Blackthoughts

Summer evenings are perfect for outdoor concerts and Central Park is pretty even in that respect as a venue. Wisely over the warm months there is pretty much an event a night and this night it was The Roots supported by De La Soul and who really cares, some guy in a mask who I'd never heard of and couldn't understand.

When buying tickets on ticketmaster you get through all the selection process and then are confronted with a convenience charge, in this case $7 which for a $30 ticket seems pretty steep, with no explanation as to what greater features in the way of ease this money might bring. these were my less than complimentary thoughts while buying the tickets and were quickly forgotten as merely one of the inconveniences of life but were soon rushed back into the forefront of my mind by the 45 minute queue for the Will Call booth, you would think that $7x5000 people could pay for more than two poor sods to deal with distribution.

Thankfully the bill lived up to its pretty fearful reputation with De La taking us on a trip back through the annals of hip hop for which they have been blazing a trail for most of the others to follow. Very cool seeing them joined by Mos Def, the Black Sheep and a raft of others who didn't mean anything to me.

The Roots as always were more than excellent during their more than two hour set. I don't know how Questlove does it keeping a continually excellent beat going pretty much non stop over this marathon. Truly a pleasure to watch him in action, hard to single him out though with truly excellent musicianship from all involved.

Inconceivable

One thing that's inescapable in the big cities of the States is homeless people. It has been a little surprising that there aren't more here in New York this time seeing it's summer and the size of the place and all, it's definitely not as bad here as LA and San Fran. Not that that's any sort of justification, one is too many.

I remember that in the previous times I was here it always used to break my heart seeing them and all I wanted to do was give them all I had and little had really changed. The main difference is that then I was working and so had a slightly larger budget and it does feel kind of funny giving to people when quite often you are only eating once a day yourself. But then I always feel guilty about the extravagence of travelling, however cheaply, and who really misses a few coins anyway. I also can't get out of my head the idea that if it's bad here what is the reality of Africa.

The front page of today's paper was trumpeting the fact that B*sh has set aside $1.7bn to battle malaria in Africa which gives everyone a nice warm fuzzy for 12 pages until you hit the editorial and find that a couple of years ago he promised 5. Who the hell needs another aircraft carrier/submarine/war - other news says that the Taliban is back on the rise so that incursion has obviously worked well giving full value for money. Try, try, try again and one day you may succeed. The diplomatic equivalent of trying to reach the playground of Peace and Posterity by banging your head against the wall while the rest of the class goes hungry.

SOOL Crusade

I have been pretty fortunate with my two weeks in New York to have timed it right for some pretty big events. This whole weekend has been Billy Graham's last Crusade and I thought I should make the effort to get out and see such an influential man along with 99,999 others. You only realise how truly large New York is when you go to the extremities like Flushing Meadows in Queens. It just goes on and on and on.

The buildup to the great man was just about unbearable, and only a little of it was the fact that it was stinking hot and standing room only, and far more to do with the music being hellish. How can it be that something seeking such great heights is without fail insipid and and so breathtakingly uninspired? It is truly staggering how narrowly focussed American Christians are on moral exactitudes. Seems to take up pretty much all of their spiritual focus, not leaving much room for such trivialities as the Kingdom and helping the poor. The latter lack being even harder to stomach looking at the people around and the general excess of New York in general. It was announced during the "15 minute" plead for money that the weekend had cost US$7 million to stage, a truly staggering sum imho. Made me wonder how many Easter Camps could've been run with that sort of money.

Then the big Billy G was finally assisted to the podium and I think that maybe 86 years is a few too many to try and communicate. 30 minutes of general evangelical waffle followed by an altar call that seemed to come from nowhere and judging by the conviction on people faces as they moved forward I was confused by those who were joining me in looking for an exit.

To recover from that I felt that a good night of music was neccessary and thankfully New York delivered. The last time I was here I had wanted to see The Soundtrack of Our Lives (SOOL) bt it had sold out quicker than these sorts of thing do back home, anyway not much chance of that Sunday night as it wasn't going to be until after1am as they were supporting Robert Plant earlier in the night - too cool.

