Majical Cloudz stages sit in

The unusual, mid-set request took little salesmanship. All it took was a dour proclamation.

The second half of Majical Cloudz’s Monday night in-store performance at Other Music would be “slow and morose,” frontman Devon Welsh explained, offering his rationale behind asking the 60 or so people in attendance to sit on the floor. The first three songs were not exactly a party.

The Montreal duo’s final four songs delivered on Welsh’s promise, doubling down on intensity, atmosphere, and lyrical frankness. Toward the end of “Silver Rings”, Welsh rose from the floor, shouting “I don’t think about dying alone” with a force that belied the intimate setting.

Majical Cloudz played Other Music on the Lower East Side a day in advance of the release of their new record, Impersonator, out on indie giant Matador Records. The vocal/keyboard duo of Welsh and Matthew Otto incorporate the former’s stark baritone and death-obsessed words with the latter’s sparse, repetitive key strokes that, when wedded together, excavate the glory of life from the clutches of despair.

Welsh’s shaved head and unblinking focus with mic in hand recalled Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle had Bickle chopped his mohawk. His eyes burned. His voice commandeered the room. His body jerked in a latitudinal fashion while shouting “weighed down” on “Childhood’s End”. He clutched the mic with his left hand, punching the air as if banging an invisible drum slowly.

In spite of appearances, sinister Welsh isn’t. His goofy, deadpan banter in-between songs came across as socially awkward and nervous.

“I noticed some people laughing,” Welsh said after “This is Magic”, a song referencing murderers and monsters. “I’m really sorry I didn’t shave.”

The set’s second-to-last tune, “Bugs Don’t Buzz”, hung on Otto’s looping, downtrodden, downtempo beat like a funeral procession into the abyss.

“The cheesiest songs all end with a smile,” Welsh opened before declaring, “this won’t end with a smile.”

Perhaps having reached a moment of catharsis Welsh backed off his original position, conceding this one could end with a smile.

Flickers of joy like the hint of a smile are few and far between amid Majical Cloudz’s work. Even so, their live show packed an emotional wallop Monday night that demanded unbridled attention, whether experienced standing or sitting.

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One shining moment in Harlem

Cajun Tomato’s NYC 100 is a series chronicling my experiences and observations as a new New Yorker. Post No. 31 chronicles the first time I worked out in NYC – an appropriate topic considering how I am avoiding the gym today. Click here for past dispatches.

Yes, that’s me, bent over and spewing Vesuvius-style. As if Harlem weren’t ratchet enough, there I was hunched over post-workout, a 6-foot-2 ginger screaming/puking my brains out near tables of Bob Marley T-shirts, self-help books and various other treasures on one of the most crowded strips on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Call it gingerfication.

I lived in New York City three months before lifting a dumbbell or doing a crunch. For those first three months, my gym membership card lived a sedentary lifestyle in my wallet. My girlfriend’s roommate, Tony, convinced me to work out with him in preparation for a Spartan Race. Note to self: A Spartan Race is never a good thing to train for after you’ve been training for a couch race.

Tony’s workout included cardio on an exercise bike, pullups, pushups, squats, abs, and other one-minute bouts of agony that caused my food to perform its own pullup from my stomach to my throat. As we finished our ab workout I felt like I had been the butt of a gang initiation. I walked up the stairs to the second floor locker room like I had aged 50 years in 50 minutes. The thought crossed my mind that I should throw up in the bathroom.

You are not going to throw up, I told myself.

You are NOT going to throw up.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO THROW UP!

The sentence reverberated in my head like a mantra. I tried to stop thinking about vomiting as I stepped out of the gym and into the descending January sun. No dice. I ambled along like a zombie in The Walking Dead. Sweat meandered down my forehead. When Tony asked me how I felt I grunted. I did not have to say the words. He read my mind.

“If you need to throw up, just throw up. Don’t hold it in,” he advised, giving me permission I otherwise wouldn’t have granted myself.

I stepped two paces to the right next to an SUV’s hood. The street’s sounds – the symphony of car horns, mothers threatening to smack their kids, guys with dreads hawking their cds – went silent. My peripheral vision lapsed. All I saw was the ground.

Once I expunged the demon from my body Tony did what any 21st century friend would – he showed me photos and video he took while I hurled. His laughter acted as the video’s soundtrack. Reflecting on the absurdity of what just happened, and how awkward I looked projectile vomiting, my stomach tensed slightly as I laughed. It was my favorite exercise that day.

