A roommate?... craziness, plus finally the night in Brooklyn I mentioned before

I'm doing terrible at keeping up... but here's an update.

So I'm going to have a roommate, which is very cool. We worked together on the campus newspaper back in college. She just got hired working for a family of fashion/hair magazines, which is what she loves, which is probably why she refers to herself as the "Fierce Fashionista" on her blog. I'll just shorten it to "Fashionista" here, since I imagine she'll be appearing here in the future a bit, hehe.

So it should be pretty fun having partner in crime here... plus she said she might even be able to help me not dress like such a mook (I've never had much fashion luck so I'll believe that one when I see it...)

I had mentioned in the last post an adventure in Brooklyn, but then I got real lazy in posting department, so here goes.

I finally made it back to Brooklyn to catch a Sunday night show at the classily named joint, Trash Bar. It was a cool little dive with a front bar and a back bar behind a curtain with a stage for concerts. Plus, they had free PBR for an hour before the show, which is always good (or bad if you actually think about the inevitable trouble it causes down the road, but that's no fun...)

Some of the bartenders at the Union Square bar, Revival, are in a band, Furmurther, so I went to go see them play.

It looks like they threw a clip of that night's show on YouTube, so here goes.



Also, one of the other Revival regulars was there with his band which was also cool. They were a jam band, so no words, just jamming... and they incorporated a lot of theremin/electro-theremin. That's the instrument used to make weird noises in old school horror movies or the strange noises/music in the background of "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys. So that was interesting.

I at least had an idea of what to expect from the first two bands, especially since I had seen Furmurthur a couple times before, but the third band was like a big steaming bowl of WTF. Seriously. I was totally baffled, but a little intrigued at the same time.

They were an orthodox Jewish hardcore punk band. I'm not making this up, I swear. The lead singer was rocking a yarmulke and saying Hebrew prayers (I'm guessing) between songs while covering his face with his hand and looking up and down.

The cooking oil on this curveball was the girl in the band. She was in the audience half the time, but some songs needed her pipes for "background." She would literally scream into the mic as loud and as shrill as possible. We're talking like bloody murder, and I don't think there was an attempt to make it rhythmic, I think the idea was to let out as intense a shriek as she possibly could. It was... interesting, and way scarier than anything that came out of the theremin.

I later found out their name is Moshiach Oi!, and I was right when I figured that night that I didn't understand a lot of the lyrics because they were Hebrew. Either way, they were fun... but totally came out of nowhere and threw me for a loop. I probably wouldn't be crushed if I saw them again though. They weren't necessarily bad, just weird as shit.

Also of note about the Trash Bar... while essentially a normal little dive bar, it did have one thing that made it stick out - Tater-tots! Unlimited, free, golden, fresh, delicious tater-tots! They just had a fryer built into the wall behind the bar and would pop out delicious batches on request.

I don't even want to think about how many tater-tots I tore through that night. So far that's the best free bar food I've come across by far. Usually free bar food is something like Chex-mix or what not... which isn't bite-sized morsels of golden fried goodness. Mmmm... I'm getting hungry.

So, also something to file into the random column. At work, we have to do an annual ethics training where they remind us of things like not taking bribes and not campaigning at work. I think our trainer got a little lazy this year. We literally watched an entire episode of "Ozzie and Harriet," which killed about half the allotted time for the training. It was actually a pretty funny episode about the family giving each other Valentines gifts. It had a surprising amount of subtle, but definitely planned, gay jokes. The trainer tied it in to ethics (very, very loosely) by saying the episode included "gifts" and then noted we shouldn't be accepting gifts/bribes from contractors or something to that affect.

Anywho, the reason I mention that is because I made a mental note to download "After the Rain" and "(Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection" by Nelson... since the Nelson twins are the "sons" of Ricky Nelson, who was the kid on "Ozzie and Harriet."

Enjoy the deliciously generic (and awesome) sound that is Nelson!





I know I'm going to end up getting caught singing one of those on the subway platform... it may have happened a few times already with "We Built this City," but seriously, who can resist singing along when such a catchy tune comes on, right?

P.S. So the iTunes store is now suggesting I buy some Winger (oddly enough their second album, In the Heart of the Young, which is sadly actually pretty obscure) since I downloaded the Nelson songs... psht, like I don't already proudly own every Winger song recorded and then some. Fools.