Hello, turn your radio on

Playlist from last night:

Elliot Smith - Independence Day
k.d. lang - Hain't It Funny
Sonic Youth - Superstar
John Vanderslice - The Mansion
The Television Personalities - All the Young Children on Crack
Nous Non Plus - Fille Atomique
Rufus Wainwright - Grey Gardens
Aluminum Group - Tiny Decisions
Canasta - Shadowcat
The Streets - Never Went to Church
The Go! Team - Huddle Flash
Josephine Baker - Don't Touch Me Tomatoes
The Fiery Furnaces - I'm in No Mood

Cocteau Twins - Carolyn's Fingers
Andrew Bird - Trimmed and Burning
Goldfrapp - Let It Take You
Stephin Merritt - Ukelele Me!
The Pogues and Kirsty McColl - Miss Otis Regrets / Just One of Those Things
Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Wig in a Box
Sergent Garcia - Jumpi Jumpi

I would say the show was less successful than the previous week, but still pretty good. Next week I'll be off, and returning to the airwaves the week after.

Labels: playlists

posted by Tony at 1:06 PM | 2 comments

The return of Finn and Charlie

DJing takes up a lot of my energy, but I am determined to keep drawing. I think I will focus on making for Hitched cartoons. Here's one from a while back that I never posted.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 4:48 PM | 0 comments

You turn me on, I'm a radio

Last Saturday's playlist went like this:

Talking Heads - I Zimbra
The Meat Purveyors - Round and Round (a bluegrass cover of Ratt's heavy metal hit from the 80's)
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Honeybear
Loose Fur - Apostolic
Family Fodder - Deep Time
Spank Rock - Bump
Stereoloab - Eye of the Volcano
Danger Adventure - Langley
The Free Design - Bubbles
Stephin Merritt - Sounds Expensive
Nina Simone - Here Comes the Sun
Laurie Anderson - Big Science
Hank Williams - I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
Bobby Bare Jr. - Adorable Beast
Björk - It's Not up to You
Sufjan Stevens - Sleeping Bear, Sault Sainte Marie
Les Innocents - Les Moutons
The Essex Green - Snakes in the Grass
The Pansy Division - Luv Luv Luv
The Headlights - Centuries
Low Skies - You Can't Help Those People
The Wolfgang Press - Sucker (young mix)

And I got two compliments from strangers. One said he really liked my eclectic mix (he had a request, but we didn't have it, and I didn't end up with time to insert an alternate selection). The other said, though the word was overused and he didn't want to contribute to that, my combination of Nina Simone and Laurie Anderson was "genius". Yes, a stranger called me a genius on the phone. This does not happen to me terribly often. So that was gratifying.

Sometimes I think to myself, why do I want to be a DJ? I got into it mainly because I like music, but there are other ways to express that. A big part of being a DJ, I'm beginning to realize, is that there's an audience, and you are trying to give that audience something good to listen to. You are trying to make them hear something that they hadn't heard before, or maybe hear something in a way they hadn't before.

So think I like this gig.

Labels: playlists

posted by Tony at 10:04 PM | 0 comments

Driving around Spain

I drew this picture — two pictures, really — to illustrate a lot of what it was like driving around in Spain. This is the interactive image I promised: mouse-over it to see what Eric and Mila are up to in the back seat:

Yeah... so while Eli and I were desperately trying to follow signs and not get lost, Eric and Mila were working on keeping Yelena amused in the back seat. Sure it wasn't like this every time we got in the car... but somehow, this is the way I remember it (fondly).

Labels: drawings, journal, personal, spain

posted by Tony at 6:31 PM | 2 comments

Radio Silence

Tonight's show began with... 13 minutes of silence. No, not the John Cage piece played three times in a row... but actual dead air silence. Not my fault! Nothing I could do about it! One minute before I was to go on the air, the power went out in the entire building that houses the radio station. Poof! Nothing.

Not knowing what to do, I ran outside to find somebody official-looking, and found one of those emergency phones that campuses put out everywhere. I figured this was an emergency... dead air! dead air! emergency! The guy at dispatch told me that they were aware of the problem and were working on fixing it as fast as possible.

So I went back and waited. I called Eric; he said what was coming through our speakers at home was not so much silence as a dull hum.

And here I'd planned out the first 9 tracks of my show already, so that I would be able to start the show feeling less stressed. So I piled up those 9 CDs and waited. And eventually the power came back on.

And I played the following:

• Sonic Youth - Tunic (Song for Karen)
  
• Made in Mexico - Face of the Earth
  (A Providence band! No, I do not know them. Yes, I probably know someone who does.)
  
