Cynthia Lin, Live

Ditched the gym to make the Cynthia Lin performance at the Museum of Chinese Americans (?) in Chinatown. The thing I always forget is that these kinds of gigs are always showcase type shows, which means you have to show up early, there’s always seating, and the lighting’s never good. Despite packing my trusty anvil of a long lens (85mm f 1.8 Nikkor), I got nothing. Except a nice free show, that is (albiet a short set).

Cynthia was pushing her CD hard, which is also expected at these things. It’s pretty nifty, hand letter pressed and art designed by Cynthia. Nothing outsourced here. The problem is that her live shows tend to outshine the CD. The signature song, Doppleganger, is far too cluttered with extrenious instruments on the CD. Every single live acoustic version I’ve seen, where it’s just her and a guitar, is clearly the better version of that song. Most of the rest of the albumn does a decent job of capturing the clarity of her voice, but seeing her live is really the only way to appreciate how it cuts through a room.

The larger problem, however, is the genre. Her songs, which are all original save for one very large exception (so rockist props to her) are like a lovely mix of folk infused with old school jazz. I like it a lot, but when I listen, in my mind I’m transported back to a 1949 slow jazz lounge on the Big Sur coast. Not exactly Kelly Clarkson mass appeal here. Not that I’m an expert on what the kids like, I’m still trying to get what’s so great about Coldplay.

All I know is that I’m glad she’s back on the scene playing some shows. I originally caught her as the warmup act for Bea (formerly The Playa), at Bea’s last show. Bea had been performing several shows in the city and in the subway following an initial warm up period in Texas. It looked like things were beginning to heat up for her, and then one day she just stopped performing. Feels like the same deal for Rude Mechanical Orchestra too. Project Jenny Project Jan is on temporary (I hope) hiatus. For a while, looked like Cynthia Lin was done too. Thankfully, that prognosis was wrong.

Looking forward to seeing (and photographing) her in a real venue in the future; and a followup albumn, which will hopefully be unplugged.

Inside The Lobster Trap

Read this neat little article comparing Facebook to a lobster trap, with your friends as bait, originally pointed out by kottke.org. Article mostly talked about building out a Facebook presence from the perspective of a non-profit organization. While the specifics might have been about non-profits, the basic premise was fairly sound. Facebook is a trap, and addicting fun trap, but a trap nonetheless. And everybody who gets caught in the trap makes the trap all the more attractive to those on the outside.

The problem with Facebook is that it’s a walled garden with no way out. And I don’t mean that people can’t see your info outside of facebook, I mean YOU can’t see your posts outside facebook. Whatever content you grow inside Facebook is trapped inside Facebook. There’s no simple way to export your notes or your photos or your videos. If you ever decide to leave Facebook, you’re going to have to leave it all behind. And you will eventually leave. Already word on the street is that nobody over 14 uses Facebook, all the kids are over on Hi5. One of the fastest growing Facebook demographics? Boomers (ie, your parents). Last I checked, parent and kids hanging out in the same online space never works out. Facebook’s days are numbered, it will soon be just like mySpace, that place you have a profile but never go to visit. And when you finally move on, you’ll have to abandon all your content. Which is why you never develop anything truly original for Facebook.

It’s actually sad, Facebook isn’t a terrible platform to work with. It pretty much plugs together everything you need in a social networking site: photos, video, blog, micro blog; and adds an ADD gratifying running tally of updates on your friends. The interface is still a little clunky, but glommed together with a critical mass of users, it’s more than good enough.

But you can’t get anything out. If you’re smart, you’ll just develop your content outside, and import it in. Doesn’t look as polished as developing original content inside Facebook, but it has two major advantages. First and foremost, people outside the lobster trap can see (and index) your content. Secondly, YOU, not Facebook, control the creative content. Some things, like comments or cross linked reference you can’t help but do inside the lobster trap, but most of the big stuff you can get by.

My blog is hosted on WordPress, where everyone can read it, and it’s ported over to Facebook as Notes. My microblogs are posted to twitter, where anybody can read it (even on their cell phone as sms text messages), and ported into Facebook as status updates. My photos are hosted on Flickr, where anybody can see them, and ported over to Facebook as both RSS updates and as selected photos to my Facebook albumns. Facebook is nice in that it ties it all together into one product, and does so for everybody in the Facebook universe, but the point is that you don’t need Facebook to find out what’s going on with me. All the same content is out there, it just takes a little more effort to find it all.

Renegade Cabaret

Got the heads up on the Renegade Cabaret from eatsdirt on flickr, who, btw, is like the real deal of the nyc indie music scene. Brooklyn Vegan’s got nothing on her. But I digress.

