Ah, it was quite a weekend of cultural experience. The first culture exposure of the weekend was the culture taken from Miss Charming Melodee's throat, which revealed something like bronchitis. The doctor wrote her four different prescriptions. Sounds like a quack to me. There's probably a good chance at least one of those prescriptions would interact badly with another.
Later in the evening on Friday, I indulged in a little music appreciation. James came over to the apartment with some of his gear, and we went through a number of his songs that he performs live. I'm accompanying him on a few shows of his upcoming tour, so we have to figure out exactly what I'll be doing. At this point, it could be bass on some songs, guitar on others, and keyboard or random percussion on others still. The introductin of Garageband has added a lot of potential sounds and possibilities, but we're a bit weary of depending on James' laptop to make it through a show without crashing or something. It could all end up sounding shitty, but there are good possibilities. Regardless, I'll be going with him for shows through New England and possibly a show in Brooklyn. And then the big daddy is a show at this year's South By Southwest festival in Austin, TX. It took me many years to finally visit Austin, and now I'll be going twice in four months. I don't harbor any real illusions of a career playing music, and I was a bit hesitant to commit to going, largely due to money, but it's the sort of thing that I would probably always regret not doing if I didn't go. And this is probably the only chance I'll get to participate in such a thing. When it comes to weeklong music festivals, it's tough to beat SXSW. So while it could be miserable, I'm looking forward to the overall experience. Plus, there are a lot of great bands playing SXSW, and I'll get a pass to all the shows. And Caryn will also be there, which is a plus. The only drawback is that Doug will not be around, which is a big disappointment.
After playing for a while, we walked down to a bar, Freddy's, that I'd been wanting to check out for quite some time now. An interesting little place. A very neighborhoody feel, and mostly locals hanging out I think. The proprietor plays these spliced-together video montages on the screen, and I have hard enough of a time keeping my eyes off a tv screen as it is, but I found this one particularly mesmerizing. It was mostly various go-go dancing and disco clips, but set to the music playing in the bar, it was a great effect.Saturday was the multi-cultural day of the weekend. By design. Matt had invited a co-worker of his to hang out on Saturday night and asked Miss Charming Melodee and me to go out with them in the neighborhood. I've barely gone anywhere in Ft. Greene, so we gladly accepted. Matt's co-worker is black, and it was his big idea to get together a group that could be, as he referred to it, "a Benetton ad." So our group would include one asian, one black, and two half-Puerto Ricans, which equaled of course one full Puerto Rican, with some Italian and Irish remainder (and what group doesn't have at least one of those two?). Matt became very upset when I told him that MCM was feeling under the weather and might not make it. Not only would this ruin the Benetton aesthetic, but Matt also worried that his friend would feel as if she were set up in some "weird trap," having been invited out with Matt and one other guy. I found this humorous.
Before going out, Miss CM expanded our cultural palettes at Cafe Lafayette, a very small French restaurant up the street. It's very small, but "cozy" might actually fit well, and in a good way. I had some lamb, which was much more satisfying than the lamb I had a week before a block down the street. Neither of us was that hungry, so we didn't really sample much, though the menu looks fairly tasty. It was a good scouting dinner, and I reckon we will be going back. We really haven't taken advantage of the plethora of good restaurants that are within walking distance of our front door.
Eventually Matt and his friend came over to our humble abode. We were all curious as to why they came over to our apartment, since we stayed for all of three minutes after their arrival, and with them actually having to backtrack from Matt's place to get there. So we walked right past Matt's apartment on the way to where we were going, which was odd, but we mostly ignored it. And indeed, walking down the picturesque Brooklyn sidewalks, we did look like we'd just stepped out of United Colors of Benetton. Despite only numbering four people, the members of our group could be described in several ways- tall and short, light and dark, male and female, curly hair and straight hair, dark hair and light hair, well-off and not so well-off, white and non-white, drug-addled and non-drug addled, menstruating and non-menstruating... the mixing and matching was all over the place. The evening in general was fun, full of stories of questionable appropriateness. Though Miss CM and I are curious as to whether we'll be seeing Matt's friend again.On Sunday, we capped off our weekend of fine and varied culture by attending a dramatic theatric performance in Manhattan. It was written by the boyfriend of one of Miss CM's highschool friends, and we met another highschool friend and her boyfriend and friend up at the theatre on West 54th st. The play was about gentrification in the boroughs of New York, and centered on a hispanic family trying to decide whether to sell to a white developer or not. It's somewhat telling, and a bit disappointing personally, that in these sort of plays or movies or shows, I usually tend to sympathize with the white developer. I just identify most strongly with what he's selling. I've never seen gentrification as a bad thing, and it's another one of those words that have been loaded with all sorts of negative connotations, usually by upper-middle class white folk saddled with upper-middle class guilt. Anyway, there was a rather interesting study done a recently at Columbia that stated that low-income residents of gentrified nieghborhoods are actuall less likely to move out of their gentrified neighborhoods. It doesn't make the case that gentrification isn't a problem, but it does provide some surprising statistical results.
Anyway, the play itself was ok. It started off terribly, mostly due to the actress playing the sister. She delivered her lines in a stilted, flat manner, and it was very tough to tell if she was supposed to be having a conversation with the actor playing her brother or if she was just spouting off lines at random. And when the third line or so of an off-off Broadway play is "Do you think there's a God," it's all you can do to keep your eyes from rolling all the way back into your head permanantly. It was quite remarkable that the play could recover from her sabotage of the beginning, but as she get less stage time, the play got better, and it did a pretty good job of sucking me in. There was good and believable interaction between the rest of the characters. All in all, not too shabby. And it's nice to tell people you're going to a play or whatnot. Makes you seem cultured or some shit.
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