May, 2017

The May Roundup

Tuesday, May 2nd

sarah — Met up with Sarah for a veggie dinner at ABCV!

Went home and spent the night playing music.

Wednesday, May 3rd

Went to the dentist for a checkup.

Does not like the dentist.

Came home and wrote down all my song sketches from the previous month.

Worked on some lyrics for the ones I liked most.

Thursday, May 4th

Preorded the new Murakami short stories collection and was very excited to read it when it came out.

Friday, May 5th

Stopped off at Stromboli for this top notch lunch with a beer. Mmmm.

Love the late 80s beastie boys photo they have on their wall.

Saturday, May 6th

Walked by La Plaza on Saturday....

...one of the lovely chickens was hanging out near the fence. (I miss these guys...the city made the garden get rid of them because their feed was attracting rats and causing a rodent problem).

Tuesday, May 9th

Lots of wispy clouds over the East Village on Tuesday.

All of the air traffic creating...

...sus looking cirrus clouds.

Wednesday, May 10th

On Wednesday afternoon Grant accompanied me to pick up the keys to the waaaay upstate off-grid cabin I'd purchased earlier in the year. (We had to wait a while for the weather to warm up!). After we drove up the mountain on the super steep private dirt road, I gave him a tour of the cabin...

grant — ...after I'd finished, Grant walked down to the scenic overlook by the fire pit and said "I think this might be the best thing you've done." lol.

After unpacking, we set out to explore the property! Cool vines in the woods.

grant — I have never owned any land and it was really fun to walk around and get the feel of the property.

...a few hundred feet down the road from my place is a miniature obelisk that demarcates the New York / Vermont border!

grant — Grant was excited about stepping into Vermont for the first time! I'M IN VERMONT NOW!

grant — We finally found our way back to the cabin...

grant — ...and dragged our cooler of beers down the hill for the innaguaral fire pit night!

Stayed up taking inventory and making lists of all the things I'd need to buy to make the place more livable / enjoyable.

Thursday, May 11th

grant — The cabin has an outdoor stove on the porch. Got treated to an excellent...

...breakfast sandwich!

Drove into Bennington, Vermont the next morning to hit the Home Depot and passed this crazy, huge dilapidated house on the way.

Later that afternoon, we locked the cabin up and headed back home. But there will be plenty more cabin action coming up.

Friday, May 12th

jeet, sarah — On Friday afternoon I met up with Gurj, Sarah and Jared uptown to celebrate Gurj's BIRTHDAY! After a fancy lunch...

jeet — ...we hit the Guggenheim to see some art.

Here are some things...

...I liked. (Naum Gabo)

They also had a really wild contempory installation. It was an entire room filled with these giant, intricate circuit-board looking patterns...

...but when you looked closely, all of the white circuits were FILLED WITH LIVING ANTS. (Anicka Yi, Life is Cheap

jared, jeet, sarah — Happy birthday, Gurjeet! <3

next lev kev — Kevin came over later that night for a reiki trade and a late night feast.

After Kevin left I stayed up late recording some guitar tracks.

Saturday, May 13th

Bob White Counter has...

...a next level chicken sandwich. xoxoxo

There is a fancy beer store right next store and this is my new favorite beer. (Cute label, too!)

Sunday, May 14th

maddy, major — On Sunday morning Meredith dropped off Major for a day of dogsitting so she could spend Mother's Day with her family.

maddy, major — Major had a bit of a what you'd call a "leaky penis" problem so Meredith made him a velcro band with bananas on it so he wouldn't nervously dribble pee all over my apt.

mom — I made my mom a photo collage tribute for Mother's Day and had to screenshot it and text it to her because she doesn't use the apps.

mom — Happy Mother's Day, mom! You really do crack me up!

maddy — I love when Maddy does that little chin resting thing when she sun-naps.

cynthia, shawn m, soli — Later that night Cynthia had us over for a dinner party...

craig, shawn m — ...and Chef Shawn treated us to some fantastic steaks!

Monday, May 15th

On Monday I finally came to terms with the fact that SIX YEARS had passed since my surfing summer of 2011...

...and that it probably didn't make sense for me to keep a giant surfboard in my tiny Manhattan apartment anymore. I took some photos of this beauty so I could give her away to a good home. (Craig came and got her!)

I spent the evening going through the more than one hundred little song sketches I'd recorded throughout the previous month.

Just like working on this website, I find it really cathartic to have an artistic process that has a recipe that involves a lot of manual work.

I like listening to each of the things I recorded many weeks later with an objective ear and trying to figure out the recordings that are related...

...and group them by recording number and coming up with working song titles for the tracks.

Wednesday, May 17th

maddy, me — Maddy loves to wake up and go on her morning walk, but some morning she just wants to cuddle a bit first. <3

Friday, May 19th

maddy, me — On Friday Maddy and I headed down to DC...

max — ...to visit my brother! Spent the evening hanging with Max.

