New Sounds

I read in the Times last week that WNYC is dropping New Sounds, after 37 years on the air. I think I started listening to New Sounds when I was in high school, so I guess I was in on it almost from the start. It’s always aired at 11 PM on weeknights, so that’s usually past my bedtime. But I used to stay up late sometimes, back when I was a lot younger. I know that I discovered a few artists on New Sounds that I still love, like Brian Eno and Harold Budd. I remember first hearing their album The Pearl on New Sounds. Coincidentally, I just heard Late October from that album on BBC Radio 3 a couple of days ago (via my Sonos One). It was an unexpected surprise, and a nice way to start my morning.

Both New Sounds and a show called Synthetic Pleasure on WFMU were responsible for me expanding my musical horizons beyond classic rock and getting into electronic music and other experimental stuff,  back when I was a kid. These days, I get most of my electronic/ambient music from podcasts, like Monday Graveyard and Future Astronauts, and from recommendations in Warren Ellis’ newsletter.

If there was an easy way to time-shift New Sounds and listen to it as a podcast, I’d be listening to it regularly too. It’s easy enough to listen to it online, but no easy way to download it. And there’s a 24/7 New Sounds stream that I can listen to on my Sonos, but it’s not quite the same as listening to the actual show.

It’s kind of amazing that the show has lasted so long, at the same station, in the same time slot, with the same great host, John Schaefer. But I guess all good things must come to an end. The Times article says that WNYC will work with Schaefer “to find a new home for the New Sounds brand.” I hope they come up with something to keep New Sounds going, in some format. Clicking around on Twitter and Facebook, I see that there’s some grassroots efforts going on to save the show. I hope that leads somewhere positive, whether it means the show stays on WNYC, or moves to WQXR, or even if it goes online-only.

Streaming Ghibli

I blogged about Studio Ghibli (specifically Miyazaki) films back in August. I was thinking about trying to catch up on any Miyazaki films I hadn’t gotten around to seeing. I was surprised at the time to discover that none of them were available digitally in the US, either for sale or rent, or on one of the pay-per-month streaming services. Since then, I’ve watched a few, by the relatively old-school method of checking them out from my local library on DVD.

Just a few days ago, Otaku USA posted an article with the title “No Plans for Studio Ghibli Films to Hit Streaming Services,” so it looked like they were still holding out. Then yesterday I saw an article in the Times saying that the films will start streaming on the new HBO Max service starting some time next year. I guess that’s cool, if it allows more people to see great stuff like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. But I’d kind of liked that Ghibli was still holding out, and that you had to make at least a little effort to “find” their films. Once the films are on HBO Max, will we still have stuff like Ghibli Fest? Or the cool special edition Blu-Rays from GKids? (Eh, ignore me, I’m just a cranky old man. I’m sure GKids will be happy to keep selling Blu-Rays to weirdos like me. Or I can always hit eBay for used DVDs.)

NJ Transit

I stumbled across this headline in the NY Times yesterday, and briefly thought that they’d actually come up with a deal to replace or repair the Portal Bridge: “This New Jersey Bridge Will No Longer Sabotage Rush Hour.” But no, they’ve only come up with a deal to avoid opening it during rush hour. So it’s still going to sabotage weekend riders like me. (The NJ.com headline is more direct: “The rusty, commute-killing Portal Bridge will never open during rush hour again.”) The current status of the Portal Bridge replacement project is still, basically, stalled and going nowhere, as far as I can tell.

Meanwhile, the North Jersey Coast Line 2606 has been declared “the Very Worst Commuter Train in America” in a NY Times article. And NJ Transit has canceled as many as 29 trains in one day, due to a lack of engineers. But, hey, they added seven new engineers yesterday, so that’s a good sign. But, as the article points out, “they need a staff of 400 qualified engineers to avoid service interruptions. The current complement is 343.”

post-MoMA trip report

OK, so this isn’t really going to be much of a “report,” but I needed a title for the post, so here we are. Per my earlier post, I did indeed head into New York for the MoMA reopening preview. My verdict: I liked it! (Keep in mind that I’m a computer nerd and not an art and/or architecture critic.) There’s a lot more space, and they’ve certainly used it to display a lot of art. Some of it is stuff I like, and some isn’t, and that’s all OK. I managed to locate most of my favorite stuff from the “old MoMA,” including Monet’s Water Lilies, a couple of Pollocks, and Ruscha’s OOF. (Somehow I completely missed Starry Night. I know it’s in there somewhere though.) A lot of the new stuff (or at least “new to me” stuff) was interesting. Some was puzzling. Some was funny. And some was just “meh.”