Cajun Tomato’s NYC 100 returns soon with new tales that, I promise, do not contain puke or shit.

The post Cajun Tomato’s NYC 100: “Hurling In Harlem” appeared first on cajuntomato.com.

The path to comedy stardom?

Here at Cajun Tomato world headquarters in east Harlem I welcome guest submissions. Today, I have the pleasure of sharing my friend Matt Wastradowski‘s recap of his stand-up comedy debut. Enjoy!

The bitter taste of a warm IPA lingers as I absentmindedly tap my foot under a small table in the darkened club. Tonight’s open-mic host steps to the stage, thanks the previous comic, and calls the final performer of the night: “Matt W.”

I take a deep breath, step onto the carpeted stage, and turn to the audience, ready to make my stand-up comedy debut. But whatever nerves I wrestled with in the previous two hours have been pushed aside for a startling realization: I can’t see the crowd.

Stepping onto the stage overwhelms my senses, not unlike leaving a darkened basement for an open meadow on a sunny day. With banks of bright lights looming above, I squint to gather my bearings and peer into what’s left of the crowd. Even the tabletop candles aren’t flickering anymore. I might as well be performing into a cave.

I first considered taking the stage in November 2011 as part of an effort to lead a fuller, more exciting life. A friend and I even showed up to a Portland comedy club one night, only to find out the evening’s open mic session had been canceled. Outwardly, I expressed dismay. Inwardly, though, a weight had been lifted. I retained my dignity without subjecting myself to the vulnerability of a stand-up comedy debut.

Over the next few weeks, I invented reasons why I couldn’t make various open-mic nights until the last of my friends stopped asking. Eight months later, I moved to Seattle and forgot about my flirtation with stand-up comedy. But after another seven months, spurred by a resurgent desire to try something new, the itch returned.

I spent a weekend crafting – and the next month memorizing – a three-minute bit about my smartphone addiction. I joked about pulling my phone out at stop lights, expressed my love for Siri, and compared a broken phone to a cheating girlfriend. I dropped some jokes into casual conversation, measuring the reactions and growing more comfortable with the material. Finally, I locked down a date and found a friend to cheer me on.

That’s how I arrived at Comedy Underground on this drizzly April evening, waiting to sign up and wrestling with warring emotions. On one hand I thought, I’m taking a risk and getting a good story from the experience. Then again, I’m half-wishing to get bumped to another night, allowing me to start the excuse-making all over again. The hardest thing about going through with this, I realize, is actually going through with it.

By the time I scan the list and see that I’ll perform last, I’m three beers in and more relaxed. With two hours until my three-minute set, my friend Lauren and I settle in and size up my competition for laughs.

Roughly three dozen comedians take the stage in rapid succession. Most stick with racist, misogynistic, or homophobic tropes that elicit more horrified gasps than earnest laughter. One white comedian jokes about how black people can’t hold jobs; another talks about dancing without looking “gay;” and others lament that “kids ruin everything, man.”

As I observe the mirthless wreckage before me, I grow emboldened and think, “I’m way funnier than most of these clowns.” But another inner voice chimes in, wondering if I really know something they don’t about the difficult world of stand-up comedy — a world which, until now, I’d only ever experienced as a spectator.

Before I can make sense of my inner dialogue, the host calls me to the stage.

I am confident about the material but, unable to see the audience from the ankle-high stage, feel pinned to the brick wall behind me. I turn from side to side, looking for a friendly face, but am stonewalled by the darkness.

I stutter and stammer through my bit, eliciting a handful of chuckles here and there. Some jokes, like the one where I compare my previous phone to Old Yeller, are met with stony silence. I never deliver the punchline to one joke and try improvising another, earning what might be a guffaw, but is more likely someone shifting uncomfortably in their chair.

After two minutes, the red warning light appears like a beacon in the back of the room, signaling that my time is nearly up. I wrap up, thank the 30 or 40 audience members who stayed for the whole set, and return to my seat amid a smattering of applause. Back in the darkness, I avoid eye contact with the other would-be comedians while trying to process the previous few minutes.

