Thanks to a shadowy figure cloaked in darkness and mystery, I had two tickets to the Legendary Shack Shakers show at Mercury Lounge on Wednesday. Melissa joined me, and we consumed good beer and mediocre quesadillas at Sixth Ward before heading over. As a venue, I like Mercury Lounge - it is small but the sound is good and there are plenty of places for those of us who are not so tall to stand and see the stage without being precisely front and center.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the Haints; I have Ghost Dance and like it, but I think they’re one of those bands that you appreciate much more after seeing them live. Plus, I mean, there’s a washtub bass. That’s got to count for something.

I had been warned that the Shack Shakers put on a show made of crazy, and I was not disappointed. I was a little too sober and a little too conscious of the fact that I do not own a spare pair of glasses to actually dive into the small pit that developed, but from the side of the stage I could still soak up the madness pretty well. The stage and crowd were both a wild mess of beer and water and sweat and noise, which I figure is pretty much as it should be. All in all it was a good time, and I am happy to have finally experienced a Shack Shakers show for myself.

Here’s what I’m playing at the moment:

• Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise: I was very much a fan of the original Viva Piñata, and I’d been anticipating the sequel for quite some time. While it’s true that it’s more like an expansion than a true sequel, and much of the game remains identical to its predecessor, there’s enough new material there that it has captured many an evening over the past few weeks. I look forward to investigating the online play a little more as more of my friends pick up the game.
• World of Warcraft: Yeah, still. Only a little, though – the Brewfest holiday is going on right now, and we all know how I feel about goofy holiday content. I always imagine that someday I’ll cancel my account, but while I often go a few weeks without logging in, I still keep coming back to it.
• Fire Words: This is a quick little word game for the iPhone that has become my default subway pastime. It’s entertaining, allows me to listen to my own music (unlike Bejewelled), launches quickly and can be stopped at a moment’s notice, and lets me use profanity. I really see no downsides.

Yeah, yeah. I know you’re far too cynical for politics. But just watch it, ok? Unless you already did. In which case, you have my permission to spend the next three quarters of an hour napping or drinking tea.

For extra credit, you may also watch this one and think about what happens when folks just don’t feel like voting.

As someone who is approaching a decade of life in New York, I’ve long since mastered the skill of ignoring people on the sidewalk who wish to hand me something, and people holding clipboards who wish to talk to me about something. Generally the latter are involved in some kind of Cause, which is all well and good, but I tend to pick my own causes and am unlikely to be swayed by the practiced spiel of a college kid in a windbreaker.

The former sidewalk group, the ones who wish to hand me something, are typically recruiting for a religion. (I’m setting aside the people who flyer for strip clubs, because as a female I usually not their target audience.) For the most part they’re Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, but sometimes one encounters the occasional cluster of Jews for Jesus. As with the cause people, it’s great that the religion people have found something to occupy their time. Were I in the market for a new religion, however, the sidewalk is not where I would go shopping.

I mention all of this by way of explaining that coming into physical contact with Bible tracts and other religious literature is such an unusual event for me that I was actually startled to discover a pamphlet called “Does GOD Love You?” in a recent order of jewelry supplies from a seller on Etsy. (The answer, by the way, is yes - but what with the rapture coming soon I’d better start repenting or I’ll still be sucked into a fiery pit of etc etc.) I wasn’t entirely sure how to react, at first. Surely negative Etsy feedback wasn’t in order, although it was a little disconcerting to be told I’m going to hell when all I asked for was some earring backs.

Now, though, I think I’ve got it figured out. To thank the seller for alerting me to the impending destruction of the Earth, I will reply with this vital information about who will be eaten first.

Whenever a new Apple product comes out, all of my acquaintances who pay attention to Apple products (either because they are fond of them or because they hate them to the very depths of their souls) seem to feel the need to find me to discuss the new Apple product and ask if I’m getting one. So in the interest of not having the same iPhone conversation another twenty times in the next week, here then are some collected thoughts about All This iPhone Stuff.

I did not buy an iPhone 3G on Friday, and indeed have not bought one at all. This has more to do with the fact that I hate lines than the fact that I shelled out $600 just last summer, but of course it is perfectly true that I already have a functional iPhone with nary a mark on it. I have no real excuse for upgrading as I spend very little time in WiFi-free areas, but that doesn’t mean I won’t talk myself into it anyway. Ask me again in a couple of months.

What I did do on Friday, of course, is upgrade to iPhone 2.0. I thought that by waiting until the software was officially out I was being exceedingly clever and admirably patient, but friends and co-workers who sneakily upgraded the night before made sure to gloat as I sat through a multi-hour download the morning of the 11th with several million other people. My phone and I both survived, though, and the App Store turns out to be rad enough to make it worthwhile.

As for apps I like, here is a brief and incomplete sampling:

• Twitterrific Premium: I use the Mac version and am fond of it. The iPhone version is just as good, though it’s true that the scrolling isn’t as smooth as I’d like.
• Bejeweled 2: It is likely that you already know by now whether you are the kind of person who likes Bejeweled or the kind of person who hates it, and hates people who like it. I like it, myself, and while I’d prefer something like Puzzle Quest this is certainly a good subway time-suck.
• CityTransit: The maps could certainly stand to be a little higher resolution, as many of the iTunes reviews note, but it does more or less what I expected it to. Worth the three bucks if you live in New York.
• Enigmo: A wise creature recently introduced me to the Mac version of Enigmo, and I liked it so much that I bought this one, too. The controls are a little trickier without a mouse, but all in all it translates pretty well.

