Gold Lounge Lunch

“Fifteen minutes ’til we’re out,” my boss said. I chuckled and pulled out my wallet, checking to see if I had any singles on me. I knew that they’d be needed soon. Ten minutes later, I got up from my chair and walked with him to the office door. He kept going towards the elevator but I waited for the remaining three coming along: a girl with long curly black hair and a valley girl accent, a middle-aged lifer that had been in the company longer that most of the executives, and the new guy sporting industrial earrings.

My boss jumped onto a closing elevator. The rest of us waited for another, giving us time to laugh at how ridiculous it was to be eating lunch at a strip club at one in the afternoon. When we reached the lobby, I could see el jefe out on the sidewalk texting. We met up with him and walked south on 4th St to meet up with the final member of our party, the resident gambler on our team, puffing away at a cigarette.

“So how many singles do you have in your wallet?” my boss asked the gambler.

“Uh, y’know, enough for the buffet an makin’ it rain.” he said as we all walked down Howard.

We continued down a few city blocks until I saw a blue carpet leading to a wall of a man in a black suit standing next to a door with the word Gold Lounge written on a royal blue awning.  After the card check and paying the five-dollar cover to a disaffected cashier in a tight black dress, I stepped into the darkness and blue glow of the main floor of the club. The music geek in me immediately noticed the song playing, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Like in most strip clubs, you can tell a good deal about the girl on stage by their theme song before you even see her, so I assumed she was pale, skinny with absolutely no curves, and covered in tattoos. I looked over for confirmation and, lo and behold, I was right. I would have checked to see if there was any image of Cobain on her skin, but I was very hungry, so I made a beeline to the buffet line.

Hey, I’m an Epileptic. Here’s My Story.

My father picked me up in the winter of 2004 from the office where I worked as a telemarketer during my senior year at high school. My boss found me sitting down unconscious against the wall of the bathroom — my last memory was of washing my hands and face.

My mother told me a story about something that happened to me back in the old house in Lima. My late uncle Paco found me standing up behind the couch in the living room, catatonic and ice-cold. He called my mother over, who immediately wrapped me in blankets and rubbed me down. ” In that hour you were staring off into space,”  she said, “I’ve always wondered where your mind was going.” I was two when this occurred, so I don’t remember any of this. I didn’t think there was any relationship  between  the Lima event and  the office one. I know better now. The kink in the right hemisphere of my brain might have made my brain go haywire when I was a toddler. It just took nineteen years to show me what really happened that night in Lima.

Last night I dreamt I went to McKittrick again…

I left the McKittrick Hotel on West 27^th Avenue at around ten PM after three hours of walking up and down five floors of the building. I walked to the nearest PATH station wearing a white Venetian-styled mask sitting on top of my hat. My hand still felt mentally sticky despite washing them of the chocolate that covered a naked man about forty-five minutes ago. My right foot had a sharp jabbing pain. It was another pretty fun and bizarre Saturday night in the city, although this one more bizarre than usual.

On October 23^rd, I saw Sleep No More, a play created by the UK-based avant-garde troupe Punchdrunk. The play devoured the insides of a building and replaced it with a 1920s hotel, mixing it with Shakespeare and Alfred Hitchcock – and just a little Stanley Kubrick – to create a non-linear retelling of Macbeth. After constant haranguing from my good friend Jeff, I decided to make a trip down from southern Massachusetts to the Chelsea district in Manhattan to see if it really deserved the hype.

There is no sign for the show, and the looks on the people waiting on line to a large midnight brown door showed doubt if this was the right venue at all. From the attire of the people waiting at the front, with women in flowing velvet skirts and men in retro three-piece suits, it was clear I was at the right spot. Despite buying a ticket for a later showing, which cut the length of the performance considerably, I tried my luck by showing up early. Luckily, my plan worked and I found myself holding my ticket – an ace of clubs playing card—underneath the red lights of a bar. One of the ushers, a slender woman in a tight black dressing, handed out the mask I’d be wearing the rest of the night. I asked a bartender from southwest England what the special was — to no surprise, it was absinthe punch. I pounded mine down after hearing the semi-aristocratic and spooky voice of one of the ushers calling for us to the elevator. He said “Welcome to Manderley” to me as I passed by. “Sure thing, Olivier,” I replied.

Another usher wearing a tuxedo spoke out the rules to all the watchers before he pressed the button on the elevator: Wear our mask at all times, don’t speak, and follow the instructions on the ushers wearing black masks. As a joke, he’d let out a few of the audience in groups, closing the doors behind them as he continued. There is a secret sixth floor open to random chosen audience members, but no one got lucky in my group.