Outside, I allow myself a deep breath of cool Seattle air as relief takes hold. On our way to the bus stop, Lauren asks about my time on stage and recounts the reactions I couldn’t see or hear. I don’t give a second thought to the deafening silence that greeted some jokes or the chuckles that followed others. Only now do I realize that this three-minute set was never really for them; the risk, the writing, the performance, it was all for me. More than anything, I’m just glad I went through with an unforgettable new experience. I couldn’t see their bored grimaces or half-cocked smirks, but none of that matters. What matters is that I stepped out of the darkness and onto the stage. What matters is that I wasn’t scared away by the bright lights.

Matt Wastradowski is a blogger at I Gotta Shine, a Portland Trail Blazers diehard, and a lover of fine beer.

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The baby Kimye

June 18.

Maybe Kanye’s dropping a new album. Maybe Kim Kardashian is dropping baby Kimye. Something’s dropping.

Only 42 or so days until we get answers.

‘Til then, today I’m dropping my Favorite Songs of 2013 (Early Edition). I considered listing my favorite 20 songs but decided to show some restraint and list 10 tracks that have listened to over and over so far this winter/spring.

Below the songs are listed in alphabetical order (according to artist’s name). Also: Check out the playlist at the bottom of the text. Enjoy!

Caveman – “In The City”
Not at all what I would have expected a band called Caveman to sound like. “In The City” from NYC upstarts Caveman sounds refined, in a give me a glass of your best Cabernet Sauvignon way. The warm synths here make me think jacuzzi and city lights, or possibly a night club with a jacuzzi. Singer Matthew Iwanusa sounds like he’s doing a Sting impression, and it’s a damn good one.

Chvrches – “Recover”
I hear a little of the Chipmunks at the beginning of this cut from Glasgow electropop babies, Chvrches. That and a little Purity Ring. When the chorus from “Recover” arrives though, Lauren Mayberry’s voice is pure and resolute. Exit innocence, enter nasty truth. Her observations are as keen as one would expect from a woman with a master’s degree in journalism. “You take what you need, and you don’t need me,” Mayberry declares. Two sold-out shows in NYC this year say she’ll be just fine.

Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams – “Get Lucky”
Enter Kanye West on-stage: “I’m sorry Justin Timberlake and Timbaland, you guys did some nice things back in 2006. But Daft Punk and Pharrell made the real future sex love sound. Kim agrees with me.” (Pan to audience members rolling their eyes and making gagging noises.) What’s the takeaway from this hypothetical fiasco? The future will sound like a slicker version of the past … and robots will run the Earth.

Foals – “My Number”
Is UK’s Foals a heavy band that likes to dance or a dance band that likes to get heavy? The answer is somewhere in between, if their sold-out Terminal 5 performance Friday night was any indication. “My Number” is an airy kiss-off to a woman, a city, a lifestyle, etc., that bobs and shimmies with the aid of a slick lick that would sound right at home on a Chinatown tea spot’s speakers.

Haim – “Falling”
The chorus of “Falling” is sexy time for my eardrums. It’s addictive. I might need to check my ears into a rehab facility. It’s like the three Haim sisters – they’re last name rhymes with dime – conceived this gem from the womb of 70s lite-rock gold. In reality, they birthed it in their family’s living room. I love the subtle sexiness of the groove, the sisterly harmonies, and the roll with life’s punches line “If it gets rough, it’s time to get rough.”

Local Natives – “Bowery”
Hummingbird, the second album from L.A.’s Local Natives, features three or four songs I could see vying for a spot on my final favorite songs of 2013 list. Today, my pick is “Bowery”, a song inspired by New York City, that is at turns nostalgic, wistful, ethereal, and, most of all, gorgeous. “Bowery” swells as the relationship between the narrator and his friend/love dissipates. It might not be a trip to remember. Yet the song is.

Savages – “Shut Up”
Now this is a band whose sound fits their name. “Shut Up” and its live video demonstrate the UK quartet in all its ass-kicking splendor. Lead singer Jhenny Beth’s unflinching focus and spazzy dance moves recall Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. Translation: She’s a star. The central message of “Shut Up” – a post-punk missile of a tune – strikes like a boot in the teeth of our distracted age. Shut up, stop typing meaningless Facebook updates, and observe the world around you.

So So Glos – “Son of an American”
Brooklyn punks So So Glos make losing sound victorious on “Son of an American”. “Take me to the ballgame, I want to sit in the stands and scream, I want to root for the losing team,” Alex Levine declares in the second verse, an easy to relate ideal for anyone who’s pulled for the underdog. So So Glos aren’t just some underdog though. They’re a likeable bunch whose formidable mix of choral harmonies, chugging power punk, and whoa-oh-ohs make “Son of an American” a 2013 anthem. PS: Check out their kickass Letterman performance of “Son of an American”.