The preview was well-attended but not too crowded. (And it’s always nice to visit MoMA on a day when there aren’t going to be any tourists there.) It’ll be interesting to see what the new MoMA is like on a “normal” day, with the usual crowds of tourists. Will the larger space allow the crowds to thin out a bit? Will the crowds congregate around the popular exhibits and leave some other areas a bit sparse? Will the larger space just attract bigger crowds? (Probably that last one is most likely.)

I’ve uploaded some random photos from today here. And the last one is a photo of my lunch. MoMA’s two cafes weren’t open for the preview, so I had to go somewhere else to eat. I decided to go to La Bonne Soupe, a small French restaurant I first went to back when I was in high school. It’s only about a block from MoMA. It’s kind of cool that a restaurant I went to so long ago is still in business, in the same spot, and with nearly the same decor and menu. (Well, OK, there are a bunch of changes to the menu, but they still have some of the old classics.) I had a $22 lamb burger and an $8 beer. Both were good, though maybe not “$30 total” good.

The last thing I want to mention: The NJ Transit train broke down on the way home, and I had to take an Uber the rest of the way home. Initially, I waited on the train to see if they’d get it working again, but decided to bail out after 10 or 15 minutes. I figured they’d probably get it running again right as my Uber showed up, but I just checked, and nope, they had to cancel it. So if I’d stayed, I’d have been stuck for a full hour. Not a big deal for me, but I feel bad for people who rely on NJT these days, and don’t have a lot of spare cash for Ubers and Lyfts. They’re having a lot of these delays and cancellations lately, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better.

a bit more on the MoMA reopening

Following up on yesterday’s post, here are two more articles from the Times on the MoMA reopening.

First, Holland Carter’s general review of the new MoMA. It’s a pretty positive review. He gets a little cynical near the end:

My guess is that in some hopefully ever-improving version, this 21st century MoMA will work, if only for self-preservative reasons. Multicultural is now marketable. To ignore it is to forfeit profit, not to mention critical credibility. And the new MoMA is obviously tailored to a new and younger audience, one that has no investment, nostalgic or otherwise, in the old pre-Taniguchi model, which now lives on mostly in the memories of a fading population (…).

I guess I’m old enough to be part of that “fading population,” but I am interested in seeing what they’ve done with the place. As long as I can still find Monet’s Water Lilies in there somewhere.

The second article, Backstage at the Modern, is a short piece from the Times Magazine.

I plan on hopping on a train today and going to the member preview, so hopefully I can share my own opinions later today.

MoMA reopening

I’m currently several months behind in reading the stuff in my email “read/review” folder. So far behind, in fact, that I just hit two NYT articles about MoMA’s closing, from back in February:

MoMA to Close, Then Open Doors to More Expansive View of Art

MoMA, the New Edition: From Monumental to Experimental

I may or may not have read them (and/or posted them here) when they were published. (February is a long time ago. Also, apparently, the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Sigh.) The first one is a straightforward news article, and the second is a “Critic’s Notebook” piece by Holland Carter.

And here are two more recent articles, now that the reopening is almost here:

The New MoMA Is Here. Get Ready for Change.

With a $450 Million Expansion, MoMA Is Bigger. Is That Better?

The first is a fairly long feature article and the second is a “Critic’s Notebook” piece, by Michael Kimmelman, more about the architecture than the art. It’s a pretty interesting piece that digs into the history of the site, and includes some diagrams showing how the museum’s footprint has grown over the years. I have mixed feelings about the way Manhattan has evolved recently, with so many new “supertall” skyscrapers, like the 53W53 one that’s now tied into MoMA, but I don’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole today.

The first day for member previews is tomorrow, Sunday. Since I was in NYC last weekend for NYCC, I wasn’t really thinking about going back again this weekend, but I think I probably will. The weather looks pretty reasonable, and I’m feeling mostly recuperated from the con.

 

NYCC 2019 wrap-up

I’m back home from NYCC, so I might as well write one more post about my trip. I didn’t go to the con on Sunday. Instead, I took a walk from my hotel up to the Met. I took a fairly circuitous and leisurely route through Central Park. It was a pretty good day to do that. It was a nice autumn day, and Central Park on a Sunday morning was certainly more quiet and peaceful than NYCC would have been. At the Met, I went into the members preview for The Last Knight exhibit. (The title of the exhibit is quite similar to the title of the new Scott Snyder Batman series, Last Knight on Earth, but they are definitely not related in any way!) I then walked down to the Breuer and saw the two exhibits that are currently running there. The Vija Celmins exhibit was pretty interesting. A lot of her “Night Sky” paintings are cool.

