Mike Patton's still the best male vocalist in rock music.

Yes, yes he is.

Pretty sad that most people would only know him if you went "he's the lead singer from Faith No More" and even then would mostly likely go "Oh, those are the guys who wrote that 'You want it all but you can't have it' song, right?"

Unfortunate that FNM's next two albums, two of the best rock albums from the 90s, "Angel Dust" and "King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime," passed right under the radar.

His other projects: Tomahawk, Fantomas, and Mr. Bungle among them, don't do it for me so much. Too concept-y, not enough melodic cohesion (though a couple Tomahawk songs are pretty good). He's not used to full potential on Dan Nakamura's Lovage album ("Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By"), but that is nonetheless a fantastic album. Jennifer Charles (whose ultra-sexy voice also graces her own Elysian Fields albums) carries most of the load there. Along with Nakamura's good taste in trip-hop arrangements.

Wish they'd make a sequel.

I'm new to New York, relatively speaking, so perhaps this is common knowledge, but... what's the deal with the museums?

The Met is closed on mondays, except holiday Mondays. I understand being open on the holidays (more people around wanting to do something), but why close on other Mondays. Is it for cleaning purposes? Can they not hire a cleaning crew that works sometime during the sixteen hours a day they aren't open?

They close at 5:30pm on weeknights, which also makes no sense to me. I live about a mile from the met. It's an easy and enjoyable walk through very nice neighborhoods with cool architecture. I'd love to wander over there after I get done with work and spend a few hours checking the place out. Yet the only time they're open late is on Friday and Saturday nights, when I am most likely to have other plans (although I guess admitting that I am likely to choose barhopping over museum crawling isn't terribly classy).

MOMA is even weirder. They close entirely on Tuesdays, and otherwise operate under similar hours to the Met.

I'm sure there are museums in this city that are open at night (in fact, Chris's wife works for one that we visited -- a cool place dedicated to Tibetian/Himalayan art), and I don't think I'll have a hard time finding them. I'm just wondering why two of the biggest, best known museums in New York have such weird hours of operation.

EDUCATE ME!

My friend Glenn was in town on Sunday, and we visited PJ Clark's, which is a 120 year old saloon on 55th and 3rd in Manhattan. Interesting place. Drinks were overpriced (nine bucks for a friggin grey goose and soda that was mostly soda) but whatever. He, and his other two friends Andrew and Alyssa, who live in Jersey, had dinner. I just had a couple of drinks.

The menu included an item called Bubble and Squeak which appears to be some sort of pan-friend potato/cabbage concoction. When asked if it was any good, the very cute waitress made a face that caused Andrew to go "well, you're obviously not paid a commission for selling the Bubble and Squeak. I think I'll pass."

We spent most of them time talking about some of the interesting things that crop up while working here at OkCupid. I'll have to write a journal entry about that sometime. Suffice to say that if I go "oh, shit, the Wang Guy posted again," everyone in the office knows what I mean.

Afterward they dropped my friend and I up at my place and we watched a couple of World Baseball Classic games before crashing for the night (he had a conference downtown in the morning). The most important thing we learned from this event was that current hairstyle fashion in South Korea dictates some of the most alarming, hysterical, and ridiculous pseudo-sideburn type things we've ever seen.

Words can't do them justice. If you get a chance to watch a game for a few innings, do it.

Also, big props to Mexico, Puerto Rico, and a few other hispanic teams for singlehandedly keeping the mustache alive.

I don't know how I can live in this city, at this time, with this level of freedom... and be so bored.

I've noticed an interesting trend on my walks to work. I live on the upper east side, in a pretty nice area that seems to be populated mostly with people in their mid-30s who have young children, and old people. Where are the 40s-60s? Dunno. Not here. Anyway.

Many of the younger women work. Living here is sort of like withdrawing all of your money from your bank each month and lighting it on fire, so you don't find a ton of single-income couples or families unless you look for the rich people. I've noticed that a very, very common sight is to see these women dressed very well for whatever downtown business it is they're headed to... except wearing a beat up pair of running/walking sneakers.

Now, obviously, they're carrying alternate shoes in their bag/purse/whatever (some of the "purses" carried around here are the size of friggin hiking packs). But the interesting thing is: NO guys do this. Not even the ones who have backpacks or whatever. When you see guys wearing business or business casual attire, they're invariably walking to work in the same shoes they will wear once they get there.

To the average woman, the very sensible notion that having a comfortable walk is worth the need to carry two sets of shoes makes sense. The average guy? Way too lazy. I use myself as an example. I don't even own sneakers, and even if I did, there's no way in hell I'm going to carry around a second pair of shoes... let alone take two minutes out of my morning to take off the first pair and put the second pair on when I get to work.^*

This is not exactly a new revelation about the differences between men and women. Just something I've noticed lately while on the way to the subway, and such.




