magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

No surprise, I didn't get out to the Apple store last night. I did a small gambling probability analysis. The MacBook that they are giving away is worth about $1250. Even if only 25 people show up during a given hour to enter, and I'm sure that's a super-lowball figure, even in the middle of the night, then any individual's entry is "worth" $50. I thought that getting a decent night of sleep was more worth the $50 to me. And like I said, there were probably even more people there, and a consequently lower dollar value to each entry.

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Now that it's warm out again, Organic Grill is back in the brunch rotation. It's a tiny place, and during the winter, whenever anyone opens the door to come or go, you might as well be sitting in the street. Then a walk, up 1st Ave, across 21st Street, down 9th, cut back across 14th, and down 5th to Washington Square Park.

'You know, I do kind of have nostalgic feelings for the Strawberry Shortcake ice cream bar.'

Chris and I met up with Dave and got dinner at Tiny's Giant Sandwich Shop which I had heard of, but never been to before. And I had an incredibly tasty sandwich.

Then Brooklyn, to see Acid Mothers Temple. Since the last time I saw them, sometime last October, was one of the best live shows I'd seen in New York, I figured I should see them again. And, I wasn't as into it this time. Maybe it was because the venue was bigger. Or because the band was smaller (they only had one drummer this time out, for one). Or because my feet hurt and my bag was pinching a nerve in my shoulder. Or because the bassist spent ten minutes eating an apple into his mic. (Which in retrospect was actually pretty funny, but at the time it really broke up the flow of the show.) Plus, the guitar smashing this time out seemed much less a spontaneous, exuberant act, and more because it was the last song of the last show of the tour.

Before the show began, Chris asked what I thought the opening band, The Antarcticans would sound like. 'I think my speculation is a bit prejudiced by the band Antarctica.'

'I don't really know what they sounded like. Were they just a slow-core band?'

'No, not really. Well, maybe slow-core crossed with electronica in the vein of Underworld.'

The Antarcticans started out with a post-rock drone thing, which became slow-core, then feedback tinged noise-pop, then thrash-pop, and back to drone. In the first fifteen minute song. The rest of the set revisited most of those styles, along with enough surf-rock sounding guitar, that the comparison in my head was Dick Dale + Angelo Badalamenti + Lou Reed played by a group of twenty- (thirty?)-something, psychedelic, noise/thrash-pop indie dweebs. (And before you jump on me over the indie dweeb bit, I mean that not in any way derogatorily, I am most certainly an indie dweeb myself.)

I really liked about 25% of their set. I kind of didn't like about 25% of their set. And was sort of indifferent to the remaining half. The fact that it constantly jumped back and forth between stuff I liked and didn't like made the whole thing a little underwhelming. But, seeing as how I would go on to not enjoy Acid Mothers' set as much as I did last year, maybe it wasn't the fault of the band, but of the venue, or my own frame of mind.