Isn't that the guy from Depeche Mode?

There are generally two ways an evening of Voice Street Teamstering can go. The first is in the manner of the Knitting Factory gigs, where we show up just after the sound check and sit patiently in the corner for the entire performance, grabbing people between sets and forcibly extracting their personal information with our throbbing, gargantuan brain powers.

The second is less common. We brandish our clipboards while hanging upside down from the ceiling for a few hours before a show, and as soon as the music starts, bolt off into the night sky. I prefer the bolt to the extract--less strain on my brainness and my valuable sitting-around time.

Monday night was an extract. I worked the after party of the Off Broadway Awards--the Obies--hanging around the lobby of Webster Hall with struggling actors and musicians and former Voice employees who were very eager to tell me how glad they were to be on the other side of the swag table. While Antibalas played the main room upstairs, I got to witness the exodus of award winners (and losers, I assume, but it was harder to pick them out, maybe they slunk out through the staff exit) in their East Village formal wear, which is similar to Oscar fashion but more fabulous. I wish I had more to add, but what can I say? It was a party, and parties is parties is parties, in my experience. Just a lot of people getting together and going "peoplepeoplepeoplepeople." Sort of like an elephant migration on the savannah, except nobody's naked.

I didn't leave Webster Hall until after midnight, which meant the MTA was doing their late night subway repairs on the F line. Riding the subway at one in the morning on a weekday is a weird experience. There's about as many people and as much activity as you'll see at one in the afternoon, but everything moves at a much dreamier pace, like the entire subway system just took a massive hit off the bong. New York may never sleep, but that was definitely the calmest I've ever seen it. But I digress.

This week was a double-dip Teamster week for me. Last night, I went crosstown to the West Village--seen at night, in the rain, as usual--to take my turn at the Street Team's new regular, Le Poisson Rouge. I can't tell you how badly I wanted that to translate as "The Red Poison," but sadly, it means, "The Red Fish." Le sigh. Le Poisson Rouge is a nightclub. It took me about an hour and a half to figure that out. I thought it was a concert space and couldn't figure out what the hell was going on in that enormous underground room. "Are they all just going to stand there?" I wondered. "Is a band going to get up on that stage or what? Why isn't anything happening?!"

Once I figured out that yes, they were all just going to stand there and mill about, I started to play a little game called "Spot the Euro." I think Le Poisson Rouge must appear in guidebooks somewhere as a--let me see if I can get the tone right--"trendy West Village hang out, a place to see and be seen with New York's hippest night owls." Lots of tight black clothes and asymmetrical haircuts and flat-chested Nordic beauties who were strangely willing to sign up for Voice email alerts, which means there's either a large population of these freakishly good-looking Euros in New York City, or Europeans are a lot less discriminate than Americans about who they give their personal information to.

I hung out for about three hours, reassuring my breasts that even if they weren't as cherry as European breasts, they were still beautiful in their own way. Just as I was getting ready to bolt, my exit was blocked by the guy from Depeche Mode. You know the one. I don't know where he came from or what he was doing there, but my mind instantly went to The Venture Bros. "Sweetie, isn't that the guy from Depeche Mode?"

So I guess that sometimes a party isn't just a party. Sometimes it's a bizarre, real-lifey version of a subversive cartoon.

And in my opinion, that's just super.

Orderly Noise

"Alas, poor Yorick, thine music sucks." Text message from the BF halfway through last night's noise rock concert/reality show taping at the Knitting Factory.

This is going to be a bit heavy on the vitriol.

You don't realize how well the subway system works in New York City until it breaks down. Last night, I took a bus, a train, another train, and another bus to get from my apartment to the Knitting Factory. It took me an hour and a half to go four miles because the F and G trains were out of service, but in different places, with an uneven outness overlap, which can be described by the mathematical theorum: F^G=F(c*B)/G(V-2c) where B is Brooklyn, c is the speed of light, and V is a wandering variable equal to the number of fuck-yous coming out of the MTA at any given moment.