My hotel was just right across the street from MoMA, so it would have been easy to go over there too, but they’re still not open. They will be opening to the public October 21, with member previews next weekend. I’ll probably miss the member preview, since I’m going to have other stuff to do this coming weekend. But maybe I can get in on Sunday. The NY Times has a lengthy article about the reopening that I haven’t had time to read yet. I did peek through the windows at MoMA, and it looks like they’ve enlarged the gift shop, which isn’t a surprise. That was about all I could really see. I’m definitely curious to see what they’ve done to the place.

Back on the subject of NYCC, The Beat published a Sunday wrap-up article that includes links to all (or most) of their NYCC content over the whole con. This includes a write-up of the big Castlevania panel that I missed. It sounds like it wasn’t that different from what I saw of those guys at the Viz panel, just longer and with more of the cast and crew present. And there’s a write-up of the Star Trek panel for Discovery and Picard. That one would have been fun to go to, but I imagine it would have involved waiting in a very long line and was probably quite crowded. I just found a reddit thread talking about the panel and various other NYCC Star Trek items. It turns out that there was also a Star Trek panel as part of PaleyFest during the con. If I’d known about that, I might have gone to that one, since you have to buy tickets in advance for PaleyFest panels, so it wouldn’t have been one of those “wait in line for two hours and hope you get in” things. Oh well. I’ll try to keep a closer eye on Paley Center stuff in the future. I should probably sign up for their mailing list.

Despite being fairly interested in Discovery and Picard, I still haven’t talked myself into paying for a CBS All-Access subscription. Nor have I managed to convince myself to shell out for a DC Universe subscription, despite some interest in a few of the shows on that service. Any time I get too tempted to subscribe to DCU, I remind myself that I just bought a Blu-Ray box set of the complete Batman Adventures, and I should probably just watch that if I’m keen to see some superhero action on my TV. (And I’ve got the new seasons of Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, and Batwoman to look forward to also!)

I’ve spent a little time reflecting on whether or not I learned anything from this year’s con, and whether or not I’ll go back for next year’s one. Here are a few takeaways:

  • I surprised myself a bit, in that I made it through four days in NYC carrying around a backpack and getting in 20k+ steps each day, without really much back pain or any major trouble sleeping. Yes, I did bail out on a few things, but I still did quite a lot.
  • After five nights of pretty decent sleep on a hotel mattress, I think I’ve almost convinced myself that I need to buy myself a new mattress. Depending on how I feel tomorrow morning, after my first night back on my own mattress, I might have to start getting serious about that.
  • There might be a few new things that I’m curious about, but I’m not really jumping on any bandwagons right now. I have such a huge backlog of stuff to read and watch that I can’t add anything new unless it’s really great.

So it’s back to the old daily grind tomorrow. I haven’t checked my work email since Wednesday, so there should be a good pile of stuff to go through when I get in tomorrow morning. (Yes, technically I could check it now from home and clean it up a bit, but I really don’t want to!)

NYCC day three, part two

OK, so this post is an end-of-day wrap-up post, which I’m writing in my hotel room on Saturday evening, because I bailed out on the con early. I had a pretty good morning at the con, and went to the DC Year of the Villain panel, and a Mutts panel with Patrick McDonnell. Here’s a write-up on the DC panel. Nothing unusual came out of that one. Just more talk about what’s coming up in the Year of the Villain event.

The Mutts panel was a lot of fun. It was mostly to promote the new Mutts book The Art of Nothing. It looks like a really nice book. McDonnell did a slideshow of various old bits of Mutts and pre-Mutts art and ephemera. I guess I never really knew much about him or his history. I was surprised to learn that he’d once been in a punk band that used to open for The Ramones. I don’t really read any daily comic strips anymore, and I’d kind of forgotten that Mutts was even still running, but now I’m finding myself thinking about picking up this book. (I’m also thinking that maybe binge-reading a bunch of old Mutts strips might be a good antidote to reading about current events, so I’m going to keep that idea in my back pocket for possible future use.)

I fully intended on hanging out all day at the con, and going to the 3:30 Adam Savage panel and the 6:30 Castlevania panel, but it all got to be a bit much and I bailed out around 1 PM. I went off and did some other stuff, skipping the Adam Savage panel, and came back around 5 PM for the Castlevania panel. But again, the con was just a bit too crazy for me and I bailed out again.

