Saturday, May 28, 2005

Today would have been mediocre, and was so until I stumbled upon the "Bicycle Fetish Festival' hosted by those neighborhood luminaries The City Reliquary where I was privilaged enough to hear a band called "The good good" who are so underground that they don't even have a website to link you to. They do however have several rollicking girl/punk/electo songs that make the dirty little foothills punker, that I used to be, Jump up and down, and shake his head. Well, if you insist on honesty, then I guess I have to fess up to the bigger older version of that kid jumping up and down and shaking his head too. They also have a lovely record that I was able to buy from CINDERS, which nearly blew my mind with hand silkscreened coolness and genuine creative fun all wrapped in a psychedelic art punk haze!

The music wasn't the only great thing. There were vintage bicycles of all types lining the already tree lined block of Havemeyer St. There was vegan food from our neighborhood vegan fast food restaurant "Food Swings", there was a raffle to win a bike, there was a booth for the much prosecuted of late Critical Mass and plenty of filthy bicycle riding punk kids mixing with the mostly latino vintage bicycle restorers.

I think my favorite part of this little street festival was when a latino man who looked to be no less than 70 years old, in his white tank top undershirt, fedora, black coat and pants started dancing VIGOROUSLY to a punk rock trio playing on stage. After last week's FEVA event where I was also witness to the possible livelihood of the ageing, I am going to make it a point to stay as active as possible as long as I can stand up so that when I am 70, instead of yelling for the kids to get off of my damned lawn, I can make them all laugh and smile by danceing goofily to whatever they think is cool and dirty and offensive at the time! I'm gonna love that.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

The following is from a conversation with changitopelludo:

I've always found it interesting how, motivated to act in the name of a god of love and justice (obviously not yhvh, but its much more understanding son/spirit/self), people so often fall into actions more accurately categorized as that of the denizen which represents the opposite of those intentions. Is it only when one forgets to measure their actions against their intentions that they begin paving the legendary road to hell, or does it begin as a lie? Is the guise of 'goodness' only a tool to gather enough popular support necessary to fuel an effort that requires the hands and minds of more than just a few people? Unlike most of the people I know, I prefer to think that we get caught up in our actions and do not understand how far from the mark we are falling when our intentions turn sour. However, I know very well that sometimes, we are just nasty bastards who set out with the intention to lie, cheat and deceive. I do it, you do it, everyone does it.
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I think it is important to specify that I am only using the x-tian faith here as an example of what we all do, whether we subscribe to the teachings of a faith or not. The conversation stemmed from a comment about religious persecution in early american history, and it got me thinking about how we loose our way when were just trying to do the right thing.

So I finally have time to come back and give a little update, sorry no rants today!

At the
Foundation for East Village Artists recent benefit event honoring Miguel Algarin, Tuli Kupferberg, Jonas Mekas and Ellen Stuart I was privilaged enough to see Penny Arcade Speak, Deborah Harry sing a few Jazz tunes and bunches of crusty old east village beat poets proclaim that even organizations like FEVA are too large and mostly do no good.

I was also Privilaged enough to break dance for none other than the
Icelandic princess of all that is strange. I think She's MY fan now because she showed up later that night to watch me dance again at the afterparty which was held at Marquis.

The following night my band Little Mountain played a set at The Lucky Cat. This was our last show for a little while as our lead man Josh is on a cross country trip/tour to support the new e.p. that he is releasing.