Lady Gaga, Daryl Hannah, “Rocks”

1. Lady Gaga, The Fame Monster
   purchased 5/5/17, released 2009
   special picture disc edition
   

   Listening to records again in my new apartment—that I’ve had since 2012—changed my relationship with music more than Spotify did. For years music had been albums, first on vinyl, then on cassette, then on CD, then on itunes.  For me it was always albums. Sometimes I purchased a single or even off of itunes a single song. Being practical it never made sense to buy only the song if the whole album only cost a few dollars more, even if, after listening it turned out every other song was terrible.Then came itunes to ruin the record industry.  Not because people found napster and other methods of getting music for free, but because every time I updated my itunes software, (which itunes FORCES me to do. I HAAAAATE every update that has ever happened to itunes. I mean there has to be some sort of advertising deal that FORCES me to look at the album cover instead of just viewing the artist name. WHAT THE FUCK? Let me make that decision. Do not force me to look at it. It’s MUSIC. And the album cover might be art, but that’s not the art I’m purchasing. If I want to look at the cover art I will. don’t waste space on my devices for artwork I’m not interested in.  I just want to listen to it. So shitty and marketing.) itunes deletes all my music, can’t find the path to it anymore, AND more importantly deletes all of the content of the playlists.  I have about 60 playlists with no songs in them. Really Apple? You can invent a device that can tell traffic all around the world and you can’t write a recovery program for songs in playlists? Come on.
   Now there is Spotify, where we hear music. If it’s not on Spotify, we don’t. Lemonade?  What’s that?
   So now I never bother to purchase music except in album form. I sit home read or write and stack up a bunch of records on my old stacking record player, sometimes all Bach, or all Elvis Costello, and sometimes a whole bunch of stuff mixed up.
   I have never considered purchasing a Lady Gaga record; picking up this one at Bene’s surprised me. Did I fall for the picture disc? I AM a sucker for packaging. Hintron told me I didn’t have to pay for it if it didn’t play on my oldie machine.
   But it does.
   And it’s GREEEEEEAT.
   long live pop music and fabulous women

2. Daryl Hannah, R.I.P.
   1998 Ford Ranger Splash Edition, December 12, 2012- April 6, 2017
   

I bought Daryl Hannah in a fever. In the two months since the hurricane and the death of Red Car, I’d been vehicleless, while being homeless and then moving onto Coffey street apartment. At night, I’d sit on my cold air mattress and bid on Ford Rangers on ebay. Most of them were going for $8000 or more so the $3400 I paid for DH didn’t seem like much until Dogsill and I drove up there to pick her up. Rusted, broken, smelling like a 1980s crack den of cigarettes, and already showing her electrical problem, she’d been hard used and not cared for at all.
The purple bubble lettered “SPLASH” on her side would go tomorrow, I said right then. Instead, by the time I arrived at Chuck’s birthday party I already knew to call her Daryl Hannah and it was going to work.

In the last five years I’ve driven her to Minneapolis twice, to Buffalo countless times. She’s been to DC and to West Virginia, and to Chicago. She’s driven through rivers and through snow.  Her flatbed has been my campsite many an night. I will miss sleeping there.
Perhaps you will be an organ doner; maybe just your tires.
RIP old truck.

3.  Rock Climbing at Brooklyn Boulders
http://brooklynboulders.com/brooklyn/
April 5, 2017 Brooklyn Boulders on Degraw Street

What the fuck is going on in between 3^rd and 4^th Ave in Gawanus? There is a Crossfit, and something that looks exactly like a Crossfit but who knows what it is called. A giant fencing place, a yoga place and then the Brooklyn boulders, where nerds go to climb.
It’s pretty fun. If you’re into that kind of indoors that you pay for thrills.  Better than say a rollercoaster or something, because you have to climb up yourself, and it’s scary and when you do it you feel kinda proud but not tough and definitely not tuff.
The problem with places like this—and the shuffleboard place and all the rest of the adorable easy indoor sports for new York city is that they are for people who aren’t interesting enough to be entertained by their own minds.
I don’t hate this. It’s probably better than yoga and the rest of the bullshit one has to do to stay fit if you live in a city, but so darn uncool. And unpretty. Probably one could do the clothes so they weren’t all pink and neon, our instructor, Stacy wore tasteful gray, but colors indicate the difficulty of the rock climb.
I haven’t grokked this yet; it’s a puzzle, not a sport. That’s the first thing to understand. Or maybe a game. Like a crossword, bowling, or golf. Not about essential athleticism, but about learning the challenge—unlike real rock climbing where it’s man against nature—figuring out how to climb a manmade structure.
So this gets a yes, but I only went because Glo won a gift certificate, you know, because climbing is for nerds. There was a kid who worked at the wine store who went every night, but he’d just moved to New York and had no friends. There are a lot of people climbing, and it’s definitely the kind of place where one would make friends, so it’s social.
If I do stop drinking maybe I become a climbing nerd, though staying home and reading sounds more fun.