Adam and the Moog is on spring break right now, enjoying Cabo and coeds with equal relish. AATM will be returning once it has gotten a nice tan, exposed its tits for a trucker hat, and run out of its parents' money. Look for new content appearing next week!
In the meantime... WHOOOO!
Just
who – or what – is Adam? What mysteries surround our titular alter-ego and his magical
Moog machine? Finally, an answer to some of these mysteries. Adam is a man who
by day (and the occasional busy night) imparts his wisdom to some of the business
world’s most prominent companies. These are companies you’ve heard of – Kraft, SPECTRE – companies that “keep things running.” Qualifications:
years of experience in the financial sector; graduation from a prestigious
business program.
Adam
also reviews music. Qualifications: Owns a Moog.
Today’s review: The Handsome Furs, NYC’s Mercury Lounge, 6 March 2009:
"An ongoing CNN series on what it means to be black single in America the internet."
Omg so last week I was leaving the building, and my crush was running… j/k. You didn’t really think I was going to blog about that, did you? That would be creepy (Jordan’s concern), as well as potentially identifiable (my concern, in case our readership ever expands to those whom I would obviously be writing about).
Here’s what I can tell you. If you’re on OkCupid, and you meet someone from Astoria who agrees to go on a date with you at MoMA, make sure you have ferreted out ahead of time her opinions on Van Gogh puns. (Also, make sure you arrive early enough to get tickets for the Van Gogh exhibition; that probably didn’t help matters.) Apparently some people don’t think a “Vertie Gogh” reference is funny the first time, let alone the third or fourth. And I will spare you the longwinded setup I created for the payoff of the Brothers Van and Man Gogh. (It involved a fruit cart.)
OHHH and my grandfather’s Toulouse-Lautrec joke? The one I always found hilarious as a child, long before I understood the terrors modern art could inflict on the mind, and yet I still find hilarious to this day? (I’ll tell it to you sometime if you ask me nicely. It involved house painting.) Apparently the pun was so patently awful that I ruined some tall Eurotrash guy’s appreciation of the painting. Like the tourists taking cell phone camera photos of themselves in front of Warhols is much less distracting. Asshole.
Anyway. I think my point is don’t make puns on dates. Also: don’t date people from the internet who live in Astoria; don’t count on getting special exhibition passes if you arrive after 4.30 on a Friday; and a little bit of art history can be a dangerous thing.
O dating. One of the recurring features of AATM 2.0 will be to share my dating landscape with you discriminating readers. I anticipate the results to be tragicomic, but only because if past experience is any guarantee then the events will be so uniformly comic that the big picture can only be tragi. (Preview: impotence is funny, too!)
Names will be changed on a whenever-I-feel-like-it basis. The name of my college will also be changed to Hudson University because… well, because fuck you, I like Law & Order (CI, SVU, and :Miami). And the name of the internet dating website will be changed from OkCupid to OkCupid.
Hopefully, we can all learn a few lessons about love, life, and the correlation between singlehood and excessive fatness, baldness, and tendencyness to crack wise about childhood leukemia.
And, you know, if none of that comes to pass, I’m sure we can still laugh at a dick joke or two. So stay tuned in the upcoming weeks as AATM turns its twinkling eye toward tackling love and romance on an occasional basis. Tomorrow: “Run, Asymmetrically Cherished Object of Desire, Run!”
Thank you, Rebecca, for providing us with this gem of a Nancy Grace video:
In case you were wondering, this is either a.) a scripted rape joke performed by Nancy Grace and co., or b.) an insane woman who has been given a national television show and also does not have any idea what her producers and writers are up to.
While there are plenty of targets to aim for when discussing clinical-lunatic-cum-TV-talk-show-host Nancy Grace, we at AATM prefer to aim for high-minded journalistic ones. Jordan pointed out this CNN story appearing on the CNN.com homepage, and apparently a part of a section called Nancy Grace’s Cold Cases. Some people might question the tastefulness of being presented a murder victim archive in rhyme. Nancy Grace is not some people.