Having not heard anything of theirs I didn't really know what to expect but was treated to a sol soothing mix of the Doors and Turin Breaks. The Doors in the cool jazzy keys and baritone voice, Turin Breaks in everyone seated, well bar the lead singer but I'm getting to him, and two accoustic guitars. All of this was fronted by a giant bearded, kaftan wearing Swede (not the exceptionaly part as the other 5 were too) who looked like he could've pillaged English villages on his own had he been born 800 or so years earlier. The other 5 would barely have made a dent in a nunnery by comparison but they did have great hair! One of those gigs that fits the mood perfectly, just like Turin Breaks in Auckland.

Sorry Brouwer, Billy Corgan was playing on Monday but couldn't make it.

Broken Land

By strange coincidence I have woken up the past two Sunday mornings on a strange couch out in Brooklyn. As I informed last week Saturday night was spent out of Manhattan and because of the hassle of night trains we crashed at Jimmy's friend Phils very cool pad. This week I had gone with Amanda instead to a bar where her friend Eric had just started working. It seems that the latest bar fashion is the 'Lounge Bar' and this is actually the name of the establishment in question. It's a pretty cool idea really with lots of couches taking up most of the floor space and giving a nice relaxed feel. One odd thing that bugged me a little was that the speakers for the DJ were positioned so that they had to go past the couch area before the sound waves broke over the dance floor - not much but took a little away from the feel they were going for I thought.

Seeing it was such a nice evening we took our drinks out into the courtyard, or maybe it was so Amanda could smoke I forget, who cares, where we got chatting to some locals. After the initial period of breaking the ice, making sure they could speak english, posessed table manners you know that kind of thing ;) we were shown once again that Manhattan was not the only place that fun and cool people reside. If you do get around to checking out the blog big ups Matt, Anne and Dana and thankyou for your hospitality and instructions re. the virtues of Nathan's hotdogs which on further testing are far superior to anything else around. Also on showing that the benefit of the broken land (from the Dutch town Breuckelen and pretty obvious derivative) is that they had rooms they didn't know what to do with compared to Manhattan where more often than not the oven becomes essential storage space. Pity about the trains.

Let's go Yankees! Let's go Mets!

When I was choosing a series I thought would be good a few months back the prospect of a subway series between the Yankees and Mets was too good to pass up. And apart from one obnoxious jerk sitting behind me Yankee Stadium delivered on all the magic it promised - apart from one thing the Yankees lost. It's the first time I have been to a game over here where the team I was supporting lost. At least New York still won though, right? ;)

The stadium itself is amazing, even getting off the 6 train with it right there you could feel the magic that surrounds the place and the storied team it houses. There are people everywhere and being a subway series enough Mets fans to give the opposition a voice and some good (and crude - tshirts just stating blatantly Mets Suck) banter. My seat was way way up in the upper deck, but amazingly you still felt really close to the game. Probably had more to do with the feeling that if you leant forward you would fall onto the field it was so steep than anything else.

I then met up with Caroline and some of her friends for a while before trying to find somewhere to watch the Lions game. During the week I had done a little research and found a couple of places that I knew were showing the game so after not being able to find anywhere open where I was (New York actually does sleep) I headed for the first one. There I was confronted by an extremely fat, extremely rude bouncer and a demand for $20 which there was no way I was about to pay, especially seeing it was already almost half time. As if we would charge an American $20 to watch the superbowl - an argument I used but I think the guy was too fat to understand. So after sneaking a glimpse and seeing we were up 11-0 timed it brilliantly with an uptown train and went to plae number 2.

Now this is a place that I had been to a couple of days earlier, Irish bar in every sense of the phrase and in response to my enquiry received a very excited and generous response in the affirmative. So it took me by surprise to find that the doors were locked and that despite a blackboard saying that they would be open the bar staff were quite hostile in saying that they weren't open. i'm just glad it was a balmy night and not like the one in Christchurch as I stood outside the damn place watching through the window - this is a 4am btw :) It's funny how much even rugby comes to mean when you are away.

A Dark Knight

Went and saw Batman the other day and it was awesome. Great that they have returned the franchise to the original Tim Burton vision. The new cinema at Riccaryon may have very comfortable seats but they forgot the reclining bit which makes the movie going experience so much better.

Also went to probably my favourite small venue to see a band, being the Mercury Lounge which is down on Houston St (pronounced How-ston - nothing like a bit of consistency for those of s trying to learn the language. I have actually been reading another Bill Bryson book - Made in America - which has as its theme American English and, as usual for his work, was very interesting and maybe that language isn't quite as bastardised as we sometimes think and has actally contributed quite a lot back.) Anyway back to the music, the band was Junior Senior and there's nothing like a bit of Danish cheesy pop with a big queer guy and his little buddy to brighten a rainy day. Yes it has been raining here a bit and with the humidity it surprises me that it doesn't more often. The humidity kills me, need some of that Christchurch freshness.