The setting is literally picture perfect, and the atmosphere is indie gentrified, but in a nice hipster way. It’s standing room only, and there’s not much room to fit on the narrow path. The sound is a little rough, and it would be nicer if there was some accompaniment. But despite the flaws, Elizabeth Soychek’s voice manages to sweep into the space and transform it into a magical venue that you only see in the movies. I wouldn’t be suprised to see this whole thing optioned into a movie starring younger prettier people.

Don’t get me wrong, Elizabeth’s not going to be winning American Idol anytime soon. Her voice doesn’t have the projection or the right timbre to properly resonate the space. The set is short, and some song selections were questionable (long instrumental interludes work best when there are instruments). But just like a diamond, it’s the flaws that make Renegade Cabaret so magical.

This isn’t High School Musical, with pitch perfect kids in antiseptically perfect staging. It’s a pair of ladies who are *gasp!* NOT 23, slapping together a stage out of jerry rigged lamps, extension chorded amps, surrounded by laundry. It’s rough, it’s totally DIY, it’s authentic, it’s ironic, it’s probably illegal; it’s totally good times, yo.

A word of warning, tho. I thought it was romantic jackpot; sunset jazz in the urban park, for free. I mean it’s real life Rent (without the AIDS and people dying), and chicks totally love Rent! Turns out, chicks like High School Musical. Saw lots of bored girls texting, talking, and ultimately leaving midway through the set. Not the perfect cheap date I thought it would be.

Where I Waste A Perfectly Good Saturday For No Good Reason

There is a reason, I’m feeling a bit depressed. I don’t know why, Friday night was pretty good times. Maybe it was too good times? Not too sure. What I’d do know is that it’s not a good reason.

Today was supposed to be a day of insanely crazy dancing and fun. Besides the usual weekend chore of ding the laundry and dropping off the dry cleaning.

Festivus was going to be the warmup, kicking it off from 3pm to 8pm with outdoors dancing in Central Park. Dinner. And then, depending on the mood, either hit The Danger’s latest street/boat party in Bushwick, or actually take up one of the many invitations I’ve been offered over the years and go hit up a Kostume Kult event downtown.

If you can believe it, that all was actually backup plan #2. The real plan was to go up to Boston and visit my cousin, but that kind of fell through. And then backup plan #1, Gemini and Scorpio’s clipper ship sail and dance, fell apart too. I was looking forward to that one, it’s a 3 hour cruise followed by dancing.

But backup backup plan looked pretty good on paper. Good enough to postpone family business to sunday. But 3pm rolls around, I’m just not into heading out to the city. Which is bad, because without internet connection, I sorta need to get into the city to get tickets for The Danger (Gemini and Scorpio had a sweet hookup on that). But I drag my ass out of the house just to get out, and I even get a number to text to beg for a last minute ticket. Plus a good frien gives me a heads up that he might be at the Kostume Kult event.

And then I just spend an hour staring at my phone and watching the planes fly way too low over Union Square. All I want to do is go home. I’m just not in the mood for anything, and I’m feeling a bit blue. And that’s where I’m going right now, home, for no really good reason. Maybe I’ve been a lone wolf a little too long.

Where Things Don’t Go According To Plan, But Much Fun Was Had Anyway

Kaleidoscope 2, Pinwheel Edition was exactly as billed, lots of fun with some very unusually cool people.

I must have missed the memo that Midtown East was the new DUMBO, but like Idiotarod, Kaleidoscope found it to be the perfect starting point. And why not? There’s a compact little park to gather at, and public transportation to whisk you away in style to relatively isolated Roosevelt Island.

I had formerly thought Governor’s Island was the perfect oasis to have your outdoor rave. Last year’s dancing at Figment went on for hours on end. But I was wrong. Armed with a boombox bike (technically a trike), the isolated hillside on the southern end of the island was the the perfect spot for sunset dancing. I wish I could have spent all night just there, but sadly the park closes at dusk.

And that’s where things took a bit of a left turn. Although the Manhattan bound F trains were running, the stationmaster wouldn’t let any of us into the station. I didn’t mind another tram ride, but we needed three trams to get everyone across, which took time. A lot of time.

The subsequent parade through the streets to the F train, and the resultant subway party were predictibly fun – There’s no party like an F train party ’cause an F train party don’t stop! (except at York St) – but it wasn’t until after the aerial display and we settled in for my favorite part, poi, that the effects of the tram delay became clear.

There was a schedule to keep. The boats leaving for Water Taxi beach at Governor’s Island was to dock at midnight. Since we burned an hour at the tram, there was no time to properly do fire. Each performer would start up, and we’d gawk for 3 minutes, but then we’d have to march on to the next performer. Which is too bad, because from the space and the number of people ready to go, it looked like it was going to be a massive conclave to rival that of the last One Night of Fire.