Thundercat – “Heartbreaks + Setbacks”
Thundercat (nee Stephen Bruner) mastered interplanetary R&B with “Heartbreaks+Setbacks”, a love groove that sails across the cosmos on a unicorn. Or something like that. Bruner is known for his otherworldly bass abilities. His voice steps to the fore this time around, with heaping helpings of soul and swagger that beckons the listener on the journey – one worth taking again and again.

Justin Timberlake – “Mirrors”
I am going to resist my own inner temptation to put Miguel and Mariah Carey’s summer jam “#Beautiful” – yes, there’s a hashtag in the title – on my favorite songs list, if only because it came out yesterday. Instead, Justin Timberlake gets the nod for “Mirrors”, a piece of bubblegum pop I’ve chewed on for months without it losing its taste. Among my favorite musical moments this year involves Timberlake flying solo with just handclaps near the 3:42 mark of “Mirrors”. Dude’s still got it.

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Jason Collins via si.com

Jason Collins’ cover story in the May 6 edition of Sports Illustrated not only announced him as the first openly gay male athlete in major American sport. It also offered a profile in courage and a master class in how to conduct one’s self with grace and dignity.

Collins’ NBA peers responded to news of the journeyman center’s decision to reveal his sexual orientation with praise and support. They should be applauded for this, especially considering only nine states in America have legalized same-sex marriage.

Not everyone welcomed the news though.

During an appearance on ESPN’s “Outside The Lines”, the network’s senior NBA reporter Chris Broussard likened being openly homosexual to “walking in open rebellion to God” – a belief many fundamental Christians share.

Broussard attempted to soften his homophobia, comparing being openly gay to having premarital sex or committing adultery, rationalizing all three are outlawed in the Bible.

While Broussard is flat-out wrong for correlating homosexuality to promiscuity and infidelity, what’s truly insidious about his words is he uses his faith, and selective passages of The Bible, to shield his bigotry.

Yes, Leviticus 18:22 calls “lying with a man as with a woman” an “abomination.” The book’s author(s) were not quoting Jesus or God; they were merely the beliefs of men more than 2,000 years ago.

If Broussard and his bosses at ESPN flipped the Bible back seven chapters to Leviticus 11:7-8, they would know God commanded humans not to touch the dead pig of skin. So much for Monday Night Football.

Other nuggets of advice from the Old Testament: children who curse their parents shall be put to death (Exodus 21:15) and shrimp are unclean for human consumption (Deuteronomy 14:9-10). One would believe Broussard, having made it this far, never cursed his parents while eating shrimp, or else he might have choked.

In order for Broussard to be just in denouncing Collins, he must be a strict fundamentalist. As “The West Wing” pointed out, that would necessitate killing those who work on Sundays and allowing fathers to sell their daughters into slavery.

Failing that, let’s call him what he really is: a hypocrite and a coward who mangled a faith, beautiful in its directive to love one another, to justify his ignorance.

The point here is not to engage Bible-thumping homophobes in a biblical tit-for-tat. The larger issue is this: The Bible, along with any book of faith, came from man. It is therefore inherently flawed and should not be taken word for word as the absolute truth.

As journalist and Harvard Divinity School graduate Chris Hedges once wrote, “I take the bible seriously. Therefore, I cannot take it literally.”

Cherry-picking sentences from ancient text does not give anyone – televangelists, politicians, NBA analysts, etc. – carte blanche to bash gays.

Broussard should look no further than the man whose Christianity he called into question to uncover what a man of faith should like.

“My parents instilled Christian values in me,” Collins wrote in Sports Illustrated. “They taught Sunday school, and I enjoyed lending a hand. I take the teachings of Jesus seriously, particularly the ones that touch on tolerance and understanding. On family trips, my parents made a point to expose us to new things, religious and cultural. In Utah, we visited the Mormon Salt Lake Temple. In Atlanta, the house of Martin Luther King Jr. That early exposure to otherness made me the guy who accepts everyone unconditionally.”

Cajun Tomato contributor Brett Schweinberg is a longtime Chicago White Sox fan who wrote in November about volunteering in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

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In my constant quest to earn rent money in New York City I have allied myself, on occasion, with corporations from which the compensation I received could only be described as “blood money.” I am not OK with this but I am not OK with the thought of sleeping in the subway or on the street either.

