Pigeons and whatnot

Obama's 'looking off into the future' pose. Thanks to the ever-excellent Ian.

Summer is here. Having a roof deck makes me happy. I sat up there writing for a couple of hours on Wednesday night, and watched a flock of pigeons circling. Ugly birds, and it had been an ugly day, but there's beauty in everything.



My younger brother moved out of my parents' house last weekend. They are now 'empty nesters.' Apparently they were all crying. Softies. My older brother and I observed that no one cried when we left. I think there may have been balloons, in fact.

Tim arrives today. Although I picked up a voicemail from him that he'd left at 3am NY time saying, "I can't board the plane without your address. Help." I assume he rectified that situation by lying. Anyway, we're going on a road trip up to Boston and other places Sunday-Wednesday so I probably won't be on here for a while.

Quite boring weekend update

On Friday night, I went to a Korean barbecue place where they cook your food in front of you. This is possibly more exciting if you're a meat-eater, but it was good. Then we went to a karaoke place a few doors down where they were showing the film of the last Depeche Mode tour - which I attended - on a huge screen behind people while they sang. The contrast of rock god (Dave Gahan) with drunken people with microphones amused me. There was a fight at one point, and broken glasses, and quite a few creepy people. And a saxophonist who was also the cleaner. Then I went to Tom's.

Most of the rest of the weekend I walked around a lot, in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Oh, also, I went up to Compo Beach in Connecticut with a couple of friends. It was very warm. A good day.

I finished London Fields. It's very clever, but not enjoyable. There were a couple of passages I loved. I'll try to remember to put them up on here.

I had a really, really weird idea for One Two Three. I don't feel like I create any of the key ideas for or about it. For example, I can't remember how I came to the plot or the title. They just popped into my head and seemed right. It's the same with this idea. But it's an idea that will change it entirely. I need to live with it for a few more days before I commit, but I'm sort of excited.

Dr. Jones. Zombies.

New Indiana Jones film = awesome. Funny, entertaining, occasionally quite touching, occasionally utterly ridiculous (the 'Tarzan' moment - what?). Shia La Beouf is clearly the franchise-in-the-making and he holds up very, very well. Ford is still handy in a fight and still pretty hot, too.

I want to read this book. I know, I know, it's a zombie book. But three friends, who are among the most intelligent and serious-minded people I know - have told me, at great length, how fantastic it is. Intelligent, serious-minded friends then set about discussing, in detail, how we'd go about surviving a zombie rising. It was agreed that I was in by far the best position to make it, since I live 'off-island' (ability to run away not limited by water) in a factory conversion with a roof deck (to grow food) and a wooden staircase (so I can burn the stairs - zombies can't climb very well). This is comforting.

Amis

Reading London Fields, one of the armful of books I bought at The Vortex. (Don't read that wiki entry if you think you may read the book one day. I had to stop.) I don't think I like it that much, at least tonally. There's something unbearably smug about Amis's style. Nor do I care for the 'narrator within a narrator' device, although I think it might grow on me and turn out to be rather clever. But I like the depiction of London and particularly of its underclass - the grime, the entertainingly unpleasant characters, feel Dickensian. I also like the humorous passages related to the demon child, Marmaduke. Guy and Hope had been trying for a baby for some time:

"Thus, after half a decade of 'trying': Marmaduke. For years they had worried about the kind of world they were bringing their child into. Now they worried about the kind of child they were bringing into their world... It appeared that from here on in a mixture of fatigue, depression and incredulity would be obliged to keep them faithful. Most of the psychiatrists and counsellors agreed Hope's unreasonable fear of getting pregnant again might soon start to fade. Their last attempt at lovemaking had featured the pill, the coil, the cap, and three condoms, plus more of less immediate coitus interruptus. That was July. This was September."

A friend I can't possibly name just sent me an email entitled "general life news" that featured alcohol poisoning, gout (yes, gout: who knew that still existed?), Amsterdam, the closure of her workplace and a threesome on the work pool table with two colleagues. I think we're going on holiday sometime in the next few months. She's my favourite traveling companion.

