This Is A Public Service Announcement

Approximately a week and a half ago, the most devastating thing that can happen to an Internet addict (like yours truly) happened: my three year old white Macbook (her given name was Lolita) died. Yes. My Lolita. Complete hard drive failure. There was nothing my good friend on the Apple Care line could do about it, no matter how I let my sobs ring through the phone line. I was going to have to surrender my lovely piece of technology to the fine folks of Apple Computer, where they’d perform the computer equivalent of a quadruple bypass on it, replacing the old hard drive with a shiny, spanking new one.

Now, this normally would not be a big deal if you are a reasonably intelligent person who takes the reasonably intelligent step of periodically backing up everything on your computer. Me? I am not reasonably intelligent. I barely had anything backed up, save my gazillions of photos I took when I was in Europe last semester. And I only stuck those on CDs because my mother naggingly insisted so. I tempted the Computer Gods, my silly immortal twentysomething voice taunting them with a “no way are you going to make MY lovely Macbook crash.” Looks like they had the last laugh.

So what did I lose? A lifetime’s worth of old “This American Life” episodes, a hell of a lot of music files, my extensive collection of photographs of the different angles of Chrissy Hynde’s haircut for reference when I eventually bob my hair, just about every document I’ve written in my three years at NYU, a French New Wave style film I made with some friends in Prague after a few too many Pilsner Urquells, a bootleg copy of “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” and countless other digital wonders.

The lesson here is, please, back up your computer’s contents. Seriously. Do it. Do it for my sake. Do it for your sake. Do it for your unborn babies’ sake. Your computer can (and probably will) crash.

And now, to drown your sorrows, I present you with a fine clip from one of my favorite movie musicals, because nothing goes together like self-pity, whining, and Liza Minnelli:

I Love Empire Records

Heads up: Tomorrow is Record Store Day, that glorious day on which we celebrate the joy of crate-digging at independently owned record stores across the nation (and around the world). The project was founded in 2007 to fete the unique cultural world that is the “record store” (and that is a culture that merits its own anthropological study).  The smell of must co-mingling with plastic wrapping, the sound of an obscure single by some proto-punk band you’ve never heard of blasting over the speakers, the chatter of audiophiles buzzing about the latest re-issues and re-releases–these are just a few of the reasons why I love a good record store.

But more importantly, Record Store Day means great limited-edition LPs and CDs and live performances at participating stores! I’m excited to get my paws on the New Order “Temptation/Hurt” 7″, the Smiths “Headmaster Ritual” 7″, and the reissue of The Talking Heads’ brilliant debut “Talking Heads: 77.” Needless to say, I will be subsisting off of ramen noodles for the rest of the month as I blow my money on these goodies. The complete list of these limited-edition releases is here.

Other Music at 15 East 4th St. (between Broadway and Lafayette Street) will be offering 10 percent off everything in the store from Friday all the way through Sunday, as well as an impressive lineup of in-store DJ sets on Saturday featuring artists like Grizzly Bear, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, and the Raveonettes. This culminates in a live performance by Bill Callahan (with drinks provided by that old faithful Pabst Blue Ribbon). You can check out all of the details of what Other Music’s got planned here.

Rob Cameron and the rest of the crew at Championship Vinyl would definitely approve.

For more info on Record Store Day and to see which stores in your area are participating in the festivities, visit www.recordstoreday.com

The Lady and The Declan Patrick MacManus

I think I may just be in the small minority of people under the age of 35 who actually listen to Elvis Costello. A lot. It’s more than just a healthy appreciation for “This Year’s Model.” I find myself listening to him on my iPod or spinning one of his albums on vinyl at least seven or eight times a week.