<Nicole> BURGER!
<emmastory> you burgerfiend
<Nicole> it is true
<Nicole> I have perfectly good Thai leftovers
<Nicole> but I WANT MY MEAT!
<Nicole> haha
<emmastory> meatbeast
<Nicole> GROSS
<emmastory> BEAST OF MEAT
<Nicole> and if you don’t help me get my meat
<Nicole> by taking me to Shack
<Nicole> I will eat YOU!
<Nicole> RRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
<emmastory> you pick terrible Shack days
<Nicole> ROOOOOOOOOOOARRRRRRRRRRR
<emmastory> it needs to be a non-rainy, non-humid day
<Nicole> haha
<Nicole> then where else around here is good for a burger?
<Nicole> TELL ME
<Nicole> rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
<emmastory> Jake’s, but we already went there
<Nicole> OK
<Nicole> THINK OF ANOTHER ONE, STORY!
<emmastory> I am a-feared
<Nicole> YOUR LIFE IS AT STAKE
<emmastory> MA MA THE MEAT-BEAST IS A-COMIN’
<Nicole> I WILL EAT YOU!!!
<emmastory> GET THE KIDS AND RUN
<Nicole> AND THEN CHEW ON YOUR BONES!!
<Nicole> AND SUCK OUT THE JUICY MARROW!!!
<Nicole> FOR AN AFTERNOON SNACK!
<emmastory> that’s actually kind of hot
<emmastory> tell me more
<Nicole> eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww
<emmastory> you know this is blog-fodder, right
<Nicole> OH CRAP
<Nicole>
<emmastory> YUR IN TRUBBLE NOW

One of my email addresses is estory@gmail.com. Much like Kerry Miller, I get a ton of email for other people named E. Story who don’t seem to know what their email address actually is. The most egregious offender in this regard is one Evan Story, who not only gave my email address to his mom but also to potential employers, headhunters, and his gym. Here is a small selection of some of my favorite Evan emails, with some identifying details blurred or cropped.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some shitty things about traveling over Memorial Day weekend:

1. Getting up at 4:30am on a Saturday morning to catch an early train to Boston;
2. Not being able to score a seat in the Quiet Car on an early train to Boston and, consequently, spending four hours listening to screeching children;
3. Getting a seat in the Quiet Car on the way home and having everyone else pretend it is not actually the Quiet Car;
4. All public bathrooms in all train stations, everywhere.

Here are some awesome things about traveling over Memorial Day weekend:

1. Polishing off one novel and one fantastic nonfiction anthology plus the latest issues of The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and a chunk of the Sunday Times;
2. Exquisite steak tips fresh off the grill;
3. Nine to eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep per night;
4. Going laptop-free for nearly three days;
5. Non-Christmas, non-wedding family gatherings;
6. Coming home to a bitey cat and his less-bitey owner, who thoughtfully ordered Chinese food so that we might all collapse on the couch and watch Discovery Channel until bedtime.

<stl> Want to hear something shocking?
<emma> I do
<stl> There has only been one update to caoine.org in May, and that was three weeks ago.
<emma> I know, I know
<emma> I am a terrible person
<stl> It’s not that I’m saying you absolutely must update with the frequency of years past, but you know I just can’t ever get enough emma.
<emma> I will endeavor to satisfy your cravings
<stl> Fabulous.
<emma> I used to have time to mostly do that stuff during the day
<emma> I no longer do
<stl> Actually I had been blaming Twitter.
<emma> I think if it weren’t for twitter I would produce no content at all
<stl> That would cause much sadness.
<emma> Maybe I will just post this whole conversation
<emma> By way of explaining things
<stl> It’s too bad that I’ve said nothing witty or profound.
<emma> There is still some time if you act quickly
<stl> Sometimes I drive into Hollywood at 4 AM to get a handjob from a transsexual prostitute.
<stl> Wait.
<emma> Scene!

I’m no longer sure exactly how I found out about This American Life — I suppose someone or several people must have recommended it, because a couple years back I subscribed to the podcast version. It remains one of only two podcasts from which I have never unsubscribed, and which I listen to every week. I’ve caught up on dozens of older episodes, too, from the pre-podcast days; I feel confident in saying that it’s by far my favorite offering from any of the various public radio organizations.

So when I happened to hear a few weeks ago about some sort of This American Life live show that was happening at one of the NYU theaters, I bought tickets without thinking twice. I wasn’t really sure what a live stage version of a radio show would be like, but I figured it was bound to be worth seeing.

The show was last night, and I can confirm that it was, indeed, worth seeing. You may have heard about it, actually, if you follow technology news, because one of the interesting things about it is that it wasn’t just a stage show. It was a stage show that was broadcast, live and in HD, to movie theaters all over the country. The sheer technical logistics required to pull this off are pretty daunting if you think about them, and certainly we as the audience were aware that we were watching something unusual when we saw that the theater was full of pretty serious brodcasting equipment. Outside, there were a couple of trucks with their own wifi network my iPhone picked up and an oversized satellite dish.

But once the show actually got underway, I didn’t think much about the cameras except when a guy with a Steadicam wandered onto the stage once in a while, or the house lights would come up so they could get a shot of the audience. Because as it turns out, Ira Glass is exactly as capitvating on stage as he is on the radio, once you get past the deeply unsettling feeling that results from hearing a familiar radio voice coming out of an utterly unfamiliar head.

Much of the discussion was about the process of translating the radio show to television, as the second season of the Showtime series is starting on Sunday. I don’t subscribe to Showtime, but I did buy the first season when it became available in the iTunes store, and after the clips I saw last night I’m really looking forward to the second season. So to the extent that the event was probably at least in part designed to get us excited about the television series again, it was certainly a success. But I just enjoyed soaking up my favorite radio show in a completely different format, and I hope they do something like it again soon.