There was more fire at Water Taxi Beach, but not nearly on the same scale or intensity, partly because a lot of people had moved on to dancing (myself being one of them) and partly because a lot of people had either decided not to come to the island (once you commit, you’re stuck out there until 2am) or could not come to the island (underage). It was too bad the timing got messed up, but on balance I think it worked out well. There was a lot of fun to be had both on the tram and during the parade march through Midtown East. And although massive conclaves are spectacular, in my experience they tend to get shut down faster. And once you go above two concurrent performers, it’s too much to take in all at once. Three is pretty much the max.

My biggest problem was the same problem I had last year, not enough CF cards. Packed 2 2 gig cards and a 4 gig card. Filled the pair of 2′s. And then the 4 gig card corrupted. Took pictures pretty sparingly to avoid toasting the entire card and all the pics. Which happened anyway. But thanks to recovery software, I was able to recover 85% of the files.

In the end, it wasn’t necessarily the events or the venues that made the night. it was the participation of a lot of wonderful people simply having fun. Can’t wait until next year’s event!

Disturbance in The Peek

Omnipreset news of the unending march of discounts for the Peek hardware are simply not encouraging. Besides discouraging earlier adopters, it doesn’t bode well for the demand for Peek’s services. If price is the nexus between supply and de.mand, either supply has gone through the roof, or demand has fallen off a cliff.

Old hardware is in the discount bin at Target, new basic hardware is knocking on the toy category ($20), and the premium product has taken a 25% discount to $60. I know that the business model runs on the monthly service charge, so the hardware is really meant as a loss leader, but if price is a useful proxy for demand, the discounting suggests that Peek is having trouble expanding their user base in the face of tepid demand. Especially considering the aggressive pricing of the prepaid 3 month and yearly subscriptions.

Looking at my own situation, I pay $30 for voice and $10 for limited messaging. If I get that $100 Blackberry Curve I know someone is selling, unlimited text and data is only $35. For a big data and text upgrade, I end up paying $15 more a month. Hardware-wise, we’re talking a mere $40 premium over the Peek. $180 +$40 = $220 in the first year, which seems like a lot, but you have to remeber that you’re carrying one less device too. $0.60 a day to own a Blackberry vs. Carrying around a phone AND a Peek. This sort of math does not bode well for the future of the Peek.

Which is why they are trying to lock in users now, I suspect. Again, looking at my situation, you don’t just take the phone price into consideration, you have to add the price of the service and hardware I am abandoning. $120 at this point. $340 premium in the first year to switch might still be less than $1 a day, but we’re getting dangerously close to talking about real money here.

Personally, I’m not switching. I plan on upgrading to a Samsung camera phone, so I always have a good camera on me even if I forgo the Nikon occasionally. So the Peek fits into that plan nicely. The game changer would be if there was tethering with the Blackberry. Or if Peek went out of business.

K2 is Tomorrow 6PM!

I Love Poi

Originally uploaded by LarimdaME.

K2 is Coming!

Back in the summer of 2008, there was this massive street art paratde festival. People called it Kaleidoscope. It was boatloads of fun.

Now that we’re in the summer of 2009, Kaleidsocope 2 (K2), the Pinwheel Edition, is coming July 18, 6PM.

Sign up for text updates at http://tinyurl.com/kaleidoscope09

Full text of official Facebook group as follows:
** TO FIND OUT SECRET LOCATIONS SIGN UP FOR THE TEXT MSG LIST ON THE SITE BELOW
EXPECT A TEXT AT 4:15 SATURDAY**

http://tinyurl.com/kaleidoscope09

Feel free to add your friends on this invite!

Last July 500 revelers joined us for a wild parade through streets of NYC.
We sailed the Staten Island Ferry, stilts and all to the tune of cowbells & drums.
Crashed an outdoor wedding at sunset on the water at Battery Park and hooped with the newly wed bride & groom.
We did ariel silk performances 20′ above the sidewalk on the Fulton Mall & Had 40 people spin fire publicly in a park and had the most beautiful renegade parade this side of the Mason Dixon.

This year, we’re back!
Cancel your wedding,
Bar that bar mitzvah
Blow off the date with grandmama (or bring her)
Just leave July 18th around 6pm open.

Revelry, performance, picnics, merriment, love, colors & music.. everything you loved about the first Kaleidoscope….
Oh, and a WHOLE LOTTA PINWHEELS!

Your K-team of Balktick, Winkel, Zemi17, Ali Luminescent and Fluff cordially invite you to join us for a night you will not soon forget!

This is a participatory and completely FREE event.

RSVP on facebook for more info, and sign up for the text list on the site below, so you know where the event starts and runs. You’ll need this to actually find us.

