shaken & stirred

welcome to my martini glass

1.08.2003

Greetings and salutations, said the spider.

I don't think LCRW has gotten any questions for the advice column yet. I know some of you know people who desperately need advice. Make them write in. I borrowed extra wisdom just in case.

The middle of the week and it feels like something else. Days like this make the concept of weeks feel like irrelevant jokes that no one gets anymore. Haven't done my 1,000 words yet today, or worked on the revision of Voices. And tonight is my screenwriting workshop's chat night so I shall be up very late. Maybe I'll get the 1,000 words in before then. But that is the last time you will hear me talk about it, because I despise the word count and, like the week, I'll try not to endorse it here. File under category of Necessary Evils.

New York is doing something backwards and forwards it seems. At first glance it seemed like a wonderful idea, but now I'm not so sure. I don't have the URL handy, so you'll have to go search poetry at the NYTimes for the article. Essentially, the city transportation department ran a competition for poetry to be emblazoned on the sides of subway trains. That's the wonderful idea part. But the actual poems are just subway-specific knock-offs of famous literary works, such as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." It seems like it would have been far more interesting to put someone's actual creativity up there; in all of New York there are many good poets who could have sent in original work. (By that, I mean completely original work.) Is any poetry better than none? I'm not sure. Allan?

Listening to Tanya Donnelly's last record today beautysleep, highly recommended. Lots of creepy yet fun soundscapes and, oddly, resonances with Emmylou Harris's Red Dirt Girl. Anybody that can get away with singing the line "The night my spirit guide left me behind" has got something. (There is one clunker that proposes the world is a wraparound skirt, which is just silly.) Besides Kirstin Hersh didn't put out anything new in awhile. Also, the new Flaming Lips album is wonderful and the Luna too. Newish music. Goodie.

And everyone should be watching Andy Richter's sitcom on Sundays on Fox. Oh, oh, oh, and Conan O'Briend had the most wonderful and strange band on the other night. They're called the Trachtenburg Family Slide Show Players. They purchase slides from estate sales and then make up songs about the people in them. The father plays piano and sings, the mother does the slides on a screen behind them, and the daughter (about 8) plays drums. It's absolutely worth seeking them out and all New Yorkers should be going to see them all the time.

That is all for now. We're off for a walk in the woods, over a huge limestone mine.

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