My friend Morgan, from way back in the olden days, is in a really good band, X's For Eyes. For a while I was Mr. Fanboy; at one point I am pretty sure I had seen every show they played. But then I missed a bunch, for a variety of reasons, and finally got to see them again on tuesday night, over there at Trash Bar. They put on a great show, and if you get the chance you should definitely check them out. I would call them a mature, tight, wry, punk rock band with just a touch of, um, I don't know what. Anyway, these twitching pictures to the left here are from the show. The top two are X's For Eyes, the bottom one is one of the other bands that played, The Anabolics. Also a very good band. Additionally, if you have the time and inclination you should check out Morgan's website, Furrycheese.com (actually, Furrycheese is divided cleanly in half, one half for Morgan, one half for Sheri, and both are well-worth your entertainment dollar.) So, this entry is entitled "You Hear it Here First" not because of music, but because of pipe-bombs. Let me explain: The other day, Monday, a package blew up in a Times Square Subway station. I don't know if this was national news or not, it was really suprisingly quietly covered here. I say suprisingly not because I think it was THAT big of a deal (I'lll explain below), but because the local New York media tends to be a bit alarmist, and this seems like the sort of thing that they could really run with. Anyway, the story is this package (depending on who you read/hear/believe) was a paperbag/napsack/package, and an off-duty transit cop noticed it on a stairwell, perhaps on fire, and in the process of trying to shoo people away from it or get help, or extinguish it, it blew up. Or not. It was full of fireworks, or loosely packed black powder and BB's, or a pipe bomb. Me, I hear this story and I know the cop did it. The hero complex, you know, like how the Chief of the Volunteer Fire Department is always the arsonist. I felt a little bad for thinking something so cynical. But, well, not bad enough to not tell Erin what I thought, and not bad enough to not tell my friend Heather what I thought, and not bad enough to not even post that opinion on Gothamist.com. Likely the cops in general knew this also (and perhaps told the media to not make a big freaking deal out of it, thus the relative silence. It is just a month or so before the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden), but couldn't say so right off the bat. They seem to be saying so now, though. Cynical Chris is vindicated. You may recall that Erin and I went Indiana for a little while. We had a great time, and got to spend good time with a whole lot of my family, and ate a BUNCH of cake, and took a bunch of pictures. Unfortunately, though, I have yet to actually put all the pictures into one pile and put them online. See the "lazy pinhead" comment above. Hopefully I'll get around to it soon. In other Dirtdirt.com news: My Polaroid a day project, Formerly 669, passed into its third year on July 14th. Pretty neat. Also, you may or may not have noticed the new front page, with a new layout, and a randomized set of background images and colors. Fawncy. Also ALSO the bullboard is chugging along nicely, and is the exact mix of sincerity, communication and downright obliqueness that I had hoped it would be. |
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