Please bring the following
Metrocard
Instruments
Food to share (our first stop will be a picnic)
Friends
Proper hydration
Gifts for your 500 new best friends
Cameras
Smiles
Appropriate clothes for the weather
Kites
And of course….
PINWHEELS

We are inviting people to choose a solid color
in the ROYGBIV spectrum. Feel free to arrive with your friends in like color!

This will be a peaceful event. If you have any concerns feel free to ask anyone wearing white, but no, they will not tell you the next location, half the fun is in not knowing!

PLEASE be smart about your actions and refrain from doing anything that would jeopardize the event from proceeding.

Expect a glorious night!

Please RSVP here for more info… and sign up here tinyurl.com/kaleidoscope09
for text notifications of locations.

Live Nude Girls

A lot of people seem to think that I am the sort of guy who goes around looking to take pictures of the naked ladies. Last week meetup.com recommended I join the fetish photography group. Yesterday I got an invitation to road trip it to a nude beauty pagent. The day before I was taking heat for not letting people know about this thing I went to featuring scantily clad girls.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy the ladies, moreso if they are naked. And I can understand the confusion, even a cursory glance at my photostream will show a lot of ladies in very minimal dress. It’s only natural to assume that I would be eager to get out and shoot the nudes. That would be the entirely wrong assumption to make.

I’m not out there shooting pretty girls just because they’re pretty girls. I’m out there shooting people I find endlessly fascinating and cool. I love the fire spinners, they spin … with FIRE! I envy and am intimidated by the costume people. I marval at the acrobats and stilters, taking dominion over the air. And the rockers are rockers, need I say more? These are the people I seek out, theirs is the mythical lifestyle I want to document. And if I immerse myself enough into this hip youthful culture, maybe I’ll be just a little hip and young too. My crippling social anxiety usually gets in the way of fully realizing this plan, but that’s the plan.

I will admit that there is a definate bias in my photos. There are some technical reasons that re too long to get into, but I am also a man, and I am attracted to the ladies. Sorry? I try to counter it consciously, and I do sometimes seek out male subjects purely for the purpose of providing balance. But at the end of the day, I choose my subjects not because they are scantily clad, but because they are scantily clad so colorfully. Hopefully with fire. Or with drums backed by trombones. Or with hoops. On stilts.

Normal Is Not An Answer

Got a bit of a situation, most of which I can’t talk about, although if you already know, you know. One of biggest frustrations is trying to get people to understand is that just because things are normal doesn’t mean that things are ok.

If the kitchen faucet has a minor leak, it’s a bit annoying, but maybe you don’t judge it to be a problem worth calling in a $150/hr plumber. Drip … drip inevitably turns into dripdripdrip. And when somebody comes on by, and can’t turn off the sink, you say “oh, don’t worry about it, that’s normal.” Drips turn into a trickle, a trickle turns into a stream, a stream turns into steady running water. Water that runs enough that the neighbors can hear it through the wall, and the super can hear the pipe running in the basement.

It creeps up on you, takes you by surprise, but there is a definate point where “Oh don’t worry about that, that’s normal,” is no longer an acceptable answer. Normal has disconnected from reality, and what you have is a problem. Maybe you’ve been able to live with this problem, maybe you think you can still manage it, and maybe you can. But what you do NOT have is Normal, you have a Problem.

Houston, we have a Problem. (Oh, and that wasn’t a metaphor above, my sink really is leaking. It’s at dripdripdrip stage.)

Goodbye Web 1.0, We’ll Always Love You More Then 2.0

Got a rather sad email in the inbox today, GeoCities is finally going dark. Hell I didn’t even realize that Geocities was still up, I haven’t looked at my website there in nearly forever. Most bookmarks I have thst point to Geocities are dead links, it’s hard to think of anyone whould would still use it as a serious hosting solution.

But there will always be a nostalgic sweet spot for Geocities, it was one of the first user friendly hosting providers. It was so quaint how you had to choose your domain subhost according to interest, as the site tried to group pages into villages of common interest. Geocities was one of the first with web based html editing tools, and one of the firs with javascript based web popup ads and navigation. Being early web, none of these tools worked particularily well or reliably, but there’s something to be said about being first.

Geocities really should have died a long time ago. The web has long since fragmented into disparate groups. Html power editors have thousands of dedicated hosting providers like goDaddy or Laughing Squid. Tech averse people have social networking sites like Facebook or myspace. And intermediate people have blogs providers, like Blogger or WordPress or Typepad. Even in Yahoo’s own portfolio there’s Yahoo Web Hosting and Yahoo 360. Geocities time has long since come and gone. But I’ll still miss it terribly so, nobody else was quite so helplessly scrappy as Geocites.