• Up the Empire - Stars at Noon
  
• Calexico - Lucky Dime
  
• John Vanderslice - Exodus Damage
  
• Edith Frost - It's a Game
  
• Stereolab - Interlock
  
• The B-52s - Channel Z
  
• Le Tigre - Tell You Now
  
• The Go Team - Huddle Flash
  
• New Order - Age of Consent
  
• Of Montreal - Disconnect the Dots
  
• Sugarcubes - Hit
  
• Os Mutantes - Preciso Urgentemente Encontrar Um Amigo
  (="I urgently need to find a friend")
  
• Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, and Os Mutantes - Parque Industrial
  
• Television Personalities - My Dark Places
  
• Quasar Wut-Wut - Pulling Yams

And I managed to tape the show, finally. This should give me some good feedback. Am I too quiet? Do I smack my lips? Do I say "um" too much? Probably "yes"...

Labels: playlists

posted by Tony at 8:14 PM | 1 comments

Not on the whole a fussy baby

It has been commented to me that I have perhaps given an impression of young Yelena on our travels that is not fair. Frankly it surprises me that anyone is reading much of what I've written about our trip to Spain; I expect people to say to me, oh yes, I saw that you'd written about your trip, and I meant to read it, but I didn't have time just then, and then I never got around to it.

In any event, let me clear something up: Yelena is not, on the whole, a fussy baby. Did she fuss from time to time? Yes. Did we need to adjust what we were doing sometimes because she was fussy? Of course. Did I write about this? Apparently. But put yourselves in the booties of a 7-month-old in on a European vacation: your nap times are completely disrupted, your sleep schedule is off, everything smells different, and your world no longer revolves around you. Would you not pitch a fit? Well, Yelena pitched no fits. She just fussed a little from time to time.

I wish I could say the same thing for the other children around us. I recall sitting at the Café-Bar Altamira in Seville near a Spanish family with a ~3-year-old boy who was wailing and wailing for no discernable reason — old enough to know better, and old enough to communicate, yet sobbing and moaning as though he'd just been told Santa Claus was dead. It was really unseemly.

So Yelena was in fact a very good baby, especially considering the stress of travel. She did her parents proud on many an occasion.


Eric holding Yelena aloft at Café Modesto in Seville
Meanwhile: I have one more sketch to post from the trip. It's interactive, and it's taking me extra time to put it together. ("Interactive, what does he mean? We shall have to wait and see!") And if you do read my journals, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that I reveal the meaning of life right smack in the middle, somewhere after the point where I describe what we ate.

Labels: journal, personal, spain

posted by Tony at 9:35 PM | 0 comments

Radio Free Europe

My DJ set went OK last night. I forget my headphones and so I couldn't hear myself, which threw me off. I stuttered, umm-ed and smacked my lips, all of which are BAD radio habits I must break myself of. Anyway, in spite of it all I thought it was a pretty good set.

I kept a copy of my playlist, for the first time. Voici:

Throwing Muses - Golden Thing
Magnetic Fields - Washington D.C.
Sondre Lerche and the Faces Down Quartet - The Curse of Being in Love

Calexico - Roka
Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day (by request)
The Sea and Cake - Lamont's Lament

zZz - Roses
eX-Girl - Hettakorii No Ottakorou
Pere Ubu - Ubu Dance Party

Ojos de Brujo - Color (something I picked up in Spain)
Matthew Dear - Send You Back
Bobby Conn - No Revolution

Mountain Goats - First Few Desperate Hours (by request from Laura)
Low Skies - Stone Mountain

Beach Boys - I'm Waiting for the Day
Gogol Bordello - Immigrant Punk (by request)
Up the Empire - Starfuck (which I referred to as "Starbleep" on air)

Stereolab - Visionary Road Map
The Aluminum Group - I Blow You Kisses
The Talking Heads - Found a Job

I also had a request for something I couldn't fill, because it's not in the catalog... but I can play it next week, because I can bring it from home: The B-52's, Channel Z.

Labels: playlists

posted by Tony at 1:32 PM | 0 comments

Leaving Spain

We woke up early and took three ungodly overpopulated rush-hour subway trains to the airport. The first train was too full for us with out bags, and we had to take the second one that arrived. Our connecting train was crowded, but we made it in (though for a time I had to stand awkwardly, with all my weight on the ball of one foot). The final train was so crowded we couldn’t even get into the trainside waiting area until two trains had filled up and left. Still, we made it to the airport in reasonable time, especially since Eric’s flight was cancelled and he was put on a later flight. We ate together at the airport – ham sandwiches, so last night was not the last ham – and Eric walked me to the bus stop so that I could go to my terminal, the newly-built and remotely-located T4.