He let the remaining watchers on the third floor – a long lobby with a concierge desk in front of a wall filled with hooks for room keys. Bookcases lined the walls and taxidermy animals and other foreboding early 20^th century knickknacks sat on the top of bureaus and tables. I looked around until the first actor walked into the room. She played the role of Mrs. Danvers, the antagonist from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca,  in the style taken from Hitchcock’s adaptation of the novel. She slowly moved around holding a tray full of glasses with a pitcher.  Oddly enough, that actor was the most attractive of the night, at least to me, despite her white hair and the conservative servant’s dress she wore. I followed her, but she disappeared into a hidden door. The usher blocked me, so as I looked for another room, I took one of the room keys as a consolation prize and pressed on.

I found myself in the balcony overlooking a stage where a pair danced under blue lights. The female dancer – I assumed she was one of the three witches – was very androgynous, and the line blurred even more when she threw off her wig to show her shaven head. She like, many other performers I saw that night, was towering and lithe. Later that night I saw her in a chapel, performing a dance-attack mix attack on an actor kneeling in prayer. The room was so small that I almost took a kick in the chest when penitent actor flipped over the altar table. In another moment of assault, another actor charged through the crowd and jumped between metal walls, propping himself up in quick bursts and then sliding down. Later on the stage turned into a ballroom under lights of a warmer color, and seeing all the dancers move in unison even while performing in very difficult maneuvers was impressive.

It was during one of those dancing scenes that I picked up another keepsake. One of the witches and a male dancer passed a king of clubs to each other sensually from their mouths while performing on a pool t table. They left the card there and I snatched it the moment the crowd left.

I moved on floor by floor, moving away from most of the directions the crowd headed to save for a few times the characters ran to other places for a new scene. When forced into the crowd, I tried my best to fight my habit of pushing through older women, which was hard to do in the middle of a charge up flights of stairs. I was on my own most of the time.  I ran through a thicket maze that led to a hospital room where an actor filled a bathtub with water. I touched it after the scene ended – it was cold and had a slight orange hue. Foreboding, that scene definitely was. I saw Banquo’s death and Mrs. Danvers hounding of poor Mrs. de Winter from afar.

Performers randomly interacted with members of the audience. The first one I saw involved a speakeasy bartender motioning a woman from her husband and to the bar. He played a card game – he put down three cards and one on his forehead. She guessed correctly and as a prize, he pulled out a bottle from a locked box and brought her over to an upturned box. He poured two glasses and drank one. He raised his foot on the box and moved closer to her, lifted her mask, and helped her drink the other glass. Later on that night, one of the witches grabbed another audience member and pulled her behind a hidden door.

In my disjointed path through the floors, Lady Macbeth had the most interaction with the audience. She slow danced with a male audience member, and handed her necklace to another person. My personal moment happened right after she let go of the necklace and fell to the floor. She put her hand out in the hopes that someone would pull her up. I stood dead center from her, so I reached out and grabbed her hand. She had stringy blond hair and wore a sequined black dress. I looked right into her pale hazel eyes as she moved in closer. She whispered to me and caressed my mask before kissing it on the right side. Later on, I saw her naked and crying, sitting in the bathtub as she rubbed the orange-tinged water on her body to clean the imaginary bloodstains off her body.  Despite that scene, It was the moment when her face was inches away from mine that is embedded into my memory.

The one thing I wanted to make sure to see was an intense verse version of Macbeth’s visit to the witches, which my friend named the “techno orgy scene.” It became my only priority when I reached my last hour of the performance. The sound of throbbing bass coming from the fourth floor above me increased my desperation as I ran through the third,  and  I got lost in the maze and the hallways on the fifth– I don’t know how I skipped a floor, I wasn’t thinking straight at that point.  As soon as I entered the fourth floor, I saw a small group of the audience walk through a slightly opened mirrored door leading into a room with flashing lights pouring out. I walked in and joined them as we surrounded the three witches and Macbeth. The bass wasn’t as loud as in a club, but it had this primal thump.   The dancers slithered on top of each other, their clothes disappearing between flashes of light. One of the witches placed a black goat mask on Macbeth, transforming him into a clubbing Baphomet. The music turned brutal and the lights flicked rapidly. One witch held a bloodied baby doll in her arms, while another held up a small miniature tree as a priest would hold up a Catholic host. I turned to see the third witch pouring a black liquid on Macbeth’s chest. It trailed all the way down. It was around this time I did a conservative Jersey fist pump to the beat for a few seconds before anyone noticed it.  The lights cut out and the music stopped. When the lights came on again, the only thing left was the baby and the tree. Seeing as it would be impossible – and insane – to steal the baby, I took the tree as a consolation prize. At least, I tried to. It fell out of my pocket on my way to the grand finale.

