“[O]n every previous launch day I’ve got out to the parking lot of this same mall at somewhere around 3:30 to 4:00 in the morning — and have been at least among the first 25 in line (sometimes within the first 10). But by store opening time at 8AM the line easily stretched into the hundreds for the first few launches.

Today at 8AM there were 16 of us in line for the iPad Air.”
 — There are photos, but you alone can judge your tolerance for a tragedy on this scale.

by Alan Hanson

Funeral Selfies

What a fine time to be alive! Quick rundown on ME: I’m a fun loving radical anarchist who stops for garage sales, goes all in for allspice, and enjoys a low-cal beer bong. I’ve got feet for hands and my hobbies include Godzilla, being ~cheeky~, and totally breaking down barriers, whether they be social, cultural, political, or literal barriers at concerts, sporting events, Thanksgiving Day parades et. al, because CAN’T TELL ME NOTHIN and also HARDER BETTER FASTER STRONGER. Whip the lambo when drunk but still got love for PETA. You see, we out here, and we are the change we want to see in the world. Social media maven and/or guru, possibly a ninja, and this is the new world, baby, welcome to the future, it’s right in front of your stupid fucking facetime screen and I’m just holding up a mirror to society, dog, and reflecting on my permanent impermanence, contextualizing a millennial trend in the face of Death and his Sexy Souls, who are actually playing The Echo tonight, and I like totes know the doorman, we should go, P-fork gave ’em a 6.66 which is the ULTIMATE these days. All Hail Satan, then go ahead and hail me, too, cause I’m worth it.

Speedy Ortiz’s “No Below”

I’m pretty late on this album but I finally got around to stealing it and thanks to this song now I spend my stretched, gray days crawling on my hands and knees, picking up pieces of all the precious things I’ve forgotten and trying to stuff them in my pockets, wheezing with the wind knocked the fuck out of me for the entire foreseeable future, transporting thirty-three slabs of cold concrete strapped to my back, buried and beaming, trying not to cry with my whole legible face in every meeting, in every elevator, in every subway car.

Sky Ferreira’s “Night Time, My Time”

In which my girlfriend and I disagree over gchat:

Me: I mean, just listen to the album.

She: I am rn. It’s fine. It’s trendy. “Remember the 80s” “I don’t.” “I’m 20.”

Me: Rolling my eyes.

She: I’m tired of white teens singing love songs written by other people. Or I’m too old for it. “You’re not the one.” No shit. You’re six years old.

Me: Ageism!

She: Taste!

Me: I just meant, teens are allowed to have feelings. They’re not supposed to be mature yet.

She: I know that. But in her case it emphasizes the disconnect between her and what she’s singing. She’s narrating stock photos. Vague, relationship-y lyrics. Heavy aesthetic. She’s cute, they’re hoping we’ll buy it.

Me: I’m not saying it’s art.

She: You’re saying it’s good. It’s average. It’s on the good end of average, for sure.

Me: I’d rather listen to her version of those basics, with this production, over most anything else on the radio.

She: It’s v listenable but it’s not compelling. She doesn’t have a personality. I’m not invested in anything that she says ’cause I don’t know who she is. And she mumbles the lyrics anyway.

Me: All right, but were you convinced who Katy Perry was fresh out the gate?

She: That EP had a voice.

Me: Imagine you’d never seen her documentary.

She: I liked her long before the documentary. The EP was cool and funny and talked about MySpace and the internet and the kind of guys you meet on the internet, long before music acknowledged the internet. And I was like 19 or whatever at the time and like, “oh, this is funny, she’s funny.” Then she became a giant pop star but she had a voice. Still. A Katy Perry song doesn’t sound like a Rihanna song doesn’t sound like a Britney Spears song. Idk, Sky Ferreira won’t matter in two years. She’s a nap.

Me: Sure, and you’ll shit on this but these Sky songs don’t sound like other songs either. They might remind you of things, but so does half of “PRISM.”

She: I don’t think it’s fair to say half. “Walking On Air”, sure. But it expounds upon it. Sky is just mimicking.

Me: Back to what I said, lyrical content and personality aside, I can listen to this and nod my head and feel pretty cool about it rather than cringing at nearly every Aviici/Lumineers/Whatever whatever is floating around the pop atmosphere. So for that, I will say it’s “good” because it’s deff better than average.

She: Right. I already conceded that.

Me: I’m having a good time when I listen to it. I would try heroin with Sky Ferreira in an attempt to have two hours of weird fun even though the next morning would be horrible. I’m down for the ride. The scuzzy, filthy, ride.

She: Gross!

Halloween

Ghouls on ghouls, my morning started packed underground Bryant Park with a smiling man hammering out the spookiest melodies on an accordion half his size which played me down the tunnel to the blue-haired amNewYork woman who is cheery and blue-haired always, not just on Halloween, but now I notice. Beer at work, cat ears poking out of cubicles, “Monster Mash” in the kitchen and then steampunk filled subways and NYU a true living nightmare, cops and co-eds everywhere. On the way home from the party, which was quiet in the right way, tasting cherry moonshine still on my tongue, I pass a couple chopping cocaine on a low wall on 150th St. and the woman, watching her boyfriend make the lines with eager eyes, exclaims “happy Halloween!” and it was and I felt it and wet leaves never looked so good.

Alan Hanson is a Californian writer living in Harlem.

If you enjoyed Willis Earl Beal, “Coming Through” (Featuring Chan Marshall) you will probably also like “Willis Earl Beal and Cat Power performing some of Bob Dylan’s ‘Pledging My Time’ and Cat Power’s ‘Colors And The Kids.’” This starts out as the kind of performance we generously characterize as “loose” but you get these two together and you can’t stop a certain kind of beauty from busting out. [Via]

The man who mocked Boston only did it because people in Boston are so insecure that it is pretty easy to get a rise out of them.

“A clever barista turned the Astor Row Cafe’s ‘B’ rating into a more desirable offering, mixing it with some ingredients from the alphabet to serve up ‘brunch.’”
 — This is great, except for the part where I’m going to hear it as “bee-runch” in my head from now on, and also I guess the part about the “evidence of mice or live mice.” I mean, I’m not saying I live in conditions that are any better. It’s New York, there’s always something creeping around there in the dark. [Photo via]

It looks like there is no wine shortage after all, and the Sriracha is safe for another year! Now what will the Internet panic about? Probably nothing. I think we can all assume that the Internet has learned its lesson and will from this moment forward approach all news stories with a measure of skepticism and restraint and hahaha no I can’t do this with a straight face either.

He wouldn’t take the tinfoil-clad bucket off his head, so we don’t know who this hero is who got off the F train last night at Bergen Street. But we caught a glimpse of him as he got fairly mangled in the subway turnstile exit, and so if you see a bald-ish English-ish man with a ton of brutal costume-related cuts on his hands today, buy him lunch, for he is a hero of Halloween.

I’m not sure I can even explain why this was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. It didn’t help that the woman with him kept saying “YOU’RE SUCH A SCARY ROBOT” and he would just say “GRRRRRR.”

God bless us everyone.

Remember when the Police Commissioner of the City of New York showed up in L.A. for the Academy Awards and everyone was all, “Wha?” Or when he sent a couple of the cops to the house of woman who was in a car accident with his wife? Or that time a few years back when he hit a pregnant lady with his SUV and drove away? Man, it all seems so long ago. Anyway, former Police Commissioner Howard Safir wants you to worry that we might return to the days of rampant lawlessness and criminality here in town, and it’s a warning we should probably heed, because who would know better?

Change your stupid Twitter name.