2002-09-30 - 1:30 p.m.

Ted spun some at this weird bar on the LES the other Thursday. It was a late night for sure, too much for these old bones. If only that thing had jumped off on a weekend, I could have satisfied my dance jones.

(The Bang in Ann Arbor seems to serve this purpose to the hilt and with panache, or so I read via livejournals and d-lands. They should get city funding for that shit -- it sounds like a necessary public service the way people rave about it. Also in relation to the Bang, JD talked some smack about Jeremy "Fisher King" Sal-mon, a dude you never want to get cornered by at a party, on Kingfishaman's livejournal. Social skills: some people got 'em...)

Anyway, Ted played this band called The Hounds. It's mid-eighties metal. Kinda Zep, kinda a preview of the G'n'R to come. It's hot. It's scorching. It's nowhere to be found on the chatbox, neither. And that's almost criminal, but at the same time refreshing.

Meanwhile the dance-dependent areas of my brain and anatomy go unfulfilled. I'm so desperate that this weekend over at Sue's and Chris's I used the language of dance to explain my take on the difference between New Order and Joy Division. What a gratuitous display that was.

Speaking of music, I swindled this old Park Slope hippie out of some choice discs this weekend. I was leaving Nami's to go shower and get ready to go to the Guggenheim (where we ended up running into Kate randomly) so I was in a bit of a hurry. But the day and the route through the park that I tend to take were so beautiful, I decided to dawdle just a bit. Come to find a block party on my street between 8th and the park -- white people everywhere eating hot dogs and what not. Spied a huge pile of records for sale in the stoop sale district of the block party, and figured that this might be virgin record territory. How right I was. I was so geeked by what I found that I put some shit back so as not to seem greedy.

Most of the discs and covers were worn but I ended up grabbing:

The Byrds: Younger Than Yesterday

Emmylou Harris, Pieces of the Sky

Boogie Down Productions: Criminal Minded (This was was near mint, dude)

Stones: Sticky Fingers (Zipper torn off, unfortunately)

Leonard Cohen: Songs of...

Not a bad haul. Not that it means much, but I think every one of those made Mojo's little book that lists 1,000 "essential" CDs.

Next step was to find the vendor. Or vender, as the New Yorker spells it. After asking a few rich middle-aged liberals, I spotted my man in a beige hat.

"These are yours?" I ask him, approaching.

"Yup, a dollar each." He takes them out of my hand, looking at each one. I start fishing around in my wallet for a five. Meanwhile, he's naming off the records. "The Boids," he says, in mock Brooklynese.

"Got a five?" I ask, waving a ten.

"Why?"

"Because I have a ten."

"Hrm...All right." Mumbling, "Suzie brought these down today..." He's kicking himself for not approving his wife's choices of what records to sell off that fateful Saturday. I'm in a hurry and ready to close the transaction. I feel bad for an instant, but not that bad. He hands over the fiver for change and I book. Giddy as a thief.