History

I taught last night, for the first time in a little while. I was helping a girl called Yolani with her history revision. She wanted a potted history of the Industrial Revolution, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and Europe after World War II. She got the version according to Newby, meaning Newcastle was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, the interesting bit of Russian history kind of died with Lenin, and my grandfather was solely responsible for the downfall of Hitler. But still, I think she enjoyed it, as did I. I realized that life as a high school student has been completely revolutionized since I was doing my GCSEs, 10 years ago. Wikipedia has changed the world.

Afterwards I met Nick for dinner at Momofuku. He asked about One Two Three and I had to confess I've barely touched it recently. I'm quite enthused about poetry, though. Maybe it'll all tie back together somehow.

First half-conscious text to myself in a while. I heard a beautiful voice singing, "Unhappy woman. Unhappy woman," and had an image of a woman, "wriggling her way out of a chrysalis, being unpeeled like a shrimp, her skin blackened with bruises underneath."

I've been looking for this remix of 'Rocco' by Death in Vegas for 11 years. No joke. I taped half of it from a John Peel radio show when 'Dead Elvis' was released. I've heard various versions but this is it. Thrilling.

Old Joy

I watched Old Joy. I loved this movie.

It's short, and almost overwhelmingly quiet. The dialogue is minimal and fairly innocuous. Some people will hate that. Tom said the lengthy silences and under-developed characters added up to what felt like lazy film-making. I thought that so much being left unspoken said a lot about the comfort between the two friends. At the end, you feel kind of dreamy and at ease, like you've just had a massage or something. I like it in films and books when the meaning of the title is clarified. The Catcher in the Rye is the best and most moving example I can think of, although I didn't like the novel all that much:

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

In Old Joy, the Kurt character - played by musician Will Oldham - is stoned and telling a seemingly endless and dull story, which turns into a recollection of a dream. It goes on and on, but eventually he gets to the point. He remembers a woman holding and comforting him in his dream, saying something like, "It's okay. You'll be alright. Sorrow is just worn-out joy."

The Vortex

So, tonight, following the cancellation of a party and my decision to not go to Atlantic City with my room mates (I write this to underscore that I did have Saturday night options), I went out for groceries. On the way back, I passed the thrift store opposite my subway stop. It's called The Vortex. I see it twice daily but have never been in. So, on a whim, I entered. My God. I truly don't remember the last time I was this excited about anything, which is possibly rather tragic, but really, it's a treasure trove. There are shelves and stacks and boxes of books. And they're not all shite. For $16, I bought:

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
D.H. Lawrence, Twilight in Italy; Sea and Sardinia; Etruscan Places
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
The Complete Poems of Andrew Marvell
Martin Amis, London Fields
Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac
Constantine Fitzgibbon, The Life of Dylan Thomas
The Song of Roland
A translation of The Koran
Spanking Addicts

I already own/have read the first four, but they're growing reproachfully damp in boxes in my parents' attic. I'm rather entertained by the want of concordance between that last pair. I'm saving The Koran for subway reading, naturally, but I broke into Spanking Addicts (1971) tonight. Whoever wrote it was not a native English speaker and enjoyed, I suspect, a close relationship with their thesaurus. Aware as I am that my brothers occasion this blog, I can't bring myself to share any of the cruder passages. This is a good example of an end-of-chapter cliffhanger, though:

To her, this was the beginning of the end in her total campaign to break Sylvia Pierce down and make her have a wild and frenzied Lesbian-relationship with her.
But little did she realize that where Sylvia's and her own turbulent erotic-adventures were concerned, instead of this being the beginning of the end as she postulated, it was merely the end of the beginning - and, for both of them:
Then again, not having a special crystal-ball to see into the future with, how could Doris Marlin realize this?
How could she, POSSIBLY?...

Perhaps I should abandon my blog and just serialize the book instead.