Yo, props to all you parents out there. After a single long day of playing with a kid, as soon as it's night time I'm out on the porch for a puff, a beer, and a cheese crackers schnack (or three).

Saturday, May 20th

max — Max is old enough now where he and I can hang out and do fun shit solo. I took him to the park for an ice cream hang to give his parents a little much-needed break.

brett, craig k — Had a lovely back yard fire man-hang with my brother's nextdoor neighbor Craig.

After Craig headed home, my brother took me upstairs to show me his latest TOY that he was really excited to show me. He custom built this PC with a really high-end video card so that he could run the new virtual reality games that were being released on Steam's online gaming platform.

In addition to having a very-powerful computer, you needed to have these special Virtual Reality controllers....

...and wall-mounted LIDAR (like radar with but with light) cubes to track your motion and map your body into the games!

Baby's first trip to VIRTUAL REALITY! I was totally hooked. Ended up staying up super late testing out all the games he doesn't have time to play. lol

Sunday, May 21st

amy b, max — The next morning Amy, Brett and Max took me to their fave breakfast spot....

...I got the breakfast burrito!

brett, me — Brothers!

Then it was time to begin my long journey home! (I kind of wish my hair could just look like this all the time. Hard to get that David Lynch pompadour just right).

Had a double-entre late night victory feast from Odessa. A cheeseburger with onions & swiss and an entire container of penne vodka because WHY NOT? (Also, I think the chef added way too much actual vodka because I actually got DRUNK eating this pasta and I don't think that's supposed to happen??)

Tuesday, May 23rd

On Tuesday I spent my afternoon at LeagueApps' board meeting...

...giving an update on the company's growth to their investors and board members. I love that I get invited into start-ups and get to help them put together plans to grow and hire more people! So many exciting developments but all I could think about was...

...was anybody noticing that I basically eat the entire chocolate babka by myself????

After work, I walked over to Jack Rabbit and got some new sneaks before heading over to...

lizzy — ...to the Strand Bookstore...

lizzy — ...for the book release party for Lizzy's book, Meet Me In the Bathroom!

lizzy — It was, by far, the most well-attended book release party I've ever been to! So cool to see that crowd that turned up!

geordon, leigh, lizzy — Back in September of 2015, Lizzy came to my aparment to go through hundreds of my old music and nightlife photos as candidates for her then in-progress book! Five of my photos ended up making it into the final book....

lizzy — ...and I was excited to see them in print! (From the night that Madonna came and DJed MisShapes....still bonkers to remember that that happenend)

lizzy, rob sheffield — Her book panel was moderated by Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield, Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and James Murphy from DFA & LCD Soundsystem!

lizzy — After the panel, attentees lined up to have their copy signed by Lizzy!

lizzy — Congrats, Lizzy! So awesome to see your book born after so many years of hard work!

Afterwards, we took Lizzy out for a celebratory meal at Souen!

Wednesday, May 24th

Remember when those black pore masks came out and everyone was going nuts about them? I think I bought this stuff off Instagram. I was excited to try it out...

...but didn't notice it pull out too many blackheads. Still kind of cool, tho.

I see Al Kavadlo working out at the jungle gym in Tomkins all the time and I love his video content so I wanted to support his new book!

Thursday, May 25th

next lev kev — I got Kevin a job working at Voray, one of my start-up clients and he was stoked on free food Thursdays. lol.

smoke tree — Smoke tree blossing on my block in Alphabet City! So Dr. Seussy!

Love all the red-tailed hawk action in Tompkins.

Friday, May 26th

On Friday I went out to Queens to catch a ride out to...

jared — ...Gurj and Jared's Lakehouse for Memorial Day . But you can read about this in its very own entry!

Tuesday, May 30th

Ended the month weird and strong by falling down the deepest of internet rabbit holes learning about the Steps of Yu (discovered by observing the pattern on the shell of a turtle!)...

...and magic squares. Watched Michael Daniels awesomely nerdy Ted Talk....

...and took lots of a notes in my nerdy notebooks that I like to write in...

...whenever I'm overloading my brain on pure internet INFORMATION MAINLINE.

Like this video totally sent me on another rabbit hole learning about Cornelious Agrippa and all of HIS interests!

A magic square is an n x n square with a whole number written inside each cell, so that the sum of the numbers in every row, in every column and in each of the main diagonals adds up to the SAME NUMBER! This number is called the "magic number" for that partiualr square. (For example, the magic number of the Saturn Square is 15)

Agrippa associated different magic squares with the known planetary bodies at the time and then showed that if you take the numbers within a magic square and trace a line to connect the numbers in numberical order, it reveals patterns that you can put on the floor and do a little dance to! Sort of a like a magic ritual dance to invoke that heavenly body's energy. SO FUCKING COOL! This was basicall the DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION of the 16th century!

Then I cleared my living room floor so I could practice some magic square PLANETARY DANCES at 3am as one is wont to do. Hi, a crazy person lives here! Happy May 2017!

Just in case you're the same kind of weird as me, here's a link to Michael's TEDx video on magic squares.