The entire audience returned to the stage to see Macbeth in the gallows. I saw the scene from the balcony next to Mrs. de Winter, rubbing her now pregnant belly, and the austerely posed Mrs. Danvers. The lights were deep blue, and when I peered down I finally realized just how many of us had walked through the five floors. The floor, packed with the white masked voyeurs, watched as our tragic hero stood upon the table – originally made for the banquet seen where the ghost of Banquo drives Macbeth mad—used as a makeshift gallows. After he made his last shout before the pulling of the lever, there was no sound save for clapping – no whistles or hoots or shouts. Even after the usher showed people the way back to the lounge, they made no sound. It was a quick shuffling of mutes.

The thing stuck to my mind, even as I write this, is that a persistent feeling of walking into a house of ghosts. Don’t confuse it with the feeling you get walking through a haunted house.  Walking alongside them, hearing them whisper and at times making physical contact that serves as a reminder of the barrier of the scene that is unfolding. I hope I get to see something as mind-bending a feeling like sometime in the near future. For the time being, I’m going to go watch Hitchcock. I wonder what they would do with Vertigo.

 

Death Bar Final Report

GODDAMNIT. I dropped the ball with everything. On the bright side, I am going to the gym, so I am losing a good chunk of time for a good reason. Here’s the breakdown:

An additional 4504 word for my initial re-write. I need to start considering cutting it down a lot. I do plan it on making it a novella, but I still need to make sure it’s not a mess.
1612 for an article on my experience at Sleep No More.
addition 291 on the seizure article. This one, of course, is going to take a while.I want to make sure this is perfect.

I should at least try to get to 90% by the end of the day. Halloween is calling me though….

I’m the West at What I Do, and what I Do Is Pretty Nice

I mentioned the Kanye+Comics tumblog created by Chris Haley, artist for Let’s Be Friends Again, a while back. I said that I’d create some myself. Well, here are the ones I’ve made and are now up on the site along with other great mash-ups.

The first two came out like crap. I hadn’t used Photoshop in a while

Lyrics: We Don’t Care
Art: Clayton Crain

Lyrics: The New Workout Plan
Art: Erin Gallagher

Here’s where I step it up.

Lyrics: Gone (Ft. Cam’ron and Consequence)
Artist: Espeng

Lyrics: Get Em High
Artist: Steve Dillon

This is the latest one so far. I’ll put up more later.

Lyrics: School Spirit
Artist: Unknown

The Past Isn’t All That

I’m losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties.
- LCD Soundsystem, “Losing My Edge”

I’ve let a lot of the ever-increasing surge of nostalgia pass by me. First it was the 80s kids pouring money into Michael Bay’s account or squee at the moment you see Jeff Bridges return as CLU from the Tron sequel. Yes, I know it’s a cycle – the 70s made its way into the 90s via a blitzkrieg with tye-dyed trustafarians wearing bell bottoms parachuting  in as VW Beetles crashed through our memory’s Maginot line. I’m not a slave to the 90s, though I do have a couple of guilty pleasures (cough*Hackers*cough) and I have no intention to become one. I need to fight back from it.

I’ve seen enough men dressed like Ducky from Sixteen Candles to know how large a best 80s nostalgia became in the 00s. But I’m not attacking the awkward hipster teenager I’ve seen many a time while walking down the street in the Village. It’s the older Smurfs crowd that allows this nostalgia fetish pervade and seep into the rest of mainstream culture.

Along with the previously mentioned Transformers, the one that bothers me the most is, shockingly, Back to The Future. When the 25th anniversary came around and propped up a celebration and reverence to the truly deserved trilogy, I couldn’t help but think of it as a Cult of McFly (no disrespect to Michael J. Fox, the man is a hero).  And then I thought of Optimus Christ, of disciples wearing neon Ray-Bans like a Catholic nun wears rosary beads. I don’t blame them for my indifference. Between my jaded vision of the 80s due to cannibalistic alternative types or from just being born in 1987 – where the only image of Transformers I have is of toddler Jesus biting on Optimus Prime’s head – I don’t have that level of connection with poseur 80s kids or the early Millennials.