So my plan for the rest of the night is to maybe watch some TV then go to bed early again. I feel kind of bad about that, but not too bad. I’m on vacation and trying to relax, and if hanging out watching Supergirl on my iPad is more relaxing than fighting crowds and waiting in lines at Javits, then that’s fine.

I don’t really have much that I want to do at the con tomorrow, so I think I’m going to bail on it entirely and go to The Met instead. I think that will be more my speed. After that, maybe I’ll hit a couple more museums and wander around the city a bit. Then back home on Monday morning and back to reality.

NYCC 2019 day three

I’m sitting in my hotel room on Saturday morning, eating a traditional New York breakfast (bacon egg and cheese on a roll and a coffee, bought from a guy in a street cart), and I have a lot of random thoughts running through my head. (Not enough coffee yet.) I suspect that this breakfast might be a little non-traditional, actually, since I think the guy used turkey bacon. But close enough, I guess.

First, I guess I should write up a run-down on yesterday. I took the subway to Javits. That worked out reasonably well. It was fast and not that crowded. Coming out of the Hudson Yards subway station, they were herding everyone around the block, so we all had to go around the back end of Javits and then come back up. That was kind of a pain, but it’s good crowd control, and really the only way to do it, I guess. When I got in, I spent some time wandering around the show floor, the same as I did on Thursday. I didn’t really stumble upon anything interesting that I hadn’t seen yet. I hadn’t made it down to artist’s alley at all on Thursday, so I went down there and wandered. I bought a pack of Weirdo trading cards from Denis Kitchen, which I will probably give to my brother for his birthday. And I bought a Love and Capes comic from Thom Zahler. He’s a pretty cool guy. He was on Mac Power Users recently.

I missed out on the DC Nation panel, since it was apparently full already when I got there. (I’m still a little confused about the process for swiping your badge in the morning to reserve a spot in a main stage panel. I couldn’t figure out how you were supposed to do that. Of course, I didn’t ask anybody either. But I didn’t think a DC panel would fill up the main stage.) There’s a fairly coherent write-up about the panel at The Beat, and a liveblog at Newsarama. A few interesting tidbits came out of the panel. I guess the biggest thing is the new continuity timeline. I remember being somewhat excited back in the 80s when DC was doing Crisis on Infinite Earths, and rebooting their continuity. But they’ve rebooted and revised so many times since then, I don’t think continuity really matters anymore. So I can’t really get excited about this. All I can say is that, if they do another New 52 or Rebirth style wholesale reboot, I’ll probably take that as a good jumping-off point, and stop buying monthly comics again. (I may want to do that anyway, but that’s maybe a subject for a future post.)

I went to a couple of lower-profile panels in the early afternoon, one on Berger Books and a DC Wonder Comics panel. Berger Books has published some pretty cool stuff, but I haven’t bought or read any of it. I’d like to, but there’s just so much good stuff being published these days. Eventually, I’ll get around to it. I have a lot of respect for Karen Berger.

The DC Wonder Comics panel was pretty good, though Bendis isn’t at NYCC, so it was a little weird to have a panel about his imprint without him being there. I’m actually a bit interested in the new Amethyst series, after listening to Amy Reeder talking about it.

The big panel for me was the Viz panel, with Warren Ellis. There was a long line to get into that one, and they filled up the room, but I didn’t have any trouble getting in. The panel was really a general Viz Media promotional panel, so the first half of it was largely a guy from Viz going over their upcoming releases and stuff like that. I’m kind of interested in some of their stuff, but, again, there’s so much stuff coming out these days I just can’t buy and/or read everything I’m interested in. They brought out Ellis and three of the voice actors for the second half of the panel, and did a Q&A with them. (Not an audience Q&A, just a Q&A with the panel moderators.) It was fun, and they all do genuinely seem to be enthusiastic about Castlevania, but there was also a bit of a “we’re doing a contractually-obligated press tour for this Netflix thing and we have to be relentlessly positive about it” vibe. And I can now say that I’ve seen Warren Ellis in person, so that’s cool. There’s a full Castlevania panel on the main stage tonight, and I will probably try to get into that one too, though I don’t think they’ll cover much ground that they didn’t already cover yesterday. (I really wish they could have gotten Ellis to do a general “spotlight” panel, or least participate in one of the DC panels, but, hey, I’ll take what I can get.)

