The Hamptons: Day One

I went on a trip to the Hamptons with Greg this past weekend. Here's what happened.

It was a gorgeous Friday afternoon in new york city, the good weather arriving just in time to kick off memorial day weekend. I got a phone call from Greg. "Ryan, we need to go to the Hamptons. I need an adventure."

About two hours later, we had tickets to Montauk and were boarding an LIRR train in Jamaica, Queens. Never having been to the hamptons, we bought tickets to montauk because that's the last stop on the train. We weren't necessarily even going to montauk, but it made sense to just get a ticket to the farthest place we could go. During the ride, we made a bunch of phone calls and asked other people on the train where we would get in the most kicks. Eventually we decided on the Hampton Bays stop.

A pretty big crowd exited the train with us. A good mix of young people and families. Within seconds, most of them had taken off in cabs or limos, leaving Greg and I standing in front of the station, virtually nothing around. I spotted two last girls getting into a cab and asked one where the party was. Her friend replied "Beach Bar!" The one I asked the question to replied, "I don't know can you shut that door please thanks."

Ok so beach bar it was then. A cab driver approached us and said he'd take us to beach bar. For fifteen dollars. Fifteen dollars?? (later on we would know full well how ridiculously expensive everything is here.) Fine lets do it, take us to beach bar. The driver told us on the way over thats it's pretty much the best place to go on a Friday night here, especially during memorial day weekend. Our spirits were high. About 10 minutes later we were being dropped off in front of this bar.

There was NOTHING else around. All woods and dark houses. No stores, no people, rarely a car driving by. We started to walk in and were immediately hassled by the four bouncers at the door. "We have to check those backpacks. And you can't bring them in there, you gotta leave them here at the door. We're tougher than JFK over here," the big fellow said, with a definite attitude. We handed over our backpacks and walked in. We were literally the first people there. Only bartenders running around preparing for a supposed huge party. We got two coronas for $6 apiece and drank them quickly, because being the only two people in a bar is pretty weak. We decided to leave and come back later when there would be more people. We grabbed our backpacks from the guys out front and as we were leaving, one of them made a comment to me that I "can't wear a white t-shirt in there by the way. You gotta get a shirt." Dick.

The cab driver had told us there was a motel just two blocks down the road from the bar. Not having a place to stay, or any plan whatsoever really, we went to check out how much a room would cost for the night. Mind you, this was not exactly the Four Seasons. It was a very small motel, not unlike the ones you find all over the Jersey Shore. Doors lining two levels of balcony. Nothing crazy. We walked into the office and inquired about a room for the night.

"Well we are only taking bookings for two-night stays right now, I'll have to check with my manager if we can book you for just one night." Said manager comes over. The two women bicker in Russian for a minute and say one night is ok.

"How much for one night?"

"One night is four hundred dollars."

"Excuse me?"

"Four hundred dollars for one night, but if you want to stay two nights we will only charge you seven hundred fifty."

(At this moment we were both starting to realize how ridiculously expensive everything is here.)

Close jaw. Exit motel office. New plan: Find a 7 Eleven and buy a boatload of beer so we don't spend a fortune at the bar. There were a bunch of young guys drinking outside the door to their overpriced room, so we approached them and greg asked if there was a store nearby where we could obtain some beers. He gave us some drunken directions and said something about it not really being within walking distance and us being crazy, and we set off. And walked. And walked some more. In all it was probably about three or four miles to this 7 Eleven, all along pitch black roads through residential areas, not another human being in sight. Even still, we were in a great mood. We had a plan to get some beer, and a place to party after we drank some of this beer, and this would definitely be a fun night. Not having a place to sleep that night did not bother us in the least. If all else failed, we would just stay up until dawn and then sleep on the beach. We considered during our walk what Jack Kerouac would do in our situation, and we felt we were right in line.

As we got closer to where this 7 Eleven was, we recognized something. The fucking train station. We had walked all the way back to the train station. The 7 Eleven was basically right across the street. We thought this was hilarious. We bought 4 24 oz. Modelo cans, a six pack of bud light, and some pistachios and granola bars.



We put all of this into our backpacks and started walking. Back to the beach bar. Again, this was a very long walk so by the time we were back at the beach bar, we each had 48 ounces of Modelo in our bellies. Not trusting the bouncers, we stashed our backpacks in the woods this time (which I later discovered was actually a giant thorn bush) and put on sweatshirts and stood in the line that now existed outside the bar. When we got to the front, we were told there was a $20 cover (the full picture of how ridiculously expensive everything is here was really coming into focus now). We debated for a minute whether it was worth it. The argument basically went like this:

"Twenty dollars is a lot of money man."

"Yeah it is but what else are we gonna do?"

"True. And there are about one million fine girls in there too."

"Ok let's do it."

We paid our $40 and entered the bar. It was packed full of young hamptonites getting drunk and dancing like fools. To save time, I'll just say we were here for a few hours, got drunk, and met a group of brazilian girls, one of whom offered to let us stay with her. Greg and I and Brazilian Girl left in a cab back to her place, which was in Southampton. It was a very expensive cab ride, and a fun one, singing all the brazilian music we knew, like Waters of March. We arrived at her little cottage, which is right on the bay, an absolutely beautiful area. Passed out.