It's not even a journey worth making. The Knitting Factory is in that hipster shithole, Williamsburg. I know Williamsburg is considered one of the better neighborhoods in Brooklyn--and considering that I lived in Bedstuy for a year, I'm not in any position to judge shitholes--but I look at all those shingle-covered houses and chic pubs and ironic beards, and it just makes me what to punch someone in the throat. The only way you can get me to go to Williamsburg is if you pay me.

And the Village Voice was paying me to go, so I went--and walked right into an MTV reality show. That's not a euphemism for getting felt up by the lighting guy in the vestibule. An MTV camera crew was actually there shooting footage for this reality show starring a Pratt student. The network had bribed a bunch of people with the promise of a free concert to come to the Knitting Factory so that it looked like their Star was attending a hot, sold-out event. They shuffled these extras around to heighten the illusion of a packed house, which made me laugh, because there were actually less people there than usual.

Yes, reality shows are staged. Sorry if anyone's world just shattered to pieces around them. You can go cry under a shelf in the bathroom now. I'll wait.

The cameras made it really difficult for me and the other Street Teamsters to do our thing because we didn't want to get in the shots. My life is difficult enough without having to explain a split-second MTV reality show appearance to my friends and family. Plus, it's difficult for me to get into my perky saleswoman persona when I'm being devoured by pity for the subject of a reality show. The Star stopped by our table to sign up for Voice email alerts and get a free mustache, and even though I knew that she'd made the choice and probably actively scrambled for her role on the show, I couldn't help but think that nobody deserves this. To be followed by five cameras when you're hanging around the club--knowing that everyone else in the room is only there to fill in the blanks of your fake life--being constantly surrounded by seething film school graduates who have shelved their dreams of documenting elephant migrations and natural disasters in developing countries because the only work they could get was on an MTV reality show--ugh, the existential angst of the situation was so intense I nearly conceived of a masters thesis in media alienation.

I probably would have enrolled myself in graduate school via my partner's iPhone right then and there if the music hadn't been sucking my will to live. Music at the Knitting Factory has never exactly blown me away with its genius and originality, but my g-d, at least it was never four sets of noise rock before now. I wanted to stand up on my stool and scream, "It's just noise! It's just orderly noise!" That's all it is, amelodic, atonal screaming and grunting and pounding, the soundtrack to Hell, and not the good kind of Hell in Dante's "Inferno," with Florentine artists and Roman poets. More like the music from the Hell of Upside Down Stupid People, where the only food is honey flavored ham jerky, and flaming drops of Mountain Dew and Zima rain down every day at six, just in time for "Jackass" reruns. That Hell.

Three hours was enough of that for me. I pleaded sickness and ran screaming into the night, where I threw myself into a yellow cab because the thought of struggling through another hour-long round of bus-train-bus-train at midnight in Brooklyn was just too much. So half of my paycheck from that evening went to cab fare, leaving me with barely enough left over to do my laundry.

Here's hoping Monday night's Village Voice Off Broadway Awards Ceremony doesn't leave just a huge, gaping wound in my soul.

Statute of Limitations

The cable guy came up to my apartment yesterday to discern why I've been so frequently without the interwebs for the past month. Turns out I had a bad connection down in the backyard of my building, in addition to a faulty circuit in my modem, so now I have a new modem and so much interwebs I feel like I should donate some of it to needy children. But since most children nowadays have cell phones more powerful than my laptop, I'm just going to hoard it all for myself. Hmmmm, fresh interwebs *rub face on screen*

Cable Guy asked me the usual questions about Hawaii. "What are you doing here?" I'm coming up on my two-year anniversary of moving to New York City--July 9th!--and I finally have a snappy comeback.

"I'm waiting for the statute of limitations to expire."

This was the first time I tried it out on another person, and it would have been a lot more effective if I'd kept a straight face, but right away I started to giggle. I have to practice my delivery.