This love of the bespectacled “angry young man” is virtually imprinted on my DNA. My father owns just about every single one of his albums that were released from approximately 1977 to 1987. As a precocious tween making the eight hour drive down to Santa Cruz for that hallowed tradition of the “family vacation,” my father would blast any number of Elvis Costello albums. I would sigh rather loudly, roll my eyes as an eleven year old is prone to do, put on my headphones, and turn up The Spice Girls on my Walkman. Nine years later, I see that my father was trying to actually infuse my youthful, defiant ears with an appreciation for one of the greatest musicians of later half of the 20th century.

I’ll admit that I’m biased. While I respect his later work, I’m almost always listening to that first trifecta–“My Aim Is True,” “This Year’s Model,” and “Armed Forces,” with an occasional dash of “Get Happy!!” or “Imperial Bedroom.”Yes, his tunes blend pop sensibilities like jangling guitar lines and whirling synthesizers with the snarling sneer of the jilted lover and ignored genius. Yes, he’s commendable for trying his hand at every single genre in the record store (with arguably mixed results): Jazz, pop-punk, roots-rock, bluegrass, hell, the man’s even classically scored a ballet adaptation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (here’s to you, “Il Sogno”).

But the reason I keep listening when my peers don’t is his complete understanding of the female psyche like no other male singer-songwriter I know of.

Pete Hamill

I recently read Pete Hamill’s “Downtown: My Manhattan,” his love letter to his Ozian land that extends from Battery Park City to Times Square, and attempted to exercise my criticism skills my writing out a brief review. I’ll spare you the entire piece and excerpt here the paragraph that hits exactly how I felt about the book right on the nose:

He often re-iterates that New York City is a city full of folks with a pre-eminent sense of “nostalgia.” Hamill, as the consummate New Yorker, especially suffers from this. While its easy for the reader to see and appreciate his deep knowledge of and love for the past through his painstaking use of detail, Hamill risks becoming one of those old curmudgeons who bemoans the current Disney-fication of New York and longs constantly for the “good old days.” This is especially apparent in his chapter on the already over-chronicled heyday of the cappuccino-sipping Greenwich Village “bohemians” (a term so overused that it’s now virtually meaningless). The historical passages in the book are fascinating in the first few chapters, but grow tiring and more confusing as the work goes on. Hamill, who clearly knows his stuff, simply tries to pack too much into 281 pages.

So I was a little tough on him. Mostly I was just annoyed with his pervading sense of “life was so much better back then” nostalgia. However, after the man himself visited my reporting class today, I’ve found that I relate to Hamill and his way of seeing the world much more than I initially thought.

Gritty City: New York in the 1970s

I saw this originally via Gothamist, one of my favorite sources for New York City related stories. Photographer Allan Tannenbaum is releasing a new collection of his fantastic photographs from New York in the 1970s (entitled, fittingly, “New York in the 70s”), from when he was the photo editor for the “SoHo Weekly News.” The photographs are chock full of disco balls, crumbling buildings, biker gangs, race riots, peace marches, celebrity celebrations, ridiculously short shorts made of incredibly synthetic materials, and just about every other thing that happened in the concrete jungle of the five boroughs during the decade.

He’s got some great shots of the Lower East Side back before Katz’s Delicatessen was sandwiched on the same block of Houston Street as a luxury condo building and an American Apparel.

(Photograph by Allan Tannenbaum)

Je voudrais un croissant…

Studying abroad in the Czech Republic for the 4 months was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my entire life. Call me a cliche. I’m that annoying kid who walks around constantly talking about “that one time in Prague.” While I love New York for its own distinctive set of charms, I’m always looking for a little piece of Europe in Manhattan. Walking down Orchard Street a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon what I imagine a Parisian street looked like circa 1968, when you’d pick up a fresh bottle of milk in the mornings at the local dairy shop and not a week before at the supermarket.

This ain’t no Mudd Club, or CBGB’s…

Classic rock club CBGB’s shuttered its doors what seems like ages ago in October 2006. Now the tenant at the venue’s former space at 315 Bowery is high-end menswear designer John Varvatos. While buying a pair of expensive (if well-made) trousers has its own unique appeal, it doesn’t come close to the idea of pogo-ing like a maniac atop a sticky, beer-drenched floor at a Ramones show circa 1975, the air laced with the stench of sweat and the tingle of palpable excitement. But it’s not too late to catch a glimpse of the East Village/Lower East Side icon, at least in high-resolution interactive JPEG format.

