cell phone, pushing other peeps out of the way to get picture on his PDA or whatever that little doo-dad is.

He blocked my way when the Matmos dudes were playing a mic'd birdcage with bows. So no blurry pic of that.

In spite of the a-hole, we had a great time.

Oh, and the Matmos guy say in pretty good Italian too: La Rosa Ha Denti Nella Bocca Della Bestia.

Whacko, Manson, and Cum Towels

Friday night Sands, Greg and I caught the opening of the John Waters exhibit at the Marianne Boesky gallery. As soon as we entered, the boys grabbed some welcoming beers in a bin -- bottleopener hanging on the wall -- and we strolled around. Here's some of what we saw:



I'd like one of these:



Baby Michael Jackson crawling across the floor to play with baby Charles Manson:



Creepy. Yet hysterical.

John Waters was there, floating around explaining his pieces and occassionally posing for pictures. Can you see him?? He's there. Squint:



Ah, it's good to be back home.

MySpace Lovin'

Everyone seems to be up in arms about MySpace here in the US. Peeps are afraid their kids are gonna get solicited sexually via the site and then they’ll end up prostituting themselves and making porno films.

MSNBC says: “Police say predators troll the site, and others like it, looking for vulnerable children, sometimes very young ones.”

Pu-lease.

I wasn’t too interested in joining MySpace, after Nerve (date a freak a week) and Friendster (the high school popularity contest), and I’ve already got email and a blog to communicate cyberly, but someone convinced me, and boy was I glad I did. If not, I would never have received these gems:

Hi
my name is walid. im egyption. can we be friends ? i wish
if u want ... send me ur agree to my adding u on my friends on myspace and add me too plz send me ur e_mail@yahoo or ur e_mail@hotmail im online now send me now
many thanks if u do if u want add me now and let us chat now i wish
walid

hi i am chuks bekee from nigeria how is life with u over there hope fine? its nice to meet some one like u hope u dont mind. i appriciate ur beauty i saw ur profile in the net and i was moved with ur beauty and the way u look so charming and wounderful .I will like some one like u to be my life time friend i mean spending my life times with u i beliieve some one like u will be cincare and truthfull ,with a man that will love u with all his life and also ,be cincare to u . I believe i will be cincare to u because i dont believe in dating two women, i believe in keeping to one woman and i will keep to u if u so desire me into ur life. i was so moved when i saw ur pic in ur profile, i see u as a woman that can keep a home,i see u as a woman that need not to be haurt ,u need just petting of wich i will make u feel like a real woman if u let me into ur life as ur husband and will make u understand the taste of love .the love and kindness i will show to u will make u forget all the sorrows u have had in this life and u will be a happy woman again . I want u to know ur special u are not like other women u are a woman of integrity, a woman of honor a woman full of understanding and favour no woman has so moved me like u in ur picture i saw in ur profile u are too beautifull i dont want to miss u i mean i have developed i very deep love for u since i saw ur picture in ur profile i am beginning to get crazy about u so i decieded to write u if u will acept me into ur life as ur friend .My dream in life is to meet some body like u and GOD has made it available for me to come in contac with u so iam happy and will not like to miss u i will be happy to hear from u .U can write me trough my email adress please do u speak inglish . i will be happy if u reply this letter THANX.pls send me ur phone number and ur house adress so that i can write or send u a letter bye.

hi how are you my name is assem. i wish to hear from u soon. sorry for my bad english see u soon and i love the love but i need the love and marry im very romance

Hi , saw u pix i and was bloshing. quite cool. Honestly i will love to know u more....Itching to hear from you...take kia of u, i am 35 year old. i am in africa for project i leave in us single here hope to hear from u
Denis

Nope, I don't respond to any of these. And if I were 14, I wouldn't respond. But they are pretty freakin entertaining, especially that dude who thinks I keep a good home. Hahhahahahhaaha yeahhhh.

Long live MySpace. Good times.

La Grande Mela

Well, folks, I am back in New York City after wrapping up the Olympic adventure and then taking some time to travel around Europe. Pretty surreal to be here, especially since I am staying at my mom's apartment in Bay Ridge. Gawd, I feel like I am in high school again. In Italy, I'd be called a "Mammona."

Anyway, due to cruel time constraints and a little thing called a privacy agreement, I wasn't able to post anything for months. But it's not like I wasn't writing, I was just waiting til the Olympics had finished, so I could split the country, and uh, not get in trouble for posting anything I shouldn't have.

So, if you don't mind, this blog is now gonna have to go backwards in time, and I'll start posting some of the observations I made along the way. The journey was pretty incredible. I worked with some amazing people, in one of the greatest cities in Italy (YES, Torino), on one of the biggest events you could imagine.

In my best Access Hollywood voice-over:

I'll take you behind the scenes and into the trenches as we uncover how an Olympic Ceremony really comes together! All the tears! All the joys! The highs and lows!

Whatever.

Happy reading and reminiscing.

