"Unfortunately it's not exactly as metal as I would like it to be, and it also talks about my feelings..."

Some people will tell you that Ryan Adams hasn't made a good album in quite some time...and I will wholeheartedly agree with them. The alt-country crooning and Grateful Dead noodlings of Heartbreaker, Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights, 29, hell, even Easy Tiger, have been replaced by a consistent stream of too-polished cheesiness that sounds not out of place in a church sermon or an office training video.

Regardless, I'm still pretty gay for Mr. Adams. It's hard not to be when someone is that prolific, that hilarious, that narcissistic, and that BAT SHIT CRAZY. Every few months I check in on Ryan (read: lurk his shit on the Internet), and what I find on YouTube never ceases to amaze me. OK sometimes it ceases to amaze me, but as his music gets progressively worse, his homemade death metal videos get better and better. Here's a recent one he uploaded listing his favorite metal videos on his fictional(?) web talk show, Night Sweats.

Street Meat Homicide

I'm not talking about that binger where you ended up naked in a Denny's storage closet after consuming large quantities of alprazolam and 2-Ci. Those were some intense therapy sessions. Then you freaked out again at Denny's. We found you raping a cheese dog while blowing lines of chicken sandwiches. I'll tell you one thing, your sneeze was All American.

Anyway, I'm talking about that time you had sex with my VCR. And when I confronted you about it, you asked me what time 106 & Park comes on. Well, you better start paying me money, because my VCR is 6 months pregnant.

...followed by DANCE!

Street Photography

So I have been shooting a lot of people on the street... and they don't give me the "all clear" about whether or not this is kosher. I used to never imagine myself doing this. I wouldn't have gone into the realm of harassment or molestation... but I guess I am starting to tread on that boundary.

There is a str33t photographer (forgot the name) that uses a flash when shooting people. This I think is on the extreme end of invasion of peoples privacy on the streets. Flashing someone with a huge strobe is a very intrusive event, particularly if they are caught unawares.

At this point, I don't think I will go that far... but I may eventually do this... if I need to get the lighting just right. But I would imagine by that time I will have definitely gotten beat up. I have already had a number of confrontations.

I think so far I have been yelled at 3-4 times by different people in the past month. One guy at Coney Island just yelled at me because I had a camera around my neck (wasn't even using it)... Then he talked to me and eventually gave me a hug... (it was weird). Another guy yelled at me for photographing this sleeping bum. He told me, "If you have the right to photograph him without his consent then he has the right to kick your ass."

I obviously argued with him about this for a good 5 minutes. Kicking someone's ass is illegal. Photographing someone is not. People don't realize that you can take photos of whoever and whatever whenever you want (as long as it's on public ground). Go ahead and try to take my camera away and I will kick your ass and then sue you for all the suet in Sudan.

This past sentence is illustrative. I am now addicted to photographing people on the street. I (heart) it. I want to go further, faster, narrower, brighter, higher and dirtier than ever before. I see it as a way of continually shaking New York City's hand. Pulling back the curtain on a moment and saving it forever. I am not a brewer. I only bottle.

I have never been motivated to see the decrepit and destitute of NYC. But I am now. I want to greet them or the remnants of their person. I want to see the really real truthy truths, the cultures and concubines, the silly and the somber.

I know this blog is supposed to be about music. So I will give you a link to the best Queen music video of all time. But if you have a camera... go outside and steal the world.

Here is a link to some of my shots (if you want).

Fuck Summer, Let's Fall!

Summer is over. Done. Gone. To say it aloud or read it in print has a certain achiness to it. I'll be the first to admit that I'm an extremely nostalgic person. I pine for the days that never actually existed. I create fantastic realities out of the ether about my past. Put me in Coney Island for one shitty, rainy October day and I'll turn it into a summer spent carousing the boardwalk, eating funnel cake and sipping Coke from a straw, catching glimpses of the summertime girls in their summertime swimsuits, doing sweet summertime things.

But truth be told, summer blows. It's too hot. It's muggy. Bugs are everywhere and the water is still too cold to swim. Who really swims anyways? Sharks are dicks, and they're everywhere. Fucking EVERYWHERE. And Coney Island? It's all Russians, all the time.

Then Fall comes around, and it's all I can think about... Summer: that syrupy season of my long-lost youth. It's not so much a season as it is an ideal. We yearn for it, but it never really happened, and never will. We'll get older, grayer, and gayer, and with each passing year the longing will only get worse.

I'm going to take the next couple of months to cry about imaginary long-lost girlfriends on the beach and old-timey necking sessions. In the meantime, enjoy Real Estate. They're made from real bits of New Jersey...so you know it works. They have a new record, "Days", out on Domino next week.



Here's another track from their self-titled debut on Woodsist (A label I HIGHLY recommend checking out!)



Hurts, don't it?