T4 was a multi-building pavilion-like space with undulating high ceilings. To get to my gate, I had to take an underground train (sort of like a horizontal elevator) to the other building.

My flight was, of course, delayed (as Mila and Eli’s turned out to be, as well). Why? Labor unrest and transportation strikes in France, whose airspace we needed to use.

For whatever reason, British Air bumped me up to first class, which was lovely. I had no such luck with my American flight from London.

A rather sick Susan very kindly met me at the airport in Chicago. I got back to the house to find the first daffodils in full bloom, as if to say, welcome home, we missed you! The cats were, naturally, apeshit, but they calmed down after extensive and concentrated snuggling.


Tony, Eric, Yelena, Mila, and Eli in Granada

Labels: journal, personal, spain

posted by Tony at 7:56 PM | 0 comments

to Madrid

We got up fairly early to pack, check out, and walk to the train station. It looked like a long distance on the map, but it only took about 15 minutes. We had breakfast there – café con leche, fresh squeezed orange juice, and something called a tostada completa. I was thinking that “completa” would imply that the toast would come well filled, perhaps with ham. As Eric pointed out later, it’s better to just ask for what you want. Still, what I learned is that tostada completa means a toasted roll with butter. Then I thought, this seems familiar; maybe I did know this already. Anyway, there was a little pitcher tomato sauce (the sort of pitcher that serves maple syrup in the US) on the counter, and following the lead of a middle aged woman ahead of me, I liberally doused our tostadas with tomato sauce. They were good, though with ham would have been better. The juice, meanwhile, was exactly what I wanted it to be – tart, refreshing Sevillian orange juice.

The train was pretty nice. Eric reported that it was not as nice the first class train had been, but still better than a plane. We did not eat anything on the train. Eric read and I attempted to draw La Marquesita, with marginal success. Looking out the window, you would think that the Spanish survived on olives alone – nearly all the agriculture we saw was olive groves.

We arrived in Madrid and I found it to be vaguely familiar (I had been there for about 3 days in 1999). The walk from the train station to the hotel was actually quite long, and mostly uphill. We could have taken the subway, but decided not to bother. Walking is healthy!

Our hotel is a on the third floor of a building on Plaza Santa Cruz (so unintentionally, we went from Santa Cruz to Santa Cruz). Plaza Santa Cruz is right next to the Plaza Mayor, which in Madrid is a large, elaborate, rectangular, Habsburg creation. Our hotel, meanwhile, is like many hostals in Spain: inexpensive, clean, and tackily decorated. It will serve quite well. But on to lunch! We were ravenous.

We strolled around for maybe 20 minutes before settling on a restaurant called Chiky that was close to our hotel and had outdoor seating on a pedestrian street. We started with an iberico plate consisting of two kinds of sausage (one with ground pimiento and the other without), plus serrano ham and manchego (or something similar) cheese. Generally, as I approach the end of a trip to Spain, I start to feel that I haven’t had enough ham products; I do the same thing in France with duck confit and steak tartare. As a main dish, Eric had cochinillo (suckling pig) with crispy skin, and I had cod with ajillo. (Funny how it always feels so Iberian to have cod, even though the cod has traveled almost as far as I have to get there.) Dessert was an egg flan for Eric and a baked apple for me; both were more or less lackluster.

Eric wanted to go to the department store El Corte Inglés – we’d been in Seville, and bought some things, but wanted to go again. Would it be open on Sunday? Yes… it’s open the first Sunday of the month; what luck! We bought more euro-underwear (why is their underwear so much better than ours?), picked up some goodies from the supermarket in the basement, and stopped in the music store to by an album by Ojos de Brujo, a band from Andalusia that combines traditional flamenco with modern styles like rock and hip-hop.

We left and wandered around town. We ended up in the Parque del Retiro, which is a nice large park, sort of a cross between the Luxembourg Gardens and Central Park. We stopped at a café in the park for some coffee, but they didn’t have any, so we had beer instead – not the sort of substitution that you’ll find recommended in a cookbook. Oddly, though, we did feel less tired.

From the Parque del Retiro, we crossed town again to the Palácio Real (Royal Palace). The park next to it was beginning to fill with folks on their paseo, and the sun was beginning to set.

I pulled out the guidebook to find places for dinner that wouldn’t be too far away. The area south of the Plaza Major is known as Madrid a los Austrias, since it was developed under the Habsburgs, and it had a few recommended tapas places. We were tired and not exceptionally hungry, so good tapas seemed like an excellent choice for a last meal.

