It’s Curtains for You, Bugsy, Curtains.

Omigod!  Someone totally TP’d Central Park!

I walked more than a hundred city blocks, yesterday, and boy are my Christo jokes tired. 

Yes, it’s the country’s trendiest Photo Op, and I opted in.  If you haven’t heard about The Gates, it's certainly not because the media isn’t tripping over itself to fabricate coverage.

Yesterday turned into one big Enforced Happiness Day:  It was in the upper fifties and sunny as all get-out, so you pretty much have to get out and do something.  So it was Christo, deep-fried Twinkies, and The Polyphonic Spree.

Walked the park from Columbus Circle up to and across 110th Street, and all the way back down to the southeast corner; by the end, I was so delirious that I was convinced everything rhymed with orange.  I really don’t want to ponder, much, the “artistic value” of the whole venture:  It’s about color, and wind, and… quite frankly, it gets redundant fairly quickly.  The point was more that it was a lovely day for a stroll, and since I forgot to recharge my camera’s back-up batteries, that’s what I mostly did.

(Only photo I hate myself for missing:  The reflections in the windows behind the Met.  Sherbet-riffic.)

Lizard-faced cult maestro Tim DeLaughter brought his Sol outfit, bubble machine and confetti cannons to Brooklyn’s National Polish Home, last night.  I’ve gone hoarse over the Spree before; they’re a hoot, and a holler.  It’s good to know that even in the cold hipster heart of Greenpoint, these Texans can orchestrate a crowd full of bouncers and swayers.

I finally got to hear my favorite Spree song (if indeed there’s such a thing as a Polyphonic Spree “song”), “Suitcase Calling” – which they’d left out last August – live.  In all, the songs seemed longer, in a good way.  Expanded upon.

There were a couple of genuinely weird moments (even for them):

The band launched into a bit from what I now know is an obscure David Bowie song, “Memory of a Free Festival” from Space Oddity.  They started chanting, “The Sun Machine is coming down, and we’re gonna have a party,” while pointing at the disco ball on the ceiling.  Yes, they sing obsessively about the sun (and waterslides and happy lil’ trees…), but this seemed very apocalyptic, very break-out-the-Kool-Aid.

Also, after “Suitcase,” DeLaughter sighed something like, “You get sick of doing the same thing again and again.”  It was unclear whether this was part of the song, or about the song.  At the end of the show, the exhausted bandleader told the crowd that their tour was ending, that they were going to take some time off to record and regroup.  Perhaps to get some sun.

They’re at Irving Plaza in Manhattan tonight, and then to LA and SF.  Check the few remaining dates here.  Looks like Jon Brion’s opening in LA, which is… cool.

Mike Doughty, of Soul Coughing fame, was their opener here, and his often monotonal, often redundant, always intimate songs were actually a nice Zen contrast to the Spree’s bombast. 

The Spree’s French horn player is, hands down, the happiest-looking person I’ve ever seen in my life. 

I don’t know whether that’s because he’s (a) genuinely a happy person, (b) incredibly stoned, or (c) a working French horn player.

My CD player is trying to convince me that I’ve been listening to The Frames’ “Finally” too much.  It is wrong.

Winning an Oscar can be a matter of life and death!  Check this out, and root for Clint.  He’s the one getting better with age… and worry for all those nominated screenwriters.

links: digg this    del.icio.us    reddit