Last week while doing contract work for one such corporation – arguably the scummiest of the American financial institutions that caused the recession – I happened on an opportunity to gain a small, nonviolent measure of revenge for the common man. Albeit, no one would suspect it as such. To the unlucky bastard who walked into the stall after me they would find a floater – my middle finger to their corporate overlords – and wonder why someone forgot to flush.

Let’s rewind for a second.

I did not seek out the second floor bathroom of said financial institution to make a statement. That would be stupid. I mean, who goes to McDonald’s expressly to leave a giant floater to protest the inhumane treatment of chickens that result in the production of chicken mcnuggets? No one, that’s who.

Truth be told, if the damn toilet would have flushed the first or second time, the idea of leaving a document of my excrement, as a means of saying fuck this place, would never have popped into my head. I am civilized. I flush, I wash my hands, the whole nine yards.

Except this situation made me confront two age-old questions: How many times do you flush before you say I did my best and move on? If it’s the bathroom of a morally reprehensible corporation that doesn’t give a shit about anything but money do I have carte blanche to leave after the first flush?

Normally, I’d answer two and yes. That particular morning though I thought about the golden rule of toilet flushing – flush your shit, yo! – and pressed the handle down a third time. Success!

Good works won’t get you into heaven, I heard various evangelical Christian preachers proclaim during my youth. Maybe they’re right, but at the moment the shit went down, literally speaking, I felt pretty good about my chances.

Cajun Tomato’s NYC 100 returns Saturday – I am feeling ambitious – with another tale from New York City.

The post Cajun Tomato’s NYC 100: “A Flush Of Heaven” appeared first on cajuntomato.com.

Behind the crafty tables

The Crafty Life is a new series chronicling my experiences as a person with a non-film background working as a craft services assistant on television shows shooting in New York City. Today’s second installment is called “My On-Set Whale Tendencies”. You can read the first installment here.

I am a whale once I step on a TV set. I have zero self-control. I am making a down payment on a heart attack. I know it, and yet I keep eating shit. Let’s be honest: It’s not a birthday cake Oreo. It’s shit.

Let me back up. Craft services will never be considered the world’s most difficult job. Keep your table stocked full of food and coffee, don’t trip and fall while passing food on-set to cast and crew, and you’ll be a hero.

The job’s most “challenging” exercise is staring at chips, meat roll-ups, er wraps, and assorted other not-so goodies for 12 hours and making a conscious effort not to eat them. (Imagine a table filled with the kind of foods loaded with three dozen mystery ingredients Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food warned you about, and you have a craft services table.)

I fail miserably at this part of the job. Thing is, we, as craft service assistants, can eat anything on our two tables or anything we pass to the cast and crew. That means a buffet of cholesterol and trans fat tempts me … ALL DAY LONG!

Craft service assistants also have the option of eating catered breakfast and lunch with the cast and crew. That’s not a problem if you can look at a food product and say no. I’ve learned on-set I have a tapeworm and that my answer to free food is never “no” but always “why the hell not?”

Has my attitude led me to a 6,000-calorie day or two? Probably so.

I am that shopper who goes into the grocery store with a list of 10 items and exits with five times that amount. Everything seems so essential when it is my line of sight. Likewise, everything seems so damn edible when I have not eaten in the past 15 minutes.

Here’s a typical day for me on a TV set:

I eat eggs with cheese, cantaloupe, and oatmeal during the catered breakfast. Occasionally, when I am listening to the devil on my shoulder, I’ll eat sausage and bacon because, ya know, “why the hell not?” The food is free and warm, and generally the temperature chills through my bones like a saw.

Once it’s time to pass breakfast stromboli to the cast and crew I usually resume eating. Bacon, egg, and cheese is my weakness. Broccoli and swiss is also delicious in a “this is manufactured in a lab and cannot be healthy” way.

The food parade continues with wraps. If we serve chipotle chicken fuhgeddabout it. I’m eating three of those mugs, as my high school English teacher Grem might say. FYI: Three sliced wraps equals one full wrap.

Chips and hummus are another weakness of mine. If those are on the table I graze. I graze a lot. Everyone does it … except the stars. They have the motivation – zeroes at the end of their contract – not to go “whalein’” on-set.