The Late Show

If someone reading this would like to pass on the website to Dick Lord I'm sure he would be most interested.

I ticked off one of the main things that I wanted to do on this trip yesterday and that was to be a part of the audience for the Late Show with David Letterman. The day i tried for had Christopher Walken as the guest and Billy Corgan playing which would have been too cool. I think I got there a bit late but I was given a ticket for the next day where it was Michael Keaton and the author David Sedaris who I had never heard of but who was extremely funny so may be worth a read. Michael Keaton was alright you have to respect him, he was the original Batman after all (I saw the new one the other day too), they talked about New Zealand a lot, Letterman seems to have a bit of a thing for us but not much knowledge.

The whole thing is so slick. I could'nt believe that they just tape it straight no retakes or anything. The banter between all of the crew that now feature on the show is fantastic, even paul is better live. The CBS orchestra is pretty amazing they play during teh simulated commercial breaks.

One weird thing was that you cold feel the 8th avenue subways going by underneath during the taping.

Well worth making the effort for when you are in New York

Beck is a Scientologist

Stepping onto 8th avenue was like a breath of fresh air! (warning: I may carry this metaphor on far longer than general practice would condone ;) Straight away the life and vitality of the city filled my lungs and I felt reinvigorated after a more than interesting insight into long distance busses across America.

Met up with Hayden and firmly established the Rydges legend on the Upper West Side. Also managed to squeeze in a little touristing and were confronted by a show of pure force down by the WTC with at least 30 cop cars parked in formation along one side. These were accompanied by officers carrying no less than M-16 rifles which makes you more than cautious and it's hard to stop wondering whether, if something did happen, how much care they would take in discriminating positively in the favour of general passersby.

It seems that every keyboard in this cafe has at least one button broken, this time it's the k - a big improvement on u and .

Caroline's friend Amanda has been very generous so far in donating her couch to the cause, and apart from a couple of mishaps with the keys (having to wake the super at 5am to be buzzed into the building isn't a great way to endear yourself to the staff. Best not to actually say your apartment)

On Saturday night I went with Jimmy, the other room mate, to probably the coolest party I've ever experienced. Pauly you would've been all over this place. Titled Rubalot it's over in Brooklyn and involves about 6 areas in a whole building with live bands, old school movies and a number of DJs. It was the type of place that dressing like Karen O was conservative.

Backdated

The baseball was too cool last night. Even though the Jays suck, I am a moderate Cardinals fan and it was nice to see them deal ot a shellacking to make p for the previous night's loss. Five homers makes for a pretty entertaining game. I seem to have a knack for going to high scoring games over here.

Being inside the Skydome was awesome. The weird thing was that the roof kind of took some of the wonder ot of the hitting, as if by having worked out the limits man had already conquered himself.

Walking to the stadium from a Chinese restarant there was suddenly clouds of smoke pouring out of one of the side streets. Turned out it was coming from a car jst sitty in the middle of the road fully aflame. It didn't look malicios so mst've been the heat but the better person to ask would be the lady standing abot 5m away for ages even as fuel dripped in burning puddles underneath.

This particular post is coming to you from Niagara and specifically a little ampitheatre just off the tourist street. Anyone else planning a trip here I would allow about an hour and you'll be able to cover all that's really necessary. See the falls then get over the Rainbow Bridge asap. The rest of the town is built around trying to extend that hour into a couple of days with a couple of casino's taking advantage of Canada's more liberal laws regarding entertainment and some of the tackiest most insipid 'fun' rides I've ever seen. It's especially sad when you consider the beauty and power of teh falls themselves but the people here must feel like they're living in a fairground.

Being 'Proudly brought to you(me) by the Niagara Casino" is the most horrible choir I have ever heard. quite how these guys made it onto any kind of stage, let alone one that leaves those that a stellar band like Brumytown performed on in its peak looking squalid at best, is quite beyond me. So far there have been four soloists none of whom have been anywhere close to in tune with the poor sap whose just returning for another go still waiting for his voice to break, thus sounding more like a beginner on the recorder rather than a tenor. Their material is the usual run of worship songs and accompianment the percussion section of an electric keyboard. For some reason there are at least 10 adult support staff bopping around keeping everyone smiling, in time etc. All I can think of when I watch them is "those who lead a shild astray the worse punishment will be reserved."