Got Music, Will Travel

I have officially fallen in love with Torino. This city is elegant, mysterious and easy to traverse, with or without bus tickets. The only shame is that I don’t get out too much. These Olypmics are all-consuming and leave little time for a private life. But when friends travel long and far to visit, I’ll make the effort to show off my new temporary hometown.

The first to visit was Norway Nick, who, living up his nickname, traveled by train all the way across Northern Italy to see his beloved Scandanavians, Sigur Ros. We made it to the show just two minutes before they hit the stage. I like to fall to sleep Sigur Ros, their music gives me a real calming yet eery vibe, leading to delightful, playful, and surreal dreams. Almost like seeing them live...



Next came Barbara, all the way from NYC by way of Milano who was lucky enough to hit town the same time Pamelia, my friend and former theremin teacher, was playing with her band Barbez. We all stopped by the Café Procope before the gig to meet up with the group for dinner. The show was fun but sparsely attended. Pamelia wowed my Italian and British friends playing her new theremin, a more compact and space-age Moog. Check her out at www.pameliakurstin.com



My Milan musicfreak cohort Maureen dropped by for The Go!Team show down the street at Café Procope (one of my favorite spots in Torino). The openers, Her Space Holiday, got us in the mood to dance. I could swear that some of their songs included bits and pieces of my favorite new-wave tracks from 20 years ago, it all seemed new yet reminiscent at the same time. By the time The Go!Team hit the stage we were in rare form. You cannot see a Go!Team gig and NOT shake your booty and we were evidence of that after only two numbers (sweating in the front row). After the gig we met the band and gave them all the kudos they deserved.



And finally Lil ‘8 skipped school for the day, travelling from Bologna to catch the Soulwax gig at Hiroshima. I turned 37 while they did their DJ/band thing onstage. I wish I could write more about the gig, but I don’t remember much. Old age.

Lingua Fa-Cock-Dah Lesson Three: One Word And One Word Only

It's okay to ask an online dictionary for the translation of a word. I use them all the time. For ONE word. Like, incudine.

This is an incudine:



Yep, I learned that important word with the help of an online dictionary.

But, dude, don't ever use an online translation site to handle your entire MEMO. Or you can end up sending a mess like to this to all your colleagues:

Good morning,
last night to the hours 10,25 pm, the technicians of Panasonic they have realized that a Cluster of N° 4 Cabinet Mod. KUDO positioned in forehead to the point of the stage was probably fallen to earth during the manoeuvre of extraction to the outside of the stadium of the enormous cloth used in the tests. Further to have provoked a damage to the equipment (what now the appointees will quantify) what suggestion warmly is to see the procedure of the segment in matter and of the possible others that same problem list introduce again, to avoid further damages to equipments (Moving Heads, Audio Cluster, Television Cameras, Pyro) and People. In every case we will provide to put a safety cables to the Clusters in matter.

Right. Uh, thanks.

One word, not a memo. Dude.

What Difference Does It Make?

Picking up and moving to another spot in the world is never easy. Sometimes it’s an escape, sometimes it’s a challenge, always it’s an adventure. Everything takes a bit of adjusting, you need to be ready and open to it. But there are a few differences that need to be pointed out. Take note:

-If you’d like to take mass transit, be sure to buy your ticket beforehand. Or don’t. You can’t pay your fare on the bus or tram here. You need to get your ticket at the magazine shop. Somehow this is just too much for me to remember in the morning, so often I find myself without a ticket. Now this ticket should be validated, basically you need to stamp it in a tiny machine that’s in the middle of the bus/tram. But if the bus/tram is packed, there is no way you’re gonna push your way through to the tiny yellow stamping box. So I just risk it. If a controller happens to come on board, you’ll see them from a mile away. They are in uniform, ready to dole out fines. At this point you can either stamp your ticket before they get to you or hop off. Yeah, I know, this isn’t honest and it could be akin to jumping the NYC subway turnstiles, but these people are just asking to be scammed with such a silly system in place.

-Let’s say you need to take a train to Bologna on Friday. Beware that Friday might be a strike-day! There will be signs posted all over the station, there will be notices in the paper, announcing the big STRIKE. There will still be some trains that run, mainly during rush hour, when most people use mass transit. Okay….so basically the transit workers strike from 9am until 5pm, when most peeps are in their cubes anyway. Like my friend Barbara noted, it’s a bit like a restaurant workers striking for the day, but not during lunch and dinner. Right. What makes these strikes so ineffective is that they are announced in advance. Very considerate but it sort of lessens their position of power, wouldn’t you say? I mean, we have wildcat strikes in the US, but we also have strikes when negotiations haven’t panned out too well, and the strike becomes a sort of last-ditch, but effective, effort on behalf of workers rights. Here the strikes are a bit more frequent (very often on Fridays, hmmmm), there is no surprise element, and anyway if the bus controllers strike you absolutely don’t have to validate those tickets….

-Oh and another thing. Of the subject of mass transit and on the subject of home appliances. Why does my washing machine take 1.5 hours to wash a load of laundry? It’s an e-t-e-r-n-i-t-y.