Monkeys Control a Mechanical Arm with Their Thoughts

Get ready for the robot monkey uprising.

Memorial Day Weekend

I am currently in the process of writing up the full story of this past weekend. Greg Barbone and I, as chris renne so eloquently put it, went to the hamptons with nothing but backpacks and 2 days worth of an empty schedule. It was an adventure to say the least, and the story should be finished soon. In the meantime, here's a photo I took of a sunset over the bay in southampton.

Flying Penis

I'm a little late on this, but if you haven't seen this, you need to. Story here.

Photo of the Day

This is my neighbor's friendly little feline, who likes to jump on my window sill and stare at me.

This is awesome.

From kottke.org: "The music video for my song 'Alice', an electronic piece of which 90% is composed using sounds recorded from the Disney film 'Alice In Wonderland'."

More Cut-and-paste-iffiti

Photo of the Day

Shameless Plug killing it

scratchitti?!

Riding the L train, I saw on the video screen that subway graffiti and scratchitti are punishable by law. What the hell is scratchitti you may ask.. Apparently this is what people are calling graffiti in which no marker or paint is involved, just carvings into glass or other surfaces. Technically, this should just be called graffiti.

It turns out graffiti, and graffito (the singular), come from the italian word graffiato, meaning "scratched." So originally, the word graffiti referred to carvings or imagery scratched into a surface. Since then, the word has evolved to include any kind of drawing on a public surface. What is crazy to me is that the word's meaning, or at least people's understanding of it, has changed to the point that a new word is being made up to fit the original definition. Even worse that the new word is so stupid sounding. Does this happen often in language?

I've noticed a new form of vandalism in the subways lately. Someone (or some people) is going around slicing out parts of posters and pasting them onto other posters, to comical or ironic effect. I hereby declare this new form of subway poster vandalism Cut-and-paste-iffiti, which is just as dumb-sounding as scratchitti.

brief geek alert.

I use Safari as my main browser, and always use command-T or command-click to open links in a new tab instead of a new window. This tends to keep things a little less cluttered. The only problem was google. Regardless of what keys I pressed, google sites like gmail and google reader always opened links in an entirely new window. Annoying to say the least. This little Terminal command remedies the situation and gets Safari to stick to one window.

Just open Terminal and type in the command below. Hit enter and you're all set.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Grand Theft Auto for NES

Busta Rhymes VIDEO

Here's the video for the new busta rhymes single "Don't Touch Me (Throw Da Water On 'Em)". (which I recorded.. heh heh). Classic busta rhymes, just like the video for Gimme Some More. Check it!

A Turtle, with Wheels

From kottke.org:

After Jim Lee's turtle was hurt in an auto accident, she never regained the use of her hind legs. Instead of letting her die, Lee affixed hind wheels to her shell to help her get around. That's right, a turtle with wheels:

After some weeks Little Bit seemed to have made a full recovery except for the use of her hind legs. So some wheels seemed to be the way to go. Some lightweight model airplane wheels on a wire frame did the trick. The removable wheels were secured by a velcro strip epoxied to her plastron. The velcro strips on the carapace were removed after four months. She was eating, drinking, and exploring all the rooms of my house. Eventually she was able to move around outside as well.

Light Drawings

Eric Staller is a photographer who does some interesting things with light and long exposure times. This one is my favorite of the ones on his site, but they are all pretty amazing.

Well said.

From The Daily Adventures of Mixerman: 

"Discographies are the name of the game in this business. The deeper and hotter your discography is, the better. The recording biz is basically a small controlled lottery. The more albums I work on in the course of a year, the more lottery tickets I have in my possession. The more lottery tickets, the more chances of a hit. Once you have a hit, you get even more lottery tickets."

Caught on Safari: Battle at Kruger

From Rolling Stone: 

Ever come home after a long, hard day and think, "If only I could unwind by watching a buffalo fight a crocodile and a pride of lions at the same time?" Now's your chance. On May 11th, National Geographic airs Caught on Safari: Battle at Kruger, the berserker wildlife battle taped by stunned tourists and viewed 29 million times online. Bloody awesome!

Or you can just watch it right here.

"A great action shot"

I was looking through some of my photo stats on flickr today and came across something interesting. A photo I took of recording drums for the boogie hustlers is being used on the "Recording Drums" page of an educational website called Squidoo. So if someone googles 'recording drums' there is a decent chance they will end up looking at a picture of my half-baked drum miking technique used over a year ago in a cabin in the middle of the woods in pennsylvania. Funny how the internet works.

Photo of the Day

Taken on the corner of Jefferson St. and Irving Ave in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

The Daily Adventures of Mixerman

A british engineer by the name of Andy McKim Parker turned me on to this hilarious novel of sorts called The Daily Adventures of Mixerman. A real-life engineer (who keeps his identity a secret by only referring to himself as Mixerman) gives a day by day account of a massively complicated recording session. What's great is that it's not very technical at all, and even if you know nothing about engineering or recording you will find it hysterically funny. I've only read through the first day, but I'm hooked already. The majority of it is all online for free, but the last part is only included in the book, which is not free, but probably worth your money. Check it out.