Cherry Blossoms, Turtle Thoughts

Tourists don't usually come to Brooklyn. That's one of the many reasons that I like living here. Before I came to New York, I'd spent three years in Waikiki, in the heart of the tourist ghetto. It was like living in a train station (no offense or levity meant to the people who actually live in Penn Station or Grand Central). Strangers coming and going all the time, never the same face twice, cameras everywhere. Sometimes I wonder how many photo albums I'm in.

The first time I was in New York, me mum and sister and I were trying to get to the United Nations. We were scheduled to have lunch in the diplomat cafeteria and were dolled up in our native dress. Aloha attire is, indeed, always appropriate. But we got on the L train and ended up in Queens by mistake. As soon as we popped up streetside and took a look around--"Crap, not in Manhattan. Back on the train, troops! Don't make eye contact."

I expect most visitors to New York feel this way. Manhattan is pretty easy to figure out, geographically, and even getting lost isn't so bad because there's really no place to go that doesn't have a lot of tourists walking three abreast and blocking the sidewalk. Not so, the outer boroughs, where there be dragons. LOCAL dragons. I think that most tourists have a tourist-radar, or perhaps give off pheromones to demarcate their safe zones. If they stray, they know it instantly, like a little crab scuttling across open sand, horribly exposed to predators.

Incidentally, this is why the ideal party situation is slightly too many people in slightly too small a space. Otherwise, your guests get the scuttle-crab feeling as they go from the bar to the bathroom. Very bad for party morale.

I digress. Tourists. In Brooklyn. Not so common, except at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, where the BF and I went last Saturday to view the cherry blossoms. Free hours are on Saturdays from 10 to noon, and the weather was as perfect as the acoustics in St. Vitus's Cathedral in Prague, so everyone and their same sex partner was out enjoying the foliage, including more Japanese and Chinese tourists than I've ever seen in any part of New York. I felt like I was back in Waikiki.

The tulips were lovely as well, but the most crowded exhibit was the Japanese garden, constructed in 1916, where the BF and I stood transfixed on a wooden bridge for ten minutes, staring at the turtles sunning themselves in the koi pond. They were so fascinating I forgot to take pictures. Made me wish that I was a turtle, no cares in the world, sunning and swimming and thinking my turtle thoughts...

Dance Dance Conspiracy

My theory of why people in New York don't seem to dance at the events I attend was that dancing was illegal in most establishments. The Man used the excuse of cabaret licenses to shut down places with too much drugs and gay people.

This is a little paranoid, even for me.

The BF's dad came up with a better conspiracy theory. He says that people in New York are great dancers. They're so good, in fact, that they don't bother to dance. If someone does dance, it's because they're trying too hard to prove that they can, which means that they really can't.

If you spend enough time in New York, you'd know why I believed him until he told me he completely made it up.

So here's the real reason, according to the BF's father, that people in New York don't dance: the venues I go to, Knitting Factory and Siren Festival and Highline Ballroom, they're showcases for Talent with a capital T. The bands that play these events are two steps away from their big breaks, and the people who go to see them play know this. Dancing while the bands are playing would, in fact, be quite rude, because it would indicate that you aren't listening to the music.

"You don't go to the Metropolitan Opera and waltz, do you?" BF's dad asked. "No, you sit and appreciate. Same thing."

So while I'm pleased with myself for creating an elaborate conspiracy involving crooked cops, drugs, homophobia, and dancing, I'm happy to be set straight.

Now I'm off to write the most awesome noir detective story ever.

Mustaches at the Knitting Factory

On Saturday night, it was back to the Knitting Factory for another round of Street Teamstering. We've been here before, remember? With the silly putty and the indie rock and the sound check that absolutely WAS NOT part of the band's set? I'm more experienced this time around. To preserve the thin shreds of dignity I have left (trust me, they're there), I never clap at the end of songs now. Ever. I've decided that the Knitting Factory does not, in fact, have concerts, just three hour-long sound checks, none of which are worthy of my applause.