*OkCupid would let me work in the sneakers anyway, but this is a hypothetical situation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the ultimate in basketball player afros:

(click for a bigger, more majestic view)



This important moment was made possible by the invention of the digital video recorder and the good people at NBA tv.

One would think that it would be impossible to run out of lunch choices in Manhattan, and to a degree that's true, but I work in a surprisingly restaurant-deficient area. Up where I live, there are probably four times as many restaurants in a two-block radius as there are down here.

It opens up a bit now that things are warming up, because no one in their right mind wants to walk two blocks (avenue blocks anyway) when it's 24 degrees out, but for a time my choices were pretty much one place each for: burgers, pizza, burritos, pasta, and crappy sandwiches (the good delis are further away).

A reasonable variety, to be sure, but it'd be nice if there was a decent chinese place around, and throwing in some other stuff wouldn't hurt either. Maybe I need to learn to be like the rest of New York and have everything delivered.

Course, there are some sit-down restaurants that I'm ignoring (including Puff Daddy's restaurant "Justin's," awwwww yeeeaaah) but I always bring lunch back to the office. I'd rather not take a lunch and spend an hour dicking around in the middle of the day, and then have that eat into my evenings.

A note on the headline: It's remarkable to me that there's an entire generation of kids, some of whom are JUNIORS IN HIGH SCHOOL, that have never lived in a world where The Simpsons wasn't a weekly show on Fox. The Simpsons is older than either of my two sisters. There wasn't a show like that when I was growing up, certainly not in prime-time (The Tonight Show and SNL are examples of longer-running shows, but they're markedly different for a variety of reasons). Everyone knows The Simpsons. Its cultural impact as a whole is measurable and demonstrable, and it's unquestionably one of the most significant television shows in history.

What an incredible accomplishment for a random wackjob from Oregon.

Lately I've been dying to get back to taking pictures, but California turned me into a whiny bitch when it comes to the cold. It's kind of weird really... I still HATE when it's over about 70-75 degrees out, and when it gets below a certain temperature (about 30) I don't really give a shit either because hey, everyone is cold.

But from like 40-55, I'm a wuss bag. This was not always the case. I grew up in friggin Syracuse, NY. Our winters were eight months long. We would routinely have four feet of snow on the ground, and twelve degrees was not "a cold day," it was "February."

Living in Orange County for four years did not make me love the weather (I missed having, you know... seasons). It just wrecked me for cool-but-not-cold temperatures. I don't mind walking in them (quite enjoy it actually), but when I stop moving, I get cold.

This comes back to photography, I swear. It's looking like Winter had its last gasp this past week, and temperatures are supposed to steadily climb into the high fifties as this week progresses. New York is not short on places to take interesting photographs, so the time has come, I think, to get out and do so (though it'll help when the days lengthen and I'm no longer walking home in the dark).

I want to grab some shots before the trees start sprouting, also. There's a local park down the block from me that I think will be my first target. Perhaps this weekend.

Here are some of my photos by the way.

Things that I've had cause to contemplate so far today:

Why is it that every time I have to line up to buy a new monthly unlimited metrocard (which you swipe to get on the subway), I always manage to do it at a machine that's going to have a credit card reader malfunction when I'm three people away, after standing there for twenty minutes, thus requiring me to buy a $2 single-ride ticket and get a new card at a different machine on my way home?

Why is it that people don't understand the basic physical law that if you're blocking the subway door -- not only with your body but also taking up additional space by setting a huge, "I just bought a comforter at bed bath and beyond" type bag next to you -- no one can get on or off the friggin train?

On a related note, why is it that people feel they have any right to give dirty looks or sarcastically go "excuse me!" when people finally give up and shove by them?

Why is it that in a society where we can't go seven seconds without seeing a personal hygiene ad, so few people seem to have heard of deoderant, aftershave, perfume or cologne, and of those who have, a significant percentage seem to feel the need to bathe in them?

And last but not least, why is it that the people who are walking the slowest are always the ones who are walking in the middle of the sidewalk, weaving slightly, so as to completely prevent one from passing them without having to bump them out of the way?

Other than all that, and the fact that I have another cold, it's been a great morning!

Healthy-ish after a couple of days where I seriously thought I might be dying.

So... two things stood out tonight. First was the Duke/UNC game, which was just about as good as college basketball can get without a buzzer-beater. I don't even like college basketball, since it's inferior in every conceivable way to the NBA, and it was still great fun to watch. Unless you're a Duke fan.

And seriously... if you're a Duke fan? Go fuck yourself.

When Duke/UNC ended, I was able to witness a less dramatic, and less amusing for that matter, epic as "the guy next to me" tried to wrap up his courtship of "the really drunk blonde."

Worked out for him, I think. They left together. Four hours of banal conversation and bad jokes did the trick. Or maybe it was the booze. I guess I should give the guy some props. He was relentless in his focus. I suppose I should be trying the same shit.

You know, this is probably a failing on my part, and probably a significant explanation for why it is that I'm currently single, but frankly? I don't have the patience for that kind of bullshit.