We headed into the Madrid a los Austrias area, and found ourselves descending into a madhouse of 20-year-old Spaniards and tourists. All the recommended places were spilling over with noisy 20-year-olds. Was the food good? I have no idea. I was too tired for that nonsense, so we headed back to the Plaza Mayor for something quieter, yet overpriced.

We stopped first at a promising place just outside the Plaza Mayor. Well, somewhat promising… I had trouble finding a menu in Spanish; all the ones scattered here and there were in English or German. I prefer a Spanish menu, because I know the names of the dishes in Spanish but don’t know how they will be translated in English. I was not able to order sherry again. As Eric pointed, we were no longer in sherry territory. The waiter had no idea what I meant when I asked for “fino” – he replied, “¿vino?” So I had mineral water – no bubbles, as they were out of that – and Eric had beer. We decided to have just one dish, a tapa of ham croquetas, which were unspecial.

We left there and headed to a place in the corner of the Plaza Major (Restaurant Carmen, I think) that I’d noticed earlier. It was pretty good, actually. I ordered a tapa of lomo de puerco (preserved pork loin, not entirely unlike Italian coppa), and red wine (Marques de Caceres, which we often buy in Chicago). Eric had another beer. While we waited for the lomo, the proprietor invited us to take a peek at his dining room, a beautiful space in the 300-year-old vaulted brick basement. We also served us little tapa of mussels with peppers and onion, and octopus and zucchini sliced and served on bread, which were both pretty good. The lomo was delicious, and satisfied my need for one last ham before leaving town.

And so to bed!

Labels: journal, personal, spain

posted by Tony at 11:40 PM | 0 comments

Seville: cathedrals and flamenco

We met Mila and Eli outside their hotel in the morning, and went around the corner for breakfast at Café de Indias. Café de Indias is a small Spanish chain that focuses on tea, but also serves coffee and breakfast items. I'd been there before, and knew that it was OK; we went there because it was easy. But I don't think it was a good idea. It doesn't feel like a very Spanish experience, what with all the tea.

I had a "baguette tosdada" with serrano ham, that is, a toasted sandwich stuffed with ham, made from a short baguette (rather than the usual Spanish roll). Eric and Mila had baguettes tosdadas too — ham and olive oil for Eric, tortilla española for Mila (that is, Mila essentially ate an omelet sandwich).

Eli, on the other hand, surprised us all by ordering the English breakfast ("desayuno inglés").

Eric, Eli, and I had standard cafés con leche, while Mila had hot chocolate (a local specialty), which was almost as thick as pudding. At my advice, Mila, Eli, and I had fresh-squeezed orange juice, too. Typically the orange juice in Seville is made from a tarter variety of orange, and is very refreshing; this juice was I think made from more standard oranges, but still quite yummy. (Hey, fresh-squeezed orange juice! Always tasty.)

Mila went back to the hotel to tend to a somewhat cranky Yelena, while the rest of us went souvenir shopping. Well, really it was Eli; Eric and I only bought and handful of postcards. Eli bought a few nice and/or fun things for family.

For lunch we ate at the recommended Café Restaurant Modesto, also around the corner from Mila & Eli's hotel. It was good but not great, especially for the price. It was also the same place where Eric, Susanne, and I had our first meal in Seville 2 1/2 years ago.

We got a pitcher of sangría — our first and only one on the trip. It was OK. It had a rather strong brandy taste. Mila, Eli, and I opted for bowls of gazpacho, knowing full well that it was the wrong time of year for it. It tasted like gazpacho made with winter tomatoes, I’m afraid, although once they added the chopped peppers, onion, egg, croutons, and whatnot, it was pretty good. Eric instead started out with a roasted piquillo pepper salad. (Piquillos are rather like sweet red peppers with a nice sharpness to them... not exactly spicy, just characterful.) I also ordered, to share with everyone, a plate of lettuce hearts with smoked salmon and seasoned with ajillo (toasted garlic and olive oil). That was quite delicious, even though it seemed to be missing the bonito that was also supposed to come with it.

Mila and I both ordered, for our main dishes, something called taquitos de bacalao, which was described as a typical Sevillian preparation. It was basically chunks of cod batter-dipped and deep fried, sort of like fish and chips without the chips. It came with a little onion relish, and was tasty, but a bit too single-note for a main dish. Also worth noting: “taquito” in Spain means something completely different from what it means in Mexico. I didn’t expect them to be the same, of course, but I thought there might be some passing similarity.

Eric had frito variado, a big plate of various deep-fried seafood items. Eli, after his big breakfast, only ordered an ensalada mixta (mixed salad with tuna) for his main dish.

