One down, nine to go

Ten shows in ten days.

I should say that I didn't do a lot of advance planning on this project, in terms of lining up tickets for show buddies, so I'm winging it a little bit. 

Here's a tentative list of shows:
9/30: Raveonettes.
10/1: Team Spirit.
10/2. LVL Up, Mitski.
10/3: Sunset Guns.
10/4: Screaming Females. 
10/5 Afghan Whigs.
10/6: Bear Hands. 
10/7: Charli XCX. 
10/8: The Blow.
10/9: Judas Priest
10/10: Muffs. 

I'd originally planned to see Ariel Pink on Thursday, and King Tuff next Wednesday, but both shows are sold out. It's looking like tickets for Afghan Whigs are getting scarce, and Charli XCX might follow suit, so this is subject to change.

First up, Raveonettes. $25 at Music Hall of Williamsburg.

(I got shitty photos, because I just used my phone and didn't want to be one of those assholes who was snapping shots the whole time instead of enjoying the show).

This was a great show. It's the second time I've seen the Raveonettes, and I was glad to get some last-minute confirmations from friends who wanted to come along. Thanks Derrick, Jackie, and Ryan for getting me started on the right foot!

I got held up on the subway between Union Square and Bedford Avenue, then stopped to join Jackie and Ryan for a drink near the venue, so I missed most of the opening act, Coves. We caught four of their  songs, enough to appreciate the huge sound from just a single guitarist, and to see the singer play tambourine with a drumstick and wave her her floppy sleeves around like a deranged druid, and to her her declare, "this is our last song, like, uh, yeah" as the guitar kicked in to cut off her ramblings.

When the Raveonettes came on, Jackie pointed out that we were in a generally old crowd, which surprised me a bit, but allowed Jackie and Derrick  to commiserate over recent experiences in which they'd been the oldster in a crowd of young 'uns.

To be totally honest, things didn't get off to a great start for me. When the show started, I ended up stuck behind an obnoxious guy with a flock of seagulls hair cut who swayed around and occasionally hit me with the jacket he had draped over his shoulder. The lights, against the smoke machine-fueled haze, burst bright and fast, and I turned to Jackie and said "I think I'm going to have a seizure." Sune looked drunk and barely seemed to pay attention to the melody he was singing. The band relied heavily on a backing track that included bass, synths and drums (although there was a drummer on stage), and at some points didn't look like they were playing guitar.

But I pushed my way up ahead of my jacket-swinging antagonist and started to fall in love all over again. The lights calmed down somewhat (although at one point near the end of the set I found myself blinking in time with the music to avoid the brightest flashes), the backing track became less obtrusive, and Sune's voice gained momentum, and the whole thing coalesced into the delirious fuzz of distorted guitars, retro-rock beats and sugary harmonies that these guys do so well. They played a bunch from their latest album, which was released at the end of July, so I was glad I was able to listen to that on Youtube throughout the workday. But they also played a bunch of their older stuff, and a three song set of Love in a Trashcan, Chain Gang of Love, and Attack of the Ghost Riders brought down the house (in particular, Love in a Trashcan, which kicked of the mini-retro set, seemed, well, huger, than I'd ever heard it before).

Sune to be seems a pretty awkward frontman for a guy who's a goddamn musical genius, almost whispering "Thank youuuu" at the end of songs, and at one point looking sheepish, gawky and self-conscious while dancing during a musical breakdown. Someone in the crowd threw him a green baseball cap, which hit him in the chest and dropped to the floor. He picked it up, looked confused for a minute and then put it on, a grin slowly spreading on his face. And then he picked his guitar back up and proceeded to kick some more ass with a new solo.

They skipped a lot of my old favorites, like Last Dance, Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed), Ignite, and Blitzed, but hey, that happens.

And then it was over. One down, nine to go.

You Are Old, Father William

"You are old, father William," the young man said,
    "And your hair has become very white;
  And yet you incessantly stand on your head —
    Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

  "In my youth," father William replied to his son,
    "I feared it would injure the brain;
  But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
    Why, I do it again and again."

-- Lewis Carrol, from Alice in Wonderland.

Ten rock concerts, in ten days.  Alone or with friends, bands you like or bands you've never heard of, shitfaced on whisky or sitting in sober contemplation. Ten rock concerts in ten days, that's the plan.

I've been back in New York for four and a half years, but I haven't really been making time for the things that I love about New York, the things that drew me back here after small-town stops in Kingston, NY and in Martos,  Spain.  

A big part of what I love about New York is the rock 'n roll spirit that suffuses the city.  Over dinner recently, my friend's mom tried to argue that Washington, D.C. was a better place to live than NYC, because it has more museums and better museums for free.  I was willing to concede that (although I pointed out that the Met is free if you want it to be), but debating museums missed the point, for me.  You can keep the Smithsonian; I prefer museums that have been lived in, like the grimy bathrooms at CBGB (well, I guess not THAT particular museum).

