about six months ago i started getting asked why i was selling t-shirts on this page and i had no idea. i hadn’t looked at it in months, or even really thought about it. the book came out – albeit in a very, very, very poor form that made me wish it didn’t and i had since stopped writing much of anything as some sort of a protest (or sparing of the english language). at some point i forgot to renew the domain and in something unfortunately not surprising for the internet there are companies that run automatic programs to buy domains the millisecond they expire and then park ads for t-shirt’s and viagra. it was only once i no longer had the ‘painfully awkward’ domain that i decided that i wanted it, making it in many ways like some of the girls i know or knew a long time ago. after sending many letters to the sleazy-as-misrahi-realty domain broker sedo i had given up on getting the domain back and was fine with it. not really sure of how most things internet related work these days (i used to be so good years ago thanks to a strong desire to see pam anderson nude downloaded using unix commands). i sent out e-mails to assorted people that i thought had bought the domain. to my surprise today a nice person responded to one of the e-mails and five minutes later the domain was back in my possession. what really isn’t back is any interest in keeping up with page in very much, but who knows? since i stopped writing anything for it on a regular basis a lot has happened.
many of the bands on the original painfully awkward page are either broken up or so dated they might as well be. though most of the pictures are gone there are still sufficient posts to show how much i loved interpol and the strokes, however cannot imagine either of the bands ever being relevant again. sure they’ll keep putting out albums, but they won’t matter. james levy is still out and about touring and from checking the link on his web page performed the other night (something i would have like to have known james!). he is still the most talented person i have ever had the pleasure of meeting. one of his levy bandmates gave up music to become a pretty neat web page designer and also the most prolific facebook status updater of all time. i-lash broke up right before they forgot to put out their best song “take” which is ok, because now i play it on guitar to impress girls and sometimes it works. i do the same thing with some of james levy’s songs, particularly “positively east broadway,” the best song he doesn’t have for sale anywhere. speaking of talent the walkmen are still the most under appreciated band in ny or the planet. radiohead and morrissey are still gods.
back in march of 2009 the beatrice inn closed. bloggers and the ny media keep trying to put something in its place, but nothing will. i don’t even think the people behind it could recreate it with all the luck in the world. it happened like anything happen and everyone who ever hung out there regularly will have fun stories to tell people, povided they can find people who care about such things. i still dine at pearl oyster bar quite often, however the minetta tavern is rapidly overtaking it as my favorite place to eat in ny. it’s only drawback being that a lot of other people also consider it their favorite place making it hard to get a reservation. in other restaurant news david chang kind of took over the east village. sitting behind a desk for work and being good at clicking a mouse i have pretty much perfected his the online reservation site and can generally get a reservation whenever i want.
perhaps the worst thing to come about since i stopped writing this was twitter. it is vile and anybody who participates in without having a product to promote is an idiot. facebook is bad, but serves the purpose of seeing what people that you disliked or even liked in high school are up to now. sometimes i smile when i see the popular girl in high school lives on a pig farm in a terrible city in the south and the guy who used to make out with her is now bald and a salesman of some product that no coercing can make one feel the need to buy. the iphone reception is still terrible. recently i went to the apple store and they informed me that while using the 3g network they brag about on tv a 33 percent dropped call rate is pretty decent. their stock is at an all-time high.
anyone who bought their stock last year doubled their return. almost anyone who purchased stock wisely a year ago could have easily doubled their money. the funny thing about a recession though is that if you have a job, it isn’t such a bad thing, in fact it isn’t really that bad at all. the great equalizer in this is barack obama. in 2008 i was excited for him to become president, a lot of people were. now it is clear that a democratic president serves as nothing other than away to take money from the hard working and give it to the lazy. he also became the first president in my lifetime that alienated israel. when his healthcare plan is done the united states of america will probably have an underlying tag “owned by china.”
there’s probably a lot of other things that i missed out, but it is time to go watch the office (something else i discovered in past year or so) and read a little before bed.
welcome back.
also, after years of not winning the yankees finally won the world series, proving my living here was not a curse on them. sadly i was not allowed to go to the ticker-tape parade, but came home to the remains of it littering my street.
