I’m going to miss the two old guys that used to dish out the meals at the German guesthouse. Despite their somewhat sour demeanor, they were quite amusing. I have no idea what their names were, but fellow resident Ben and myself dubbed them Basil and Manuel after the characters from Fawlty Towers.

“What’s the matter? You no eat eggs, eggs are your balls, they make you grow big balls, you don’t eat eggs, you no have balls!” – Words allegedly spoken by Basil Fawlty to a guest.

However, I can now walk to work without the bother of the subway, which is super handy. That’s pretty radical.

Bob Dylan and the Kids

On the weekend I visited the Brooklyn museum to check out the excellent “Who Shot Rock and Roll” exhibition. It was an exhibition which celebrated over 50 years of music photography and it was pretty darn good. Highlights include an awesome black and white shot of Pavement playing at the Reading festival in the 90s, a great Bob Dylan shot (shown above), a great shot of Paul McCartney in a car looking back through the rear view mirror (taken by Linda McCartney), as well as the classic Paul Simonon bass-smashing photo taken by Pennie Smith, often judged the greatest rock’n’roll photo of all time. Australia was even represented there, with a video installation of the Vines clip “Outtathaway” playing on loop (surely, they could have picked a better song/clip though!).

Arlene’s Grocery

Last night, I took up the opportunity of heading to Arlene’s Grocery – a bar on the lower east side famous for its live music. From the outside, it looks just like the name suggests – a grocery shop. Monday night means rock’n’roll karaoke, with punters getting up from the crowd and playing songs with a live band. The place was absolutely jammed and some crazy characters got up to sing some songs rarely heard at traditional karaoke. There was people doing Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and AC/DC. The best of the night was some dude getting up to sing thrash metal classic “Seek and Destroy” by Metallica. The band ripped this version out even including Hammett’s epic solo. I never expected to see that one played!

Anyway, I’m in my third week here and it is going pretty well. More to come.

By the way, I was saddened to hear that god-damned phony J.D Salinger died last week. I haven’t really being paying attention to the news, so this managed to pass me by.

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Today, I went to look at some accommodation. I also visited Times Square and the International Center of Photography.

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