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There were two guys, I wasn't paying that close attention but they were doing songs in Spanish.

Billy Bragg - Talking with the Taxman about Poetry. The difficult third album. Like Lach's symbiotic 1980s twin in the U.K., Billy Bragg politicized like The Clash and Woody Guthrie, wailed about romance like Hank Wiliams, and rocked like The Clash, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. On Talking with the Taxman, Bragg splits his time between being a helpless, albeit cynical, romantic, and a political firebrand. Johnny Marr and Kirsty McÇoll give Greetings to the New Brunette and the Warmest Room folk-rock style pop. A new development for Bragg. Despite his new found pleasantness Bragg gets political on Ideology, There is Power in a Union, and Help Save the Youth of America. Sometimes the sentiments seem overly didactic or empty sloganeering but when you think about how many musical artists never address things like this, you wonder why more don't, I mean people buy your records, and there's something awesome that Bragg, even if it is sometimes clumsy or heavy handed, remembers to remind the people they have rights as human beings and not to be afraid to demand and protect these rights. Read more »

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I bumped into Helen Stratford on the street today and she told me that she and I and Babs had our photo in a NY Times article about the East Village a few months back and we'd never known it! It was a horrible article actually, in the Real Estate section, I feel sick that Babs and Helen and I were the visual for it.
Where do these people get their journalism degrees? This is some awful stuff.

Of "East Villagers" around Tompkins Square Park the article (by Jake Mooney) says:

"That group has included homeless people and drug users who took over large parts of the park in the late 1980s, more than once clashing with the police. But it also includes people like Ms. Kewalramani, a yoga teacher who paid $1.2 million for her 1,000-square-foot one-bedroom in Christodora House, a 16-story condominium at 143 Avenue B. Loyalists say one of the best things about the park and its environs is that they can comfortably accommodate such a broad spectrum of residents." Read more »

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Did I tell you all about the rotting corpse on my hallway?
Awful story!
I'd been smelling this stench on my hall for about 3 weeks, even complained to maintenance over a week ago, half-jokingly saying that I even thought it might be someone who died, I got the semi-racist response "it's probably just a Chinese person cooking a cabbage, that always smells bad." Finally yesterday the old Ukranian lady who lives across the hall from me knocked on my door to ask me if I agreed with her that there was a terrible smell in the hall, she had complained to maintenance also and they blew her off as an annoying old lady. So she and I decided this had gone on long enough and went to the maintenance office together, and convinced them to come check out the smell - they came, belittling our concerns all the while, insisting that it was "not a rotting smell." One maintenance guy said he smelled nothing, and the other guy said there was definitely "a stench" but that it was "definitely from someone's dirty apartment." Read more »

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After a long weekend of doing a whole lot of stuff or after a long weekend doing a whole lot of nothing Sunday night is a good time to relax with some herbal tea and make a connection with the collective unconscious of the planet. So I turn on the television. Sunday is a great t.v. night because the Adventures of Electra Elf is on. I love that show. Nick Zedd is the television part and art stars are the cast and crew. Nick Zedd is a great film-maker. I don't understand all his ideas but I know that's o.k. because he's so ahead of the curve. I remember seeing a bunch of his films from the 1990's and other film/video people didn't start using those ideas until the 2000's and they were people that were the curve, so it was kind of fun to see them standing in the dust with their new dust. I think Reverend Jen and Zedd write the scripts. Reverend Jen plays the Electra Elf character and sometimes they use the special effect where the same person can be on the screen twice, so I think Jen plays two characters sometimes. Sometimes Jon King is on the show, sometimes he holds the boom mic. Read more »