And then the Lion King happened.  23.9 million dollars on opening weekend  for something released seventeen years ago, remastered Lucas-style with 3D. The kids I grew up with watched animal Hamlet one. more. time. Really, people? Why are my brethren letting me down like that? This, on top of Nickelodeon’s re-airing of 90s television under the title ”The 90s are All That”.  The first time I saw the media release, I already had a severe reservation to the 2-4 AM broadcast block. While people are heralding the return of their beloved shows, I’m wondering why they aren’t hunting for new ones. It’s insane to say that, given that we’ve all grown up and have tuned our television watching to the right frequency (with the exception of reality TV show viewers who are probably ones most likely to have a sort of arrested development to begin with) we’ve decided, like our older brothers and sisters before us, to go from the HD-quality television we have at our disposal and go back to CRT style drudgery. All this, in the name of reclaiming childhood.

I’m already annoyed with 3D over-saturation, now I have to deal with nineties-fatigue? When do the fucking pop-up videos show up in 3D? Let go of the past, my people. It’s worth looking into it now and then, but life’s too short to spend your 2 AM laughing at Mellisa Joan Hart when you could be laughing at a new forms of absurdist comedy or even traditional ones. Why play crappy side-scrollers from the 90s when you could be championing anytime someone makes the Kinect just a little bit better?

The best way I can explain my sentiments in the format of those trite and schmaltzy “I remember when”  chain letters. Here I go:

I remember when you could find information on the word  ”rotary phone” faster than anyone can turn the dial on an actual one for the first number (or better yet, faster than remembering they even existed)

I remember melting tapes and floppy disks to use as materials for the frames of the first pair of augmented reality glasses.

I remember shows that didn’t have a media blitz when a minority was a part of the cast.

I remember when the word ‘Letter” referred only to the abecedarian ones.

I remember when Kenan Thompson fell off the Brooklyn Bridge.

If you remember your future, send this to the trash bin. Make something new.

20,000 Word Death Bar Halftime Report

Dammit.Well, last night’s push definitely help, but I got mired in weddings/Dark Souls/unpacking and I can only take the fault for Dark Souls (that game is the goddamn devil). Here’s the breakdown:

4541 for continuing my rewrite of the initial Terra Occulta comic arc into short story/novella form.
3371 for a story in the same universe that is muuuuch later in the story between the protagonist and his sister
752 for a work-in-progress entry on my seizure.
768 on an anti-nostalgia article which I’m cleaning up now.

If I keep working on the main story, I should be able to bang out the remaining 53%. let’s see what happens.

Me Vs. Death Bar, Round 2

OK, it’s that time again where I get my serious writing on. I’m already working on a few things already but I’m not going to count those words – or edits/translations of old stuff – because that’s cheating. And I only cheat at Monopoly, or on final exams.

Anyway, The new deadline will be All Hallow’s Eve, so starting tonight, that gives me a month to write:

OK, let’s get there.

Music Overdose – Atari Teenage Riot to St. Vincent

Atari Teenage Riot – Is this Hyperreal?
Most reviewers criticized this album for having a dated political screed and a lack of change in their sound but honestly it doesn’t matter. A great comparison of this album is The Prodigy’s Invaders Must Die. The band always kept true to their sound, with a couple of stumbles with Always Outnumber Never Outgunned aside. They came back out guns blazing, which wont to do for groups like The Prodigy and ATR. “Activate” opens the album with an upgrade to their electropunk sound, but only slightly. Adding CX Kidtronik to the band brought anew kick into the system, and as far as his opening statement on racism and Barack Obama on “Re-Arrange Your Synapes”. Other songs of note are “Black Flags” and “Digital Decay”.

Das Racist – Relax
I don’t even…just get on this. Heems and Kool A.D. are insane on the wordplay ( and that’s not to say anything of El-P’s bars on Shut Up, Man) and their references make Childish Gambino sound like a punk (sorry Donald, stick to funny). Oh, and “Punjabji Song’ is reminiscent of Punjabi MC on Jay-Z’s “Beware the Boys” but this song puts a flag on that then drops 16 weed-filled deuces on it.

DJ Shadow – The Less You Know
OK, I have to finally admit one of my greatest sins:Up until recently, I’ve never had a good pair of headphones. I’ve always rocked the cheap Sony wrap-around blue sports one – it was the only one that’d survive my clumsiness – and now that I have these massive Skullcandy ones with the ultra bass, I’ve heard songs in completely new ways. I’m still not a snooty audiophile (I’m too lazy to convert to lossless formats) but…oh, the drums..the drums on a Shadow song on them.