So far then I'm hitting .500 (you now, got to keep this baseball metaphor going :0 with high school music productions after relaxing in the square in front of the very cool Toronto Town hall - a spaceship being eaten by a clam (Lonely Planet) - while an excellent big band from Wisconsin played a lunch time set. Take note CCC Leisure unit, great way to make a square a fun place on a summer lunchtime.

Next one will be from NYC also with my first Greyhound adventure under my belt.

Cue the organ

Sorry about that, comments have now been turned on so you can all get writing.

Youth hostels must be some of the coolest places on earth. Bug ups to Matt for the Canadiana recommendation, it's easily understandable why it won the Best Hostel in North America award. It seems that pancakes for breakfast is a standard feature over here, just gotta be up in time 'cos otherwise it's like that tank of vodka and orange in Rarotonga - Jeff, with accompanying disappointed faces.

Today I passed a shop entirely dedicated to fashion for the tall woman which got me wondering whether those of the opposite gender were particularly lanky in these parts. With the survey maybe three quarters done I would have to say that maybe the bell curve is a little skewed in the upward direction.

Off to my first baseball game tonight - can't beat two dollar Tuesdays for a bargain. Met a young mancunian last night before the movie who has become addicted to the national pastime and instead of tripping around has spent the last three weeks going to the Rogers Centre. I could maybe understand it if it were a good team but the Blue Jays, would be like getting hooked on Northland or something.

Forgot to ask about Katherine's birthday, hope it went well and was enjoyed by all who attended.

Tomorrow is Niagara and then the overnight bus to New York, oh yeah!!!

Winners Champagne

It's kind of unbelievable that it has taken six days to find an internet connection that didn't require the same sort of payments as a small African nation might make to the IMF in interest to merely check my messages and fire off a short report.

What I thought I might do was ressurrect the old blog that was so popular for about a week last year and just make posts on there for you all to check at your leisure. So set your homepages to http://thegreatmontombo.blogspot.com/ - go on it'll be fun. And you can post comments and stuff - woosah!!!

First things first for those of you who got up early on Monday morning to watch the race - how'd I look on TV ;) Actually I think the stand I was in got shown about 5 times in the whole broadcast. Everyone always said that going to a GP will totally change your mind about the sport, in that it will totally blow your mind and all I can say in response is "too right!" Half the time you're marvelling at the beautiful machines and the other half you're trying to keep track of all 20 cars in your head. Until they hit meltdown point the Renault's looked so good, a cut above everyone else except maybe Montoya when he was pushing hard and not stuffing up pit exits. Alonso also took the prize for the most hot girls wearing his gear, again Montoya a close second esp. as I was sat right in between a big Colombian crowd. But the real excitement of the weekend came after running down the track afterwards. That back straight is long so missed the presentations and stuff but as I was going down the pit wall taking photos of the garages, ron dennis etc I got into the throng in front of the Ferrari pit. The guys in front of me suddenly started yelling and waving and one of the red clad mechanics came over, he had with him the bottle of champagne that Schumacher dropped down from the rostrum and all I will say is that it is very nice champers and a shame that so much of it gets wasted spraying it around everywhere.

I'm in Toronto now after taking the overnight train down from Montreal and it's quite refreshing not to be in humidity over 50%. On Saturday it was 38 celcius and 57% humidity which meant that I was basically in a full body sweat the whole day - attractive I know. Doesn't lend itself to touristing much so it was a good thing I had the GP for distraction.

Los Angeles actually wasn't too bad. I'd managed to sleep most of the way over and then got the last bed at a really cool hostel (USA Hostels if anyone's headed that way) just off Hollywood Bvd. On the counter as I was checking in I noticed a flyer advertising a free movie and when I turned up it was a pre-release screening thing, had to fill out a questionaire at teh end and stuff which isn't a huge price to pay for a free movie. As part of screening who would get in you had to say how many films off a list of 10 you had seen to which I replied 'Eight,' which was a good omen for actually enjoying it. All of you who are into other realm beings living among us type thrillers with mega cool action scenes go see Night Watch when it comes out. Oh and it's Russian for a bit more indie cred.

Better wrap this up, but just before I go I'd like to give a big kodak theatre Oscar thank you to Luke for the tent, it's perfect.