For dessert Mila had the tocino de cielo (the same sort of custard brick that Eric ordered in Ronda, with a slightly different name), Eric had rice pudding, and Eli had what they called an egg flan, which seemed to be basically a flan. I ordered a fruit salad, but it didn’t come, and I was fine with that.

Afterwords, we had to figure out how to our precious last afternoon in Seville. The cathedral? The Alcázar? Guitar shopping? Buying Flamenco tickets?

We started with the cathedral, which is by volume the largest church in the world. This is sort of a strange piece of information. Who measures a church by volume? It’s not like it’s a warehouse that will be packed full to the ceiling. It was in any event a beautiful church, and quite large. Not as striking as the mezquita in Córdoba, but still worth a visit. The cathedral tower is a former minaret (to a mosque that was torn down and replaced) which has brick ramps leading to the top (so that during Moorish times, a disabled muezzin could climb to the top of the tower on horseback), and it is worth climbing up it. Seville is a fairly flat town, with most buildings no taller than 4 stories; the view from the top of the tower gives you a different perspective on the town.

After the cathedral we had very little time left. We decided to forego the Alcázar in part due to fatigue, and went questing for guitar shops. Unfortunately it was late Saturday afternoon and the guitar shops were not open. So that was too bad. We did buy flamenco tickets, however. At least, we bought two — Eric was going to stay behind and babysit (no children under 4 allowed at the show), but the only show we could get tickets for was the later show (10pm), too late for Mila to leave Yelena with another person. It’s a shame Mila couldn’t come too. I suppose it would have been more gracious of me to forego flamenco, but I had always regretted not going to a show last time I was here, and I thought Eli, being a guitarist, would regret it even more than I did if he did not go. So we went.

We went to a show at a cultural center — a good compromise, I thought, between visiting a real gypsy bar (where you might have an excellent show, but you might also have no show at all), and going to a big tourist-directed spectacle. Actually, our audience was populated by tourists, too, but still it was good, and I’m glad I went.

Before the show we all went for one last dinner together. (Tomorrow we will head off separately.) We ate tapas at a place in Santa Cruz called something like Café Patagón. We all drink fino (Eli had a beer after) and shared delicious croquetas de queso (cheese croquettes), fabulous artichokes al ajillo, lovely Manchego cheese, a rather lackluster patatas a la brava, some highly unspecial fired chicken wings, some extraordinarily good berenjenas salmorejo (spears of fried eggplant served with a sauce of pureed tomato with lots of good olive oil), and two platefuls of green olives.

We walked to the show and said some of our goodbyes — me to Mila and Yelena, and Eric to Eli — and then Eli and I went in and found two seats in the back corner. Not the best seats, but then we were free to stand at will, with no one behind us.

The show started with the singer, Enrique de Morón, and the guitarist, Raúl Cantizano. Morón was quite young looking — maybe as young as 20. He seemed to have a sore throat, coughing sometimes between songs, but his voice was full, powerful, and emotive. The guitarist was very impressive, too. After a couple of songs, the dancer joined them. She performs under the name “La Marquesita” (“The Little Marquise”). La Marquesita came out first in a more traditional flamenco dress (red with polka dots, and a long multi-ruffled train) and a white, fringed shawl. There were many elements of the show that reminded me of other music and dance styles, especially from the Middle East. At one point La Marquesita did something with the shawl that reminded me of a belly-dancing move with a scarf I’d seen Mila do earlier in the day. After the more traditional outfit she changed into a more modern silk vest and black skirt with a single ruffle at the base. In this outfit she didn’t need to hold her dress up for us to see her footwork.

The dancing was sometimes impassioned, with intricate gestures, and sometimes all footwork. Between the foot-stomping, the clapping, and the finger snapping, the dancer also doubles as a percussionist. (There were no maracas in this show, though I understand they can be a part of flamenco.) Sometimes La Marquesita had a sort of pained expression of deep emotion, and other times she smiled broadly as though she were really enjoying herself (which she probably was).

I will refrain from saying too much about the selfish and rude jerk sitting next to us. He was a large, middle-aged Frenchman, who apparently understands neither Spanish nor English (nor context and gesture), and so did not understand when they told us not to take photos. When Eli, I, and the two British women on our other side stopped him from taking pictures, he was very upset, and got it into his head that we were selfish and rude people who had decided by ourselves that he shouldn’t take photos. Did he not think it strange that he was the only person taking photos? Was my French explanation, “c’est interdite” (“it’s not allowed”), not clear? Whatever. He was borderline abusive, but despite it all, he could not ruin this fine performance for us.

After the show I said farewell to Eli and walked back to our hotel through the narrow, half-deserted streets of Santa Cruz.

Labels: journal, personal, spain

posted by Tony at 11:59 PM | 0 comments