The beautiful thing about New York, I told her, is that you can see an awesome show any day of the goddamn week. And so a challenge formed in my brain - I'll see a week of shows.  

My thirtieth birthday is coming up, and as with many milestones, it has prompted some self-reflection. I've spent the latter part of my twenties sucked into a job that was planned as a two-year stopover, losing friends one by one as they left the city, dutifully putting third of my paycheck towards my staggering student loan burden, generally acting like a boring, responsible person. 

And I'm getting to notice my age.  Somewhere in the back of mind mind, I'd expected to take some extravagant risks, drugs or a military career, maybe, that would guarantee an early exit before I turned into an actual "person of advanced age."  But recent evidence suggests that that will not be my fate - I've played it safe, and am settling into the life of slow decay that most of us are destined for. 

I play beer-league softball in the summer,  running for the first time in months, and my legs took days to recover. From beer-league softball! My occasional insomnia leaves me barely able to function on some days, and hangovers and heartburn are, apparently, now a thing.  My father died last year, and although he lived to 83, seeing him broken down renewed my fear not just of death, which I've wrestled with since I was a small child who prayed for the souls of all the ants I unwitting stepped on on my way to school, but of the inevitable decline of mind and body that precede that final oblivion. 

In short:  I am old, Father William, and I want to prove to myself that I still have time to stand on my head (figuratively speaking).

So I'm warding off my neuroses with a black magic cocktail of reverb-soaked vocals, distorted guitar  and drums that hit hard like the Hammer of Thor. I'll probably also see the Blow. 

Like any black magic ritual, this one needs strict rules, and a bit of sacrifice that puts it out of reach for the casually-committed among us.  A show every day, without break, without fail, without concern for companionship or the impact on my wallet. And because a week seemed just a little, well, weak, I went for a nice, round number, 10, to match the nice, round 30 of my impending birthday. 

Tonight, I start with the Raveonettes, whose "Last Dance" is the most sugary, danceable ode to suicidal overdose I've ever heard. Tonight, Rocktober starts a day early. 

My Guidelines For Online Political Debate

I have qualms about posting political screeds online, and I'll often play a contrarian role when left-leaning friends, who generally match my political views, get political on Facebook. To the friends who think I'm just trolling, here's where I'm coming from.

Generally, I argue with people who I agree with more than I argue with people who I disagree with for two reasons; I have few reasonable conservative friends to debate, and I believe that fairness and honesty should be prioritized over politics. The left doesn't have a monopoly on truth and fairness, but I feel like we can and should win arguments without stooping to exaggeration, histrionics or outright lies. A little fact-checking and introspection can go a long way, and I try to play the role of ombudsman for people on my side of the aisle. Please, speak up without shouting down, keep an open mind and play fair,  do the research and ask questions.


I try to play by certain rules when wading into political discussions, which I generally enjoy. 1) Don't judge people online, because you rarely know all the facts and you often come across like a bully 2) Don't waste your time responding to fools who say stupid stuff just to get attention – especially on Twitter, (PLEASE IGNORE TWITTER), 3) Calling out sexism/racism/other prejudice online is cheap and plays into an us-versus-them mentality that can be toxic and counterproductive. Especially if it seems like you're leaping to conclusions without evidence.

On Rule #3: Generally, when one of my online friends posts a reaction to a sexist or arguably sexist comment or situation, I recoil, not because I'm sexist (I think we're all a little sexist sometimes, but I believe in full equality and opportunity, full stop, and I believe that we have a ways to go before we get there), but because those reactions lend themselves to a self-righteousness that I find off-putting and a little frightening.

It's off-putting because a common attitude of the anti-sexists is something like “hey, I can spew the hate because this guy's already shown himself to be a hater! It's cool because I only bully bad people and weirdos who disagree with me!” That kind of tone assumes that every reasonable person agrees with you; it shuts down debate by inviting either unquestioning approval or a refutation that only proves how sexist everyone else is.


It's frightening because it lends itself to broad-brush generalizations in which facts go unexamined and people take sides based on ignorance and noise.