I walked back from the convention to my hotel, which is about a two mile walk. Between that, and a bunch of other walking, I set a new record on my Apple Watch for my “move” ring, burning 957 calories (530 active calories). I also got 137 minutes on my exercise ring, over 23,000 steps, and a total distance walked of 11.8 miles. I actually didn’t get as tired as I did on Thursday though, for some reason, and managed to stay awake until my usual bed time of 10 PM. I’m a little worried that I might hit a wall or crash at some point today or tomorrow, but I seem to be doing ok.

The plan for today, to the extent that there is one, is to take the subway down to Javits again, and probably follow the same circuitous route into the convention center again. I’m not too enthusiastic about that, but it’ll probably be fine. After I get in, I want to go straight to a 10:30 DC “Year of the Villain” panel. Other than that, there’s an Adam Savage panel on the main stage at 3:30 PM and the Castlevania one at 6:30 PM. So I’d like to try to get in for both of those, but I won’t be surprised or (too) disappointed if I can’t.

I was fairly smart about food yesterday. I brought a couple of apples, a couple of Kind bars, a falafel wrap from Pret, and a full bottle of water with me, so I was eating reasonably healthy food and staying hydrated. I want to do the same thing again today, so I’ll run over to the grocery store that’s near my hotel before heading for the con.

And now it’s 8:30 AM and I’ve been working on this blog post for about an hour, so I should really wrap it up and go get some more coffee.

NYCC 2019 day two

I managed to write a blog post for each day of the con last year. I guess I’m not going to do that this year, since it’s already day two and I haven’t written anything yet. So here’s a few notes on yesterday and maybe a couple of thoughts for today.

It rained all day yesterday, so that put a damper on things, to some extent. I took a cab down to Javits and spent most of the day there, inside. I took the subway back to my hotel at the end of the day, since the Hudson Yards station was actually open this year. (It was closed for most of the con last year, for maintenance work or something.) It should be clear today, so hopefully I can wander around the city a bit more than yesterday.

I went to a few panels yesterday. The first was the Christopher Eccleston panel. I really liked his portrayal of the Doctor, and was sad to see him go after only one season. He mostly kept away from anything to do with the show for years afterwards, but I guess he’s OK with talking about it a bit now. He has a book out now, about his father, and their relationship. The panel was fun and I’m glad I went to it. (It was also the only panel I “won” in the lottery, though it wasn’t crowded and anyone would have been able to walk in.)

I also went to the DC Meet The Publishers panel, with Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. I’d gone to that one last year on Thursday too, and have gone to other Dan & Jim panels at other cons, so I knew what to expect out of that one. Mostly Dan doing his “carnival barker” thing (he described himself that way at one point in the panel), with a bit of Jim Lee’s more laid-back self-deprecating style mixed in. This year, they were pushing the new Joe Hill imprint, which sounds good, if you’re into that kind of thing. (Personally, I’m not, but it does sound kind of cool.)

And I went to a couple of other, smaller panels, one on horror comics (from Dark Horse) and one on women in Jack Kirby’s comics. Both were fairly interesting, though I will admit that I was also just using them as an opportunity to sit down and relax for an hour.

I left the con at around 5 PM, mostly because I was really tired by that time. There were a couple of more panels I wanted to go to, but I decided to give up and go back to my hotel. I got some nice spicy lamb noodles from the Xi’an Famous Foods branch that’s right down the block from my hotel, watched some TV, then went to bed at 8 PM. I had really just intended to take a little nap, then get back up and do a few things, but I gave up on that and decided that I’m old enough to go to bed at 8 PM without shame.

Today, I’m looking forward to the DC Nation panel, maybe the Marvel Cup o’ Joe panel, maybe the Berger Books panel, and definitely the Castlevania panel with Warren Ellis. Ellis posted a photo from New York on his blog last night, so I assume he made it into town in one piece. I’m still a little disappointed that he’s only doing the Castlevania panel. I put my name in the lottery for a signing with him, but I didn’t win that one, and (as far as I can tell) there’s no public signing with him and he’s not on any other panels. He doesn’t really do cons, and he almost never comes to the US anymore, so this it probably my only chance to see him in person. So hopefully that’ll be a cool panel.

Anyway, I got up at 6 AM today, so I’ve got a good ten hours of sleep. Hopefully, that’s enough to get me through the day. I do need to pace myself, since that Castlevania panel isn’t until 5:15, which is dangerously close to my bed time.