OK, so at this point, catered lunch has arrived. That means a selection of fish, chicken, and red meat. I generally ask myself before ordering, what would the homeless man on the subway who hasn’t eaten in four days do? When this question arises I go with the holy trinity of fish, chicken, and red meat. I also eat spinach with minimal dressing. This is my one offering to the health food gods.

My post-lunch binge continues with warm cookies, an occasional bagel bite, and egg rolls, plus whatever else we pass that night, or that happens to catch my eye, be it skittles, M&Ms, or Oreos, in the throes of on-set boredom.

Boredom is a constant companion on a TV set, where each shot is meticulous and tedious to the point of being tiresome. By night’s end my coworkers and I pack away the packaged foods and toss the unpackaged ones. It’s a time of reflection.

Tomorrow I will bypass the strombolis and go straight to the carrots, I tell myself. I will work out for two hours before work. I will not be beached!

The post The Crafty Life: “On-Set Whale Tendencies” appeared first on cajuntomato.com.

Hey mon!

Cajun Tomato’s NYC 100 is a periodic series chronicling my observations and experiences as a new New Yorker. Today’s 29th installment titled, My Life, The Hey Mon Sketch, focuses on my many jobs. You can read past Cajun Tomato’s NYC 100 dispatches here.

Super Mario World on the Super NES is more difficult than I remember. Yessir, that’s the main nugget of wisdom I’ve ascertained during my month-long hiatus from The Cajun Tomato. Shame on me. But seriously, I’ve become BFFs with Yoshi again so I feel one with my 7-year-old ginger, freckled Opie self.

Not all my time has evaporated in Mario’s warp pipes though. I’ve frozen my butt off in all manner of places over the past month(s). All in the name of the Almighty Dollar. The Almighty Dollar, as you might expect, does not go far in the Big Apple.

Thus, I am like one of the characters in In Living Color’s “Hey Mon” sketches back in the day. What?!?!?!? One job?!?!?

In my case I’ve performed somewhere north of 20 jobs since moving to New York City almost six months ago. That does not take into account jobs performed over weeks or months.

A few weeks ago I wrote about my craft services gig. That’s perhaps my most glamorous gig, mostly because I eat catered food for breakfast and lunch. (Programming note: Another day I’ll write about my out of control blue whale tendencies on-set. I might need an intervention.)

My first job in New York City involved passing out yogurt to businessmen, tourists, and everyone in between outside Grand Central Terminal. The moral of that story? Everyone regardless of social status, race, religion, etc. will try to take two cases of yogurt if you offer them one. I later promoted the same yogurt product in Spanish-speaking areas of the Bronx, leading me to add the words “gratis jogurt” to my foreign language repertoire.

Most of my jobs have involved handing out free goodies to strangers – pistachios at a Harlem Globetrotters game inside Madison Square Garden, potato chips on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and umbrellas for a television network on a snowy January afternoon. I’ve discovered I like yelling at people and giving them free stuff they don’t really need. I might have stumbled upon a career path. Or not.

Before I started doing craft services I promoted various television shows and networks. Ironically, the goal when promoting TV shows is to finish ASAP while working on an actual TV show guarantees at minimum a 12-hour day (if you’re lucky).

The TV promos I’ve worked include handing out voting stickers touting a comedy program’s Election Night coverage, coordinating “stroller check” for a children’s TV network’s VIP event, and chauffeuring a team of brand ambassadors around Manhattan to promote a premium cable show I don’t like. Oh, and lest I forget, I also handed out sunglasses for a famous white trash TV show on New Year’s Eve. My most cherished memory from that gig involved me handing a cardboard box of 500 or so sunglasses in plastic wraps to a homeless man intent on selling them individually on the streets that afternoon.

I’ve also done a bit of acting myself, albeit not on a screen or stage. It involved me playing the role of a medical practitioner at a wellness fair in which I took people’s height, weight, and body fat percentage. At the end of the individual screenings I advised some of the out of shape types they needed to exercise more and eat better, parroting the words of my coworker in the station nearest me who actually had medical training. Yippeee!

On occasion, I’ve acted a fool while getting paid to play dress-up, such as when I danced around in a banana costume to chants of “Shake your smoothie” or did Gangnam Style while dressed as a famous video game character. I also marched in Stalin-esque garb with 70 or so “comrades” in Times Square to promote a new TV show, although that event banned us from laughing.

