One of my favorite things to do in New York is taking pictures of people on the subway. I've long admired the Walker Evans subway portraits, but even if I'd never seen them, I'd still take the pictures. It's much easier to take pictures on the subway when someone is with you, because you can just pretend you're showing pictures to someone. This is one of the better things to come out of the digital camera. All I have to do is point and look furtively at the screen and act like I'm pointing something out when really I'm zooming in on the people in front of me. One of these days, I've been told, someone is going to catch on and get angry and kick my ass or something. or at least take my camera. But until then, I'm trying to gather as many quality shots as possible. Coincidentally, most of them have come while I've been riding around with Miss Charming Melodee. The most recent came on Sunday, on the way to Park Slope on the G train:
(Click the picture for the hi-res version)
I wouldn't have taken this if they weren't perfectly framing that Bud Lite "Always in the Mood" ad.On Sunday, after hanging out in Prospect Park and eating pizza with Jen, Jed, and Miss CM, I met Geoff and a friend at the Bowery Ballroom to see the Delgados show. I'd been wanting to see them for years now, and missed my first change when they played the day before Thanksgiving in 1999. I'd forgotten how much I like that band. And how much I like Scottish accents. Could barely understand a fookin' word they said, but it's charming nonetheless. Hearing the co-singer Emma say "When we got a 1.75litre bottle of Makers Mark, we nearly died sheer delight" was one of the most charming things I'd ever heard.
The opening band, Aerogramme, is also Scottish, and rocked out pretty hard, but in a sensitive, loud-to-quiet way. But the rocking was really full out, balls to the walls rocking. I've also been reading the Delgados' bass player's tour diary. Why is it, I ask you, that almost all tour diaries, if kept at all, are kept by the bass players? Alex from Blur does theirs. Before he retired, Justin Harwood did Luna's. Maybe they have the least to do. Anyway, I probably wouldn't like it so much if I hadn't heard him speak in person. He's kind of a meathead, actually, and it surprised me that he would be in the Delgados. But I love that he writes in Scottish too. It's fun just reading it to yourself in a Scottish accent. Maybe I need more to occupy myself with.