The Knitting Factory is now part of the Village Voice's regular Street Team rotation, so they generously bequeathed us a table and some chairs in the corner by the band merchandise booths. It's always better to have a table between me and the general public (f**k you, Electric Zoo). And the Voice bequeathed us a proper photographer, with a camera the size of her head, to wander through the crowd and take pictures of hipsters with mustaches. The mustaches are part of the Street Team's new, bold initiative to lure people to our social networking websites via paper facial hair. One side of the mustache is a mustache; the other side is a business card with our Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LikeMe addresses. Once a week, our Facebook page posts a Mustache of the Week picture, and while I think I'm excluded from the contest because I work there, how awesome is my mustache lei?

This is how an ordinary Voice event should be: good seating, helpful comrades, mustasches, and inoffensive lilting rock.

Speaking of which, I'm a little disappointed in the New York music scene. I've been on the Street Team for just about a year now, and most of the events I've attended with them are concerts and music gigs, so I think it's fair to say that I get around. Occasionally, I hear something I like, but most of the time, the music is merely tolerable. Not once have I heard something that I love. It's both surprising and sad, because New York is to musicians what Paris is to depressed poets, or Tokyo is to disaffected cosplay lovers (I scored high on the analogies section of my SATs).

The BF and I were discussing this, because he doesn't think anything musically interesting happened after 1990 except Weird Al and I haven't been pleased with any new music since 2005 (Gorillaz, Demon Days). We decided that modern music--HUGE sweeping generalization to follow--is brittle and clear, like it's made out of plastic and glass. The indie music I hear at the Knitting Factory is a perfect example. It's somewhat rock n roll-ish, but blander and prettier, like someone drained the pulp out and left a see-through frozen sculpture behind. But the music of GenX, to make another sweeping generalization, was like raw red meat. It had substance, a heft and a squishiness you could wrap your fingers around. You could really gnaw on it, or throw it against a wall and hear it go splat without worrying that it was going to shatter.

I know that there's got to be really good music fomenting somewhere in this damn city, like I know there's got to be life on other planets in the universe: it's just statistically probable. On the other hand, I've never been anywhere else in the world where people don't dance when they see live music, so maybe my statistics are wrong. Seriously, concert-goers in New York don't dance. It was illegal for many years to dance in bars and clubs--something about caberet licenses, but really just an excuse for cops to close a place down if there was too much drug-taking and gay people. We're talking a few generations of New Yorkers going out and not dancing to live music. They've forgotten how. They all just stand in front of the stage and stare at the musicians, not even swaying a little (which has got to be unnerving for the musicians). Again, sweeping generalization, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. And the not-dancing has got to affect how New Yorkers feel about music. Not dancing produces a demand for non-dancable music, and a prevelance of non-dancable music leads further and further away from truly rocking out.

Please, everyone I know in the Inland Northwest, come to New York and teach them how to dance again. If they learn how to dance, they'll start demanding music they can dance to. Someone's got to break the cycle!

Working for The Man...

... who is actually a woman, but still definitely The Man. I went back into the phone booth this week and came out as Mighty Temp, this time playing assistant to a very high makamaka executive at some midtown company. The Man pretty much ignores me and lets me do my work, but hearing her talk on the phone and to her coworkers, I have determined that she is very powerful, very frightening, and kicks ass on a regular basis. Also swears a lot. Probably goes with the asskicking territory.

This is my first encounter with that New York creature of lore, the high powered executive, and while I don't ever want to be on her bad side, I wouldn't mind have a beer with her. You don't see a lot of women in power, and hearing her cursing in the office behind mine gives me a feminist rush like you wouldn't believe.

But the awesome doesn't stop there. I have a window--that's not the awesome, but it makes a nice change from the basement-and-brick-walls work station of my previous assignment--and the window faces a building with Batman logos and a decal of Superman in flight in the windows. I thought to myself, "Self, wouldn't it be great if that was the DC Comics New York headquarters?"

I checked. It totally is. I sit across from the DC Comics New York headquarters. A powerful woman as The Man and my favorite comics distributor across the way--and did I mention that my office constantly has free sandwiches and cake in the kitchen?

I'm so glad I went into that phone booth.