To take two recent examples from the Republican “war on women” :  1) Remember the outrage when Lisa Brown said she was censored for saying “vagina” during a debate on an anti-abortion measure? That was essentially a lie (she was prevented from speaking on the bill AFTER it had already passed , and she pissed off Republicans not because she said “vagina,” but because she implied that Republicans wanted to rape her; her full quote was 'I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina, but no means no!' I happen to think that's a funny and fair way to score political points, but if that's your strategy don't lie about it afterwards and claim that Republicans are trying to legislate vaginas while being scared of the word “vagina.” More to the point, for me, this is frightening because the national conversation afterward became all about one self-serving press conference and a catchy slogan – not a single one of my friends who threw their support behind Brown seemed to realize that this happened in the Michigan state legislature, not the national Congress, and none seemed to realize that the anti-abortion measure had already passed. They were just happy to point and laugh at the craa-azy Republicans, while the craa-azy Republicans were busy legislating away women's reproductive rights in Michigan. The real issues here were completely drowned out by ill-informed political noise. 1) Scott Brown, a moderate with no clear record of sexism, was unfairly targeted by ads lumping him in with the likes of Todd Akin, who he publicly repudiated. Brown's last act in the Senate was co-sponsoring an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow government to set aside larger government contracts for women, putting women-owned businesses on equal footing with other historically underrepresented group in contracting, like minorities and disabled veterans.


I'm probably going to go ahead and be a hypocrite here, and break all of those rules anyway. But I just wanted to explain where I'm coming from.

Mets Player Struggles With Definition of Humility, Irony

Mets player Jordany Valdespin appears to be a monumentally hilarious jerkwad.

https://twitter.com/jordany023

His current Twitter status stresses the importance of humility -- and is accompanied by a photo of Jordany Valdespin posing next to a collage of PHOTOS OF JORDANY VALDESPIN!

My mind is Valdespinning....

In another Twitter photo, he wears a Marlins hat, which is a jerkwad thing to do in the best of circumstances. Valdespin wins extra jerkwad points because he plays for a team that directly competes against the Marlins.

Still, I'll be rooting for you, Jordany! Go hit 30 HRs for the Mets next year!

Zombies at the IRS

So, you've been transformed into a brain-hungry undead hooligan. But are you also subject to the estate tax? Prof. Adam Chodorow explores this serious question.

"This article fills a glaring gap in the academic literature by examining how the estate and income tax laws apply to the undead. Beginning with the critical question of whether the undead should be considered dead for estate tax purposes, the article continues on to address income tax issues the undead are likely to face."

Death and Taxes and Zombies by Adam Chodorow

Press Release of the Day: "Look At Me, I'm A Lawyer!"

I get a lot of press releases and story pitches in my work inbox, and, most of the time, I ignore them. Whenever something important happens, self-promoters go on a blitz to cast themselves as "experts" so they can hoodwink some quote-hungry reporter into using them as a source for a story.  Everybody wins - the reporter gets his quote, and the "expert" gets more ammo for their next PR blitz ("...as quoted by the New York Times...").

The only problem is that a lot of it is bullshit, and weeding through them often isn't worth the effort.

This is the kind of stuff I get on a regular basis: "Are you writing about the Supreme Court's health care decision? I've got a broccoli farmer who'd love to talk about Congress's power to force vegetable purchases under the the Commerce Clause... Writing about the controversial Keystone pipeline? You should talk to this gas station owner who has proof that Obama wants oil prices to rise so he can usher in his Kenyan-Communist master plan!"

But sometimes irrelevant stuff catches my eye, like this absolute gem from today that practically begs to be ignored.

So, congratulations to the winner of today's "Most Transparently Self-Serving Press Release," NY attorney Michael Menicucci, who wants you to know that he has been practicing law for nearly 25 years and doesn't mind being called obsessive. 


Is this a Hannibal Burress joke cleverly disguised as a sad PR grab? 

Or did the PR guy just write a bio for the lawyer's website, and say, "What the hell, maybe I can send out a bunch of emails and see if anyone bites"? He doesn't even try to make it relevant to anybody but  Michael Menicucci! 

That's particularly  ironic, coming from a PR firm called "Relevant Public Relations LLC."

Rather than summarize the release and tamper with its greatness, here it is, re-posted in its entirety.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 2012

  New York City Lawyer OK With Being Labeled ‘Obsessive’
          Up-to-date legal scholar Michael M. Menicucci approaches 25 years in practice

NEW YORK – New York City attorney Michael M.Menicucci is admittedly obsessive when it comes to being a leader in his field.


“I’m fixated – but in a good way,” said the seasoned legal scholar and principle of Menicucci,Villa & Associates.


Many of today’s legal concerns, he said, involve recent legislative changes that could render case law or once-standard procedures obsolete.


“If staying up-to-date on court decisions and regulatory makeovers for my clients means I’m obsessive, the label fits,” said Menicucci, who is one of the New York region’s foremost authorities on the legal details of banking and finance, including federal regulatory-compliance issues; residential and commercial real estate transactions; commercial litigation, and trusts and estates.


Clients -- ranging from builders and banks to families, large corporations, small-business owners and lawyers -- commonly depend on Menicucci’s expertise in matters of property law; business transactions; partnerships and corporations; regulatory disputes; administrative law; comprehensive estate planning; offshore asset protection; forensic accounting; will contests, and trust and probate litigation.


