philip sherburne

I am a crummy blogger. MUTEK is already a week behind us, and my promised review is still largely in my mind, where scary things happen that often prevent other mind-things from ever dancing their way into the light of day and the pixelated surface of screens and paper. I am here in Barcelona after a long weekend in New York that consisted of two radio shows, one club gig (all three of which had me wondering if I should give up DJing once and for all, incidentally, but enough about my neuroses), one thwarted attempt to see Richie Hawtin, and one absolute corker of a game between France and England, caught in a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend's loft in Chelsea, where the Zidanistes were heavily outnumbered and outinebriated by the Beckhamians, so that when France scored their second glorious goal (both scored after the 90 minute mark) and the game wrapped up, we beat a hasty retreat. The Brit supporters, after all, had been lobbing full beer bottles to their friends in mid-game, from across the room and with alarming speed. We didn't want to catch those empties on the way down.

Also saw two potentially dead people lying face down on the street this weekend: one a middle-aged woman planted face-first on the sidewalk, surrounded by medics; the other a young man felled in a fight at a Brooklyn party, a tidy pool of blood beneath his head. Both looked peaceful, but the latter was the only one that looked like a Weegee photo.

Since no one, least of all me, knows when I will blog again substantially, I will sub in some notes scribbled somewhere over the Atlantic, and we'll call it a day. See you in a few.

* * *

May I suggest that the airline industry get their fucking story straight. First you couldn't use a cell phone anywhere near an airplane; now, at least on American, you can use it as soon as you touch down. When I was a teenager, you could listen to a Walkman whenever you damn well pleased, but now you have to wait with bated breath to clear some imaginary marker and fire up the iPod. I've even been scolded for taking pictures during take-off with my digital camera. Listen, lady, if the microchip can't even make the autofocus light work, it ain't gonna bring down the entire plane.

Anyway, the stern Iberia stewardess, speaking in a voice I'd expect from a Russian orphanage-marm, just accosted me, pointed at my computer -- practically wagging her finger -- and inquired, "It has no CD-ROM?" but in a tone of voice that sent the question mark skittering off with its curlicue between its legs.

It didn't seem worth explaining that in fact, at the moment, my CD-ROM is broken. So I just said no. Then I got cheeky -- must be the second bottle of this excellent vino tinto I'm halfway through -- and asked why. Or rather, Why not? She just shrugged and walked off.

Someone or other said something about consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds, a phrase that was very popular among my sophomore year high school English class -- possibly because the word "hobgoblin" established a wistful, if tenuous link between our receding childhoods and this strange new adult world of philosophy and contradiction -- and so I must admit my own small-mindedness here and ask why, if CD-ROMs have likely been used on a hundred thousand plane flights since their introduction, without incident -- and I might add that right next to me, the very middle American family wearing some kind of red-white-and-blue "United States 'International' Martial Arts Team" warmup suits (scare quotes theirs -- another of my serious pet peeves, unnecessary scare quotes) is watching a DVD on one of those rental players, and what is a DVD player but a CD-ROM drive -- Iberia airlines finds it necessary, out of the blue, to make an entirely half-assed attempt to keep them from being used on this particular flight, without even justifying the decision. (And no, I'm not sure if that's the same thing as a half entirely-assed attempt.)

Reminds me of the time, actually, during the last great terrorscare, in the 80s perhaps, when a half-witted security guard in Mexico City confiscated the double-A batteries from my Walkman, ostensibly for security purposes. I didn't feel so annoyed that time, though, because I had several more sets sealed in blister packs in the bag he didn't bother to search -- my consistency alarm went off that time, too -- and because I knew that, in the end, he was probably just going to use (or sell) whatever he confiscated. Corruption I can understand. Arbitrariness? Not a whit.