I laughed anyway, sometimes when a fellow comrade screwed up and sometimes for no reason. Why wouldn’t I laugh? Someone had chosen me of all people, a Cajun with an Irish mop, to parade around one of the world’s busiest tourist meccas dressed as a Russian soldier.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of New York City.

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Green juice

Today I am debuting a new series called The Crafty Life. In the past month I worked on two TV shows – one a first-year drama/thriller, the other a comedy pilot – on craft services. With this new series I will write about what it’s like to work on a television show for someone without a film background.

“I have one diva request … ” the actress started.

My ears perked. The slender, 5-foot-10 brunette standing before me starred on one of my favorite shows. On this day, we worked together on the pilot episode of a show set to debut this fall on network television. I served as a production assistant on craft services, she starred as the sitcom star’s wife. As we stood face-to-face, I wanted to tell her how much I enjoyed her other show, but that would be awkward and unprofessional, and besides there was her pending request.

“I am a juicer,” she continued.

“Oh, like green juice?” I cut in.

“Yes,” she responded, inquiring whether it would be too difficult to make her some.

I informed her my coworker Alex already made green juice – a smoothie-like concoction containing celery, cucumber, and kale – for her TV husband, and making it for her would be no trouble.

Her face expressed relief. I too felt relieved that her “one diva request” turned out, well, reasonable.

An hour later, the actress and I toasted cups of green juice. It’s the small pleasures on a 15-hour TV shoot, I tell ya.

That night, I shared my story about the actress being an amicable person with a friend, who is in a theater company. My tone indicated the actress’ real life attitude surprised me since she played an insecure, bitchy, kleptomaniac on the TV show I love.

“You know she’s just acting, right?” he asked.

Good point, I thought.

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Out March 26

From the moment Is This It? dropped in 2001 The Strokes’s retrofitted sonic palette appeared destined to be the musical equivalent to the law of diminishing returns – factor of production (i.e., more albums) while other factors held constant (i.e., the band’s sound) then returns would diminish.

“Is This It?” erected a monument to bored, disenfranchised, effortlessly cool garage rock so immediate, so timeless, so staggering that it promised to cast a shadow over all the NYC quintet’s future recordings. Their trajectory seemed clear. Imagine a graph where the first line touches the ceiling, and all subsequent lines are jockeying, in vain, to stand as tall.

And yet The Strokes’ career has confounded convention despite the band’s seeming unwillingness to experiment. Sophomore album Room On Fire proved a worthy successor to Is This It? Third album First Impressions of Earth lacked inspiration for the most part but fourth album Angles recaptured some of the old, drunk at 4 in the morning Strokesian spirit that existed, ya know, before the band members had wives and children.

Their fifth album, Comedown Machine, doesn’t hit stores for another month, but if “One Way Trigger” and “All The Time” – the first two tracks released – are any indication, this could be the album where the law of diminishing returns kicks into high gear for the Strokes. If that’s the case, The Strokes should retire after Comedown Machine – at least as a studio outfit – rather than continue to recycle from their past albums and drift toward irrelevance.

About the aforementioned tracks …

“One Way Trigger” received a slew of comparisons to A-Ha’s “Take On Me” after its January release. The Strokes, it seemed, had finally embraced the 80s by ripping off one of the decade’s most recognizable tunes. The band’s A-Ha thievery is far from my chief complaint with “One Way Trigger”. That (dis)honor would go to Julian, or should I say Juliana?, Casablancas’s unintelligible, strained falsetto. It’s an irritating mess that obscures his gift for writing drunk, happenstance poetry.

Comedown Machine’s first single “All The Time” lacks the earworm quality that made Angles’s first single “Under Cover Of Darkness” such a delight. Casablancas’s vocals once again sound thrown together and garbled, in particular the chorus. Musically, this track borrows from the same garage pop playbook as much of the band’s catalog, right down to Nick Valensi’s guitar solo. It lacks any semblance of freshness – I know, an odd thing to say about a band whose music always leaned heavily toward a revisionist bent.

I thought the point of releasing songs in advance centered around generating favorable buzz. These two songs pointed me in a more apathetic direction about Comedown Machine. In one respect, the band feels like a tribute to itself, albeit a tired one. It also feels like a cover band replicating a song that did not need covering. It’s funny, and a touch sad, how seven minutes of music from this band, of all bands, could leave me asking “Is this it?”

Listen: “All The Time”

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