The Vortex also has drawers full of photographs. Just random photos from albums. I have no idea whose they could be or how they've come to be there, but they're mesmerizing and unnerving, and I felt like a prowler in someone's house. I couldn't decide whether to buy any, and then they were closing up so I just took the books.

Butter. Roadtrip.

Last night I went to Butter for dinner with Marcus. He wanted to go, "because they came here in Gossip Girl." That's one of the better justifications I've heard for dining somewhere, and it looked good, so we went in. What a strange experience. The food was good and the wine was excellent, but I just could not get past our waiter. He kept... touching us. I mean, it started with Marcus, then he perhaps sensed I was feeling a bit left out so he moved onto me, and then Christy joined us for dessert and he did it to her, too. Everything from the specials read-out to the delivery of the bill, every interaction, was accompanied by shoulder-stroking/squeezing and deeply uncomfortable, intense eye contact. It was really quite amazing.


Tim, my friend and radio show co-host from university, has announced a visit to NYC in a couple of weeks. Since my road trip to PA with Rich was such a raging success, we're going to do something similar down into Maryland:

tim knife says: the only question is... do we need A CAR?
Erin Newby says: for a roadtrip? yes.
Erin Newby says: that or rollerskates.
tim knife says: do you HAVE a car?
Erin Newby says: probably your first question should be, "do you have a driving license?"
tim knife says: i have a driving license
Erin Newby says: let us get a car then.
Erin Newby says: oh, oh god, can we do the thing like in the aerosmith video where we win whole hundreds of dollars at a roadside karaoke bar?
Erin Newby says: and then can we do the thing like in the enrique iglesias video where we're chased down by gangsters and you cry in the rain and i scream and then mickey rourke kicks you to shit?
tim knife says: then we can do that coldplay video where we have a horrific accident and i walk backwards towards it
tim knife says: singing coldplay
Erin Newby says: yes yes yes
tim knife says: OH GOD I'M EXCITED

Playing dead

I went for a walk last night and saw two dead rats. One was squashed on the road and was recognizably a rat only because of its still-intact tail. The other was lying on its back on the pavement, little teeth bared. I thought it might be moving slightly but I wasn't sure.

I mention this because I like this music video, especially since my friends Ollie (green neckerchief and cigarette, 48'') and Lindsey (hairspray, 1'04'') are in it.

Since it's sunny

Sunny song.

You kind of had to be there

I wrote a poem this weekend, for the first time ever. It turned out okay. I mean, it's terrible, but it's not nauseatingly so, and the process of writing it was more enjoyable than I'd expected.

Rich's illustrative interpretation of a long-standing in-joke:

Long time coming

It's been an eventful week.

Rich was here. We went along to my friend Laura's 'Black and Light' event on Friday:

Rich's godparents have a cabin on the shore of Lake Wallenpaupack in Pennsylvania, so on Saturday we hired a car and drove up there. It was beautiful and peaceful and felt singularly odd given the previous night's activities. We saw many, many deer and birds of prey. There were stores selling guns, which is normal if you're American and absurd if you're English. I was told to ensure the French doors in my room were locked "in case a bear tries to get in." I had intended to write while I was there, but felt so much at ease that I couldn't bring myself to re-enter the tortured world of One Two Three. I thought about writing a children's book instead.

On Monday, Tom took me to see Lou Reed. It was the last date of his tour. The venue is exceptional and we were just a few feet from the man himself. I knew very little about him or his music before the gig but am excited about learning more now. The excellent John Zorn joined the band for the evening. They played a wonderful new song called 'Power of the Heart.' I always feel sorry for musicians who feel obliged to play songs from years ago when they'd probably rather move on, but the lengthy encore of 'Walk on the Wild Side' (up on YouTube already) was awesome.

This is interesting. I love it and it's not, I think, in the least bit confusing.

London's is worse, although very pretty.

Tokyo's: my God. I came close to hysteria a couple of times.