The indefatigable Ms. Grace runs into yet more naming problems when it comes to the headline of the article in question: “Nurse didn’t show up for smoothie with friends.” This strikes us as an oddly casual headline for a missing persons report. Upon reading the headline, Jordan said, “Maybe she went and got a cake instead.” In the spirit of unintended headline consequences, join us and Nancy Grace for some natural follow-ups that sound a lot more relevant to the tone of that headline than Ms. Grace may have intended:
“Nurse forgot to TiVo ‘Chuck’ last night.”
“Nurse opts to nurse warm beverage alone; ignores friends.”
“Nurse misses smoothie night to write letter accusing Nancy Grace of being a hellspawned harpy.”
Those are a few to get you started. But we want to hear what you’ve got, too. Updates will be made throughout the day.
P.S. I wonder if the Legend of Bagger Nance will be apologizing to Gary Condit? Probably not. But that's all right. Now Lou Dobbs can become Condit's most passionate defender.
UPDATE:
So I know we have, like, two readers, but that's still two more user submissions I was hoping we would have than the current total of zero. It seems the lesson to be learned is don't solicit user content if you have yet to solicit users. I knew I should have listened to that keynote address on Web 2.0.
New Yorkers are an odd breed when it comes to eating out. It can be all too easy to satirize the Le Cirque black card crowd – you know, those for whom a visit at per se is not a rare, intimate experience, per se, and corporate cards are a totally acceptable way to run up a $5,000 wine tab (it’s for the clients, I swear) – but I’ve always found the “hip and cheap” set a lot more entertaining.
These are the people who start vicious turf wars over which $7.00 halal cart offers the best mix of spiced lamb and green sauce. I guess in a city this large, people will always want to track down the next great thing, especially if it comes without a Manhattan zip code. The additional handicap that all of this exploration must be undertaken without a personal automobile adds a frisson of excitement to any quest, be it culinary, artistic, or whatever other aspect of city life is garnering online raves and requires multiple transfers.
I’m willing to wager right now that my good friend James is the undisputed king of culinary exploration. And what this means for me is that, as much as I might privately lampoon the hip foodie mindset and its accompanying extremes, I am also just as often the beneficiary of a fantastic evening out. If you want to know a dark, personal confession (don’t tell James), anything over an hour’s travel time in a metropolitan behemoth simply in pursuit of “the Best ____” has been, in my opinion, rarely worth the trip solely from a food standpoint. That is, I wonder how the meal would compare in a blind taste test among similar competitors in a setting that did not include a hunger-inducing, local/light-rail spanning aperitif.
But the adventure never fails to disappoint. Throw in a few cocktails or some Thai iced tea, add one part hipster snobbery, and the New York City dining scene might sometimes feel clichéd… but never boring.
The following is a nearly verbatim exchange between me and James, the likes of which occurs on a weekly basis. Some might point out apparent exaggerations. I can assure you that any such perceived hyperbole is in fact barely – and I do mean barely – trumped up.
James: Are you coming out to dinner with us tonight? We’re trying this great authentic Tibetan restaurant we haven’t been to yet. It’s called Anyetsang's Little Tibet.
Matt: Oh, great. I like Tibetan food. I think. Where is it?
James: Well, that’s the thing. It’s kind of far, so you should plan on this taking the whole evening.
Matt: Oh, well, okay. I don’t really have friends. Is it out in Brooklyn?
James: No, actually, it’s in Bloomington.
Matt: Bloomington, New York?
James: Er, no. Bloomington, Indiana. But it has a good write-up on Yelp, Indiana might be like the new sixth borough.
Matt: Bloomington, Indiana? That sounds far. How do we get there?
James: It’s easy, really. We’re taking the 1 train from our apartment to 72nd Street, and then transferring to an express 2 train. We take the 2 all the way out to Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn – you remember, that’s where we went to see the hockey game.
Matt: Mm-hm.
James: Right, so then we just hop on the B11 bus to Avenue I and Coney Island Avenue, and make a quick stop at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car depot there.
Matt: Gotcha so far…
James: We rent a car (we already booked one, there’s room for all of us), and from there it’s super easy. We actually drive in an perfectly straight line west for about 780 miles, and we’re there.
Matt: I don’t know, man. I might have to sit this one out. I might be hanging out with some friends from school in a few hours, and you know, it sounds like we might not be back in time, and I don’t want to be the one rushing all of you.