Visitors to the club’s official Web site, http://www.cbgb.com, can take a virtual tour of the hallowed halls that once saw the shuffling of Converse sneakers belonging to such rock luminaries as Debbie Harry and Patti Smith.

on holiday

I’ve been on spring break for the past week. The parts of it that I haven’t spent road tripping through the greater Boston area or curled up in the library working on assignments have been devoted solely to the languorous task of watching some enjoyably cheesy YouTube videos of 1970s superstars in their prime.

My personal favorite? Charo. What would my late night “The Love Boat” marathons be without her sequins, Spanish accent, and trademark “cuchi-cuchi”? She’s unabashedly ridiculous, and that is something to admire. Her sparkly effervescence is on display in the music video for her 1977 single “Dance A Little Bit Closer” from her album entitled (you guessed it) “Cuchi-Cuchi.”

Now I wish I’d spent my break doing “The Hustle” down a Las Vegas street.

Fear of Flying

I can name the exact day my aerophobia, or fear of flying, began. It was Jul. 17, 1996, and my 6-year-old self was flying from my home of Sacramento, Calif. to Boston, Mass. to visit relatives on the East Coast, with a 2-hour layover at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

But Jul. 17, 1996 isn’t just the date of one of my family’s many summer trips to the Northeast. It’s also the day that Trans World Airlines Flight 800 exploded in mid-air and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean at approximately 8:31 p.m. EST, killing all 230 people on board. I learned about the crash as we waited in Chicago. My mother thought that her uncle was on the fatal flight. Frantic calls to California fortunately revealed that he wasn’t.  By the time we landed in Boston, I was convinced that one day I too would perish in a plane crash. For the next 10 years, I nearly bawled every time I had to set foot on a plane, gripping the arm of my seat every time the aircraft hit even a minor bump.

227 Bowery

Kiki Adebola has everything that comprises the classical American dream, except “a dog named Bingo and a cat named Fluffy.”

But that wasn’t always the case. Back in his native Nigeria, he would hustle American G.I.’s and show them “where to get the weed and get the girls.” “These G.I.’s, you know, they got style to them. And the ones from New York–they were slick,” he said. He made it his personal goal to get to the US. He did so in the mid-1980s, landing in New York to begin his own personal search for that elusively alluring “American Dream.”

He started taking college classes in Brooklyn, but things soon devolved as he became a recreational drug user. Drugs and the entire New York clubbing scene was engrossing, new, and exciting to him. As he became more and more a slave to the chemicals, he ended up homeless, spending between 7 and 8 years on the street. However, having overstayed his visa, he couldn’t get the services he needed to help him quit without risking deportation.

Kiki’s lowest moment occured while he was committing petty thievery up on Madison Avenue. He robbedg a group of French tourists, smacking one of his victims with the base of his gun in the process. The blood curdling scream was unforgettable.

Change came on January 23, 1993, when James Macklin of the Bowery Mission offered Kiki the help he needed despite his precarious situation via the Mission’s Discipleship Institute, a six-month residential recovery program.

Now, 16 years later, the student has become the teacher. Kiki now leads the Discipleship program in the facility that helped him get clean. His height, shining shaven head, and bulky build belie a generous sense of humor and an easygoing manner that brings to mind cliched images of a relaxed Bob Marley (hey, it’s cliched but true!).

He’s the only former junkie I’ve ever met who is able to toss a few jokes about how he used to be. But he also illustrates the loyalty I found among the graduates of the Bowery Mission programs. The Mission’s halls are filled with former residents working, cleaning, cooking food, teaching. Once you go through the Mission, you are forever tied to this one way of life and this one building–227 Bowery.