Truth be told, The Outsider sucked. Only Phonte on “Backstage Girl” and “Artifact” saved that album for me. But from track one on The Less You Know… Shadow established that his scratching is back. The follow-up song”Border Crossing” sound like a poorly made 90s action movie version of “Artifact” (actually, check out “HYPERPOWER” from NIN’s Year Zero if you want a better version of this song). The “Stay the Course” team-up of Posdnuos and Talib Kweli is pretty solid; Kweli especially got to me seeing as he’s been off my audio radar for a minute. It’s amusing that  Shadow dropped an emphasis on the lull in the next three songs by putting up a song titled “Tedium”. The slowed down vocals and acoustic guitar on “Enemy Lines” gives the album an Entroducing pick-me-up before the break beats of “Going Nowhere” rolls in. that, along with “Run for Your Life” should get any Shadow fan at attention. Sadly, on “Scale It Back” Yukimi Nagano does her first lackluster performance on a song she’s featured on.

Now, let’s get to the singles. “Def Surrounds Us” renewed my faith in Shadow with his effective use of vocal samples, pounding drumbeats, a sprinkle of hyphy and dubstep, and pianos and apocalyptic choir singing. “I’ve Been Trying” was in the first lull I mentioned, so I didn’t realize it was a single. Oh, back  the topic of new headphones: listen to the other single “I Gotta Rokk” on them. Trust me on this.

Jay-Z and Kanye West – Watch the Throne
It’ s a little late to review this album without looking like a punk against ones like the fake Ghostface’s review. Instead, I’m just concentrating on the singers. First off, Frank Ocean dominates on his two songs; even if “Made in America” was one of the lesser cuts on WtH, he still delivers on it (and don’t get me started on his hook on my new banger “No Church in the Wild”). Truth be told, the only other ones of note is Elly Jackson of La Roux on “That’s My Bitch” and The-Dream on “No Church…”; I didn’t know that the unintelligible bridge on the “That’s My Bitch” was Bon Iver, nor did I really care. As for Beyonce on “Lift Off’, the song was pretty bad on its own, and she didn’t really help to bring it back. Mr. Hudson’s voice on “Why I Love You” reminds me of how the last time he brought something good to an album is still 808s & Heartbreaks. Oh, and Swizz Beatz needs to stop putting his “talking while straining through a bowel movement” voice all over a track.

Kasabian – Velociraptor!
Halfway through, I stopped listening it and went back to West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

Ladytron – Gravity the Seducer
It’s interesting to see the career trajectory of these electro-Liverpudlians, not just in their sound but in their whole look. The aesthetic in their music videos and photos from each album mirrors the songs of the album attached to them. In this album’s case, there is this a baroque, upper-class sound far different from the utilitarian beats in 604 or the cold grinding pulses from Witching Hour. There are some glimpses of Velocifero in “Melting Ice”. Songs like “Altitude Blues” and “White Gold” reinforce an 80s sci-fi soundtrack vibe (even the album art is reminiscent of the opening scene from Blade Runner). One of the biggest issues with the album is that there are too many songs that sound alike; “Ace of Hz”, “Mirage”, and “Aces High (which is just a boring instrumental of “Ace of Hz”) are the culprits of this. Overall, this is not as good as album as the previous one.

St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
It took one song from her Actor album to really make me into a stan for Ms. Annie Clark (go listen to “Laughing With a Mouth of Blood. The title is deceiving.). “Cruel” lets her gets it starting with her great vocals (it kind of reminded me of Feist) on the end of her verses. Then she reminds you “Oh yeah, I still got the grind” on “Cheerleader”. The eponymous track has an 80s synth thing going on until it hits you with her guitar/vocal one-two punch. The album fades out a bit until “Hysterical Strength” which reclaimed my attention with its driving drums and piano.

Keep

Watch the Throne is already in my library – hearing Kanye beat out Jay-Z on this (I think that’s intentional, but on the other hand, Jay’s skills are waning) is good enough to make it a keeper. DJ Shadow and St. Vincent stay as well. I can’t say no to Shadow’s masterful sampling/mixing and Annie Clark’s singing/rocking.

Second Listen

Ladytron might grow on me like Velocifero did. We’ll see.

Toss

ATR and Kasabian

Down by the Golden Gate, Pt III

I was originally going to put a whole article on this, but I’ll keep it to notes on this one:

There were artists making these murals throughout the campgrounds all weekend. This was my favorite.

Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon

The Decemberists

Arcade Fire