emzee

I remember reading Idoru years ago, where one of the characters is a purely virtual pop idol, a software construct created to entertain the masses. You can imagine the advantages - no rehab, no paparazzi, no romances with sketchy guys.. though there’s always a risk of a software bug causing her to freeze up in mid-concert (please be patient while we reboot the performer..).

Frank Sinatra’s royalties are safe for now

A virtual pop star is a lot way off, but synthetic singing software already exists… enter whatever words and notes you want, and it sings them. They of course created a virtual idol (limitations be damned) called Miku Hatsune, whose songs are all over Japanese charts.. it’s all still pretty scripted, so we’ll have to deal with the Britneys and Winehouses for a few more years, but I’m looking forward to the day when tabloids are full of rumors that the latest virtual idol has caught a deadly computer virus (planted by a jealous rival, natch..).

In a town as big as New York, you’d think great bars would be a dime a dozen… sadly not, though if pushed, I could probably name a dozen good ones across the entire city. I consider having found them to be one of my greatest achievements (gained at no small cost to my liver) of my tenure in this fair city. Last night I stopped by one of my favorites, named after the “angel’s share” of booze that evaporates from aging barrels.

This angel’s had his share

To get into the bar you walk up a narrow staircase, through a Japanese yakitori restaurant, and through an unmarked wooden door. Inside is a high-end cocktail bar straight outa Tokyo.. this time I sampled one of their many original cocktails - the Bootlegger:

Canadian whisky, Benedictine, Sweet Vermouth, bitters.. stirred with a large piece of block ice

A bit like an Old Fashioned, but spicier and nuttier.. and being a Japanese bar, I’m quite sure that if I order it again next time, it’ll be made exactly the same way, and will taste exactly as good as this one did. Something to be said for things you can rely on in these uncertain times.

The power has not gone out in the last 24 hours. I woke up this morning without any new bug bites. I went to the gym, because I could, because there’s a gym here. I bought a coffee on my way home, because the stores actually sell coffee. Now I’m web surfing, and pages load almost immediately. I’m listening to music, and it’s not reggae.

¿Dónde está Whole Foods?

Hanging out on a Caribbean island was not a bad way to spend a week, especially when the diving’s as good as it was in Roatan. Sunny and warm weather every day didn’t suck. Neither did walking down the beach to get to town. But it’s definitely a one-dimensional experience. After a week, even sitting on a beach eating lobster tails and drinking rum punch every day starts to get old. Really, it does.

Well, not exactly.. but as a place for a beach/diving vaca that’s off the mainstream tourist radar, Roatan’s not bad. Apparently it was a major pirate hideout back in the day.. which is not hard to imagine, the place is full of little coves where you could park a ship and wait for the heat to pass you by.

The beach always makes me feel like a little kid

Nice beaches, quite decent diving, good & cheap food.. very sleepy vibe. I could easily hang here longer.. except the entire island’s internet access is going over what feels like a corroded dial-up line. Some might say that’s a good thing, but I miss my Digital Lifestyle.

Call me a late bloomer.. last night I felt every bit the virgin fan that I was at the Kaiju Big Battel at Webster Hall. I had read about it before, it sounded like a goofy godzilla-meets-wrestling pseudo-satire, where huge “monsters” battle it out in the ring. The series comes complete with backstories, rivalries, betrayals and intrigue.

Monster vs monster, duking it out

The event definitely blew me away… first of all it was sold out, over a thousand people. The MC kept the crowd worked up with melodramatic commentary that any WWF/WWE fan would recognize. People were really into it, some sporting t-shirts of their favorite monsters, and I even spotted one wearing the costume of a recently-deceased monster (Pablo Plantain RIP.. or not..).

Dr. Cube talkin’ smack in the ring

The other thing that amazed me was the action. I was expecting silly dweebs in the costumes hitting each other with foam appendages… these guys were doing all the crazy flying moves you’d see in a pro wrestling event. I mean, the “fighting” is fake, but when they’re doing flying backflips off the top rope and colliding in mid-air, it’s still impressive.

Finish off that slimy beast!

Definitely an event best viewed with a sense of humor (a drink or two doesn’t hurt).. highly recommended.

I had the pleasure of attending a talk this evening given by Gore Verbinski at the DICE summit in Vegas. Gore’s claim to fame is that he’s the director of all 3 of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which together have grossed over $1 billion in box office revenues - which puts him in a pretty exclusive club that includes the likes of Peter Jackson and George Lucas.

Go Johnny Go!

His talk was a prototypical creative rant - as you’d expect from a brilliant director. Some funny anecdotes about the studios’ reactions to Johnny Depp’s performance - “What’s up with him? Is he drunk? Is he gay?”… but he fought against changing it, believing the eccentricity of Depp’s character was what made the film a success.

So far I agree.. but Gore went further, ending up on the well-worn plank that “the suits” just want sequels and that original ideas are the only way to really excite audiences. The reality is somewhat less satisfying.. the first Pirates movie did well, but the sequel earned nearly 50% more.. and even the third release, widely viewed as crap, earned as much as the original.

So what’s up with that? Clearly there’s a disconnect with what the creators think is innovative and what audiences pay to see.. the ugly reality is that people will pay to see a known quantity, even at the risk of being disappointed by a crappy sequel.. the best performers tend to be well-executed sequels, where they capitalize on name recognition but still manage to build on the original. Terminator 2 comes to mind, as does Empire Strikes Back… of course there are plenty of counter-examples, which merely prove that it’s easier to screw up a sequel than it is to get it right.

Stopped by the Loden Dager fashion show yesterday to check out their latest hipster duds.. they’re one of my favorite menswear lines, sporty casual, lots of ironic touches.

The show was a presentation, always a bit more relaxed than runway shows.. the venue was fantastic, inside one of the seminary buildings in Chelsea, with the spotlit models standing up in the window alcoves.

The spotlights were a little lower than the models and aimed right at their faces, and with no gels so the models had a ghostly white glow to them. Between that and the ecumenical setting, there was more than a little bit of a goth vibe to the whole thing.

It seems that DKNY is running a street campaign during NY fashion week, chaining fluorescent orange bikes to random posts around Manhattan. Since they’re too corporate to do real street art, they’ve actually gotten permission from the DoT to do it, under the guise of promoting biking as an environmentally-friendly form of transportation. They’re even giving out free bike maps at their flagship stores.

Christo’s leftover paint?

The connection between day-glo bikes and the DKNY brand is a bit tenuous, though their web site is (more or less) the same shade of orange.. it still feels like just another member of the herd trying to jump on the green bandwagon, though they’re at least being slightly indirect about it. Definitely works as a grab for attention though, you really can’t miss the bikes, especially on a semi-drab winter day..

My summer jobs during high school were mostly lifeguarding gigs at various community pools.. part of the training and certification involved doing “A.R.” - artificial respiration, a.k.a. mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. We all got pretty used to it, and by the end there wasn’t much that would gross us out, but this…

The student was passing the enclosure with her toddler son on a visit several weeks ago when she noticed the 4-month-old tiger choking and offered her assistance to the helpless keeper, said Andreas Jacob, director of the zoo in the eastern German city of Halle.

“The tiger tried to eat a piece of meat that was too big and started choking and shaking and then fell over,” the student, Janine Bauer, told MDR radio.

“We got the piece out but he wasn’t breathing so I tried mouth-to-mouth and heart massage,” she added. “After 3-5 minutes he came to, thank God.”

Would you kiss this kitty?

I can’t imagine doing it. I’m sure if I was there I’d just get over it and do the same thing the student did, but I think I’d be gargling Listerine for the next 3 hours.