I still wanted to meet those folks at Benders, but needed some time with my thoughts. I thought maybe stopping into the Homestead saloon would help. The place was busy. Raucous discussion bounced back off the pressed tin ceiling. The naked women in the wall art looked on stoically. I wedged myself between members of a bitter, self-deprecating party ( Read more... )

Sunday morning, in the motionless office, after a burrito and coffee from Whole Foods, I looked obsessively online for any material on Martin Buttrich. The only memento from the previous night, the only evidence of that rhythmic minimal funk frenzy, was a 20 second recording I had nabbed on the iPhone, from within the very embers of Martin's set. ( Read more... )

On a show a group of people was contemplating a "magic table" that bound them as friends-although itself nothing special, someone who leaves the table realizes the significance of it, and its irreplaceability. I thought later, oddly and not at all related to tables, about shadowing Ben as he managed Think Coffee on Manhattan. We'd end a shift ( Read more... )

I didn't expect Bender's to be so self-aware as to have made paper mache robot heads to top the columns behind their bar. This was the place I'd been searching for...for years. Everything fit so naturally, myself included. Drunk groups of kids argued over who would submit the next karaoke slip. There was a booth behind the stage, and people were ( Read more... )

from the sketchbook ( Read more... )

(in progress ( Read more... )

i hear the sun waving its arms
clearing a path through this dusty eve
lacing its fingers into the deepest crevasse of night
to Pull
-----Pull
----------Pull you motherfucker
Turn this world one more time
So I can see its face

then there was a gust, that's not the sun
a thunderstorm has come in like a mongol, sacking my hopes and setting ablaze my

[an email ( Read more... )

ighbors ( Read more... )

[from an email ( Read more... )