James: Are you sure? I mean, if you’re sure, then that’s cool. But if not, I kinda need to know. I think we’re going to leave really soon because there’s this tiny custard stand off the PA turnpike that I want to swing by on the way back if it’s not too late. They get their own milk from cows from a nearby farm.
Matt: Oh you didn’t say you were getting custard for dessert. Okay, I’ll come.
James: Great. So it’s 4 a.m. now, we want to be on the subway by 5. It’s a 13-hour car ride, so, you know. It’ll be tight for our 7 p.m. dinner reservation. But totally worth it.
This was brought to my attention just now, and while this blog might be late to the game in making fun of this, heck. That doesn't mean I won't try. BBC News has reported about an exciting new business venture, wherein Marlon Jackson (yes, he's one of THE Jacksons) has teamed up with other certifiably insane business partners to create -- and this is a direct quote -- a "slavery memorial and luxury resort" in Nigeria.
If you think the luxury resort part sounds like a poor juxtaposition, read on. In addition to a slave memorial, the park will also include a museum dedicated to the Jackson Five. Because many historians feel that, as a group, no people better exemplify the crushing fallout of the slave trade than the Grammy-winning pop powerhouse of Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon, Michael, and Tito Jackson.
Toyin Falola, Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History at the University of Texas and notable Debbie-Downer, condemns the unique and soulful Jackson Five blend of mass grave monuments and poolside cocktails.
For his own part, when reached for comment by AATM reporter-at-large Jordan Bross, Marlon Jackson responded that he thought the prospects of completing the Nigerian slave memorial and resort hotel plus Jackson Five museum "should be as easy as 1-2-3."
In all seriousness, the success or failure of this project actually has a lot more riding on it than just the Nigerian tourism industry. A similar business venture in Europe has been in the development phase for years, and if Jackson's resort proves to be successful, you can soon attend the grand opening of the Auschwitz Holocaust Memorial and Ritz Karlton Resort and David Hasselhoff Museum.
If anyone is awake right now, you can have a good laugh by frequently refreshing the AATM homepage and watch me and Jordan try to get Twitter to sync up with the website. I'm about to give a real-time tweet about how my computer is being smashed over somebody's head. At this point I can't help but laugh. We have maybe three or four different feeds from two different widgets, NONE OF WHICH ARE FUCKING WORKING.
Reboot. What is a reboot? Cultural theorists theorize that reboot is a literal positioning of re-boot, or to shoe something using the supertonic note in a musical scale. (This assertion has been challenged by Marxist linguists, who consider supertonics to be a false consciousness in modal theory.) Thus, this current iteration of Adam and the Moog is not technically a reboot.
Yet we are back, and better than ever. Unless you liked the old site, in which case we’re simply back, and not quite as entertaining but probably more frequent, which seems to work for marriages so why not internets? After all, what is the internet but a marriage of nerds and fetish porn?
The new AATM will also be fully equipped to feature user-generated content. (If you generate content, we will use you and post items without giving credit.) I wish I could tell you about all the wonderful ideas we have for AATM 2.0. Big, big plans, like actual music production (think “When Falco Met Hüsker Dü” … that’s not what it will sound like, but wow, isn’t that a great sound?). Regular content. More CNN Headlines and chimpanzee attacks (we know you steal from us, Esquire, and we’re not going to bother to fight you; it’s not like you’re GQ). T-shirt designs by Philippe Starck (or his protégé Jordanne Bross). Yes, these are all wonderful ideas that we can’t tell you about because then I will run fleeing from actually following up on this commitment. (The internet, remember, is like a marriage; for those keeping track, a marriage of nerds, Disney costumes with holes cut in key areas, and no promise of commitment.)
The biggest change, however, is the b-word. This site was started with what has become a remarkably lofty goal nowadays on the Internet: to avoid becoming a blog. This goal proved to be a quixotic one, and we quickly found ourselves trapped by… Oh, hell. I’m too lazy to write an online magazine. So blogs are now awesome and the future. Welcome to the AATM blog multiverse. At least we can still hate on Twitter. (Keep an eye out by the way for Matt’s Twitter feed appearing on AATM.)
