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.

– collected from thomas pynchon’s gravity’s rainbow and always so relevant.

i am also curious how anyone could come up with a top 50 albums for 2008 list. thought not as insane about finding new bands i am positive that 50 great albums were not made this year. i couldn’t even name 50 albums that came out in 2008!

with the epic failure of the financial system i am surprised nobody has looked into finding the gentleman who performed this song (a parody?) of u2′s song one. i wonder if he still is employed as a banker or if he has been forced into performing in local lounges. part of me also wonders if the moment caught in this clip could signal the absolute pinnacle of the absurdity that was wall street over the last decade.

having enjoyed bone-in ribeye steaks all weekend in chicago, a little kraft macaroni and cheese was a very reasonable dinner choice this evening. at $1.19 a box (half stick of butter and milk extra)
it is well priced for almost everyone to eat.

20 bits of chicken
matzah meal
carrots
celery
onion
2 eggs
loads of water

boil chicken all ingredients for 3 hours. make matzah balls with 2 eggs, oil and matzah meal. then add to the mix and boil for 20 mins

so there it is. the secret recipe is no longer secret.

dont forget to check me out at www.myspace.com/roryguinness

lots of love, and stay awkward,

Rory

there’s a lot more here - actually i think this page has a link to pretty much every dfw on the internet from the last week or so.