“A lack of adequate knowledge and experience involving any of these matters could devastate a client’s finances,” Menicucci said. “This is why it’s so important for an attorney to be in the forefront of regulatory changes and court decisions before offering advice, sitting at a negotiating table or entering a courtroom to represent a client.” 


A member of the New York State Bar for nearly 25 years, Menicucci launched his private practice in 1988, efficiently growing it into a powerhouse practice. Fourteen years later, his endeavor further blossomed into the law firm of Menicucci, Villa &  Asociates.


Earlier, 1985 to 1988, Menicucci worked as the confidential assistant to the borough president of Staten Island. From 1982 to 1985, he drafted and developed federal environmental measures as legislative assistant to then
Congressman Guy V. Molinari.


Menicucci attributes his years of success to a combination of unrelenting due diligence and a work ethic instilled in him by his father.


 “There should be no compromise when a client hires you, expecting the very best representation,” Menicucci said.
“You either know the law and do what’s best for your client, or look elsewhere for a less demanding career. It’s that simple.”


Menicucci may be reached at 718-667-9090 or via e-mail at: MMenicucci@menicuccivilla.com


About Menicucci ^. Villa & Associates
Menicucci, Villa & Associates PPLC is one of the New York region’s leading law firms with an expertise in the legal details of banking and finance, including federal regulatory-compliance issues; residential and commercial real estate transactions; commercial litigation, and trusts and estates.
Based in Staten Island, N.Y., the team of Menicucci, Villa &Associates is widely recognized as one of the top law practices of its kind in metropolitan New York. The firm may be reach at 718-667-9090 or via e-mail at SILawyers@menicuccivilla.com.
                                                       
                                                                                --- 30 ---
CAPTION: Attorney Michael Menicucci is one of the New York region’s foremost authorities on the
legal details of banking and finance, including federal regulatory-compliance issues; residential and commercial real estate transactions; commercial litigation, and trusts and estates.

Media Contact: Barton Horowitz
Relevant Public Relations, LLC
Headquarters: 718‑682‑1509
Mobile: 917‑715‑8761
Email: Bhorowitz@RelevantPR.com



(Hat tip to fellow reporter Bibeka, who passed it along to me).

How much is an apology worth? In U.S. -Pakistan fight, $2.1B

"We are sorry," Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said Wednesday. She's sorry for the deaths of 21 Pakistani soldiers who reportedly fired (repeatedly) at U.S./NATO troops patrolling the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, but she's surely also sorry that the political blowup - fueled by Pakistan's dissatisfaction with previous U.S. apologies - has cost the U.S. roughly $2.1 billion and further recalcitrance from a dubious ally.

Clinton's apology has helped re-open the Ground Lines of Communication, military jargon for the ground transportation routes through Pakistan that the U.S. uses to supply its forces in Afghanistan. The routes had been closed since the November border skirmish that killed the Pakistani soldiers, forcing the U.S. to rely on expensive alternatives, such as longer roads through Russia and Central Asia and more airlifts.

In a previous post, "In War, $100M A Month Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry", I talked about the absurdity of a formal apology being a sticking point in the U.S.-Pakistan negotiations. But with overall costs of re-routes exceeding $2.1 billion so far (and disrupting war funding enough that the Department of Defense asked Congress to reshuffle $8 billion in contingency funds), I guess the U.S. decided enough was enough, and that it could extend itself beyond offering "condolences," "deep regrets" and acknowledging mistakes.

Although both the State Department and Department of Defense downplayed the role of the apology in negotiations, Pakistani officials continued to publicly insistent on a more formal apology. And the apology plays prominently in Clinton's official statement today, dominating from the first paragraph.

"I once again reiterated our deepest regrets for the tragic incident in Salala last November. I offered our sincere condolences to the families of the Pakistani soldiers who lost their lives. Foreign Minister Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pakistani military lives. We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military. We are committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again.



As I told the former Prime Minister of Pakistan days after the Salala incident, America respects Pakistan’s sovereignty and is committed to working together in pursuit of shared objectives on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect."  -- Hilary Clinton.

Pakistan's insistence on a formal apology must be maddening for the State Department and Defense Department, who must surely be thinking "but they started it!" (in terms of shots fired), at least on some gut level.  Pakistan is so focused on "respect" that they ignore their repeated failures in the complicated and dysfunctional relationship -- from its failure to police its borders for Taliban fighters to its failure to capture Osama Bin Laden (compounded by the later treason conviction for a Pakistani doctor who tried to help Americans discover his whereabouts).  At some point, Pakistan, in so many things, needs to figure out that respect needs to be earned, and insisting on it will just get you into pointless and embarrassing fights over semantics.