Almost everything has gone swimmingly here so far, but not everything.

A list of mishaps in no particular order:

• I finally decided to pony up and put $50 on a subway card.  Those flimsy little pieces of crap.  It got stuck coming out of the machine and wouldn't dispense.  Nothing to be done about it.  I just had to fill out some stupid paperwork and try and claim my $50.  I called the phone number and they said they're backlogged and it takes at least 3 weeks to process the thing.  Maybe it'll be a nice surprise a month from now.
• The wonderful person who helped me hustle my stuff into storage dropped my computer from about two feet off the ground.  "Hehehe," she said, "I'm sure it will be ok."  It wasn't.  My computer is totally broken and won't even load the bios.  Ow.  That one hurt.
• My old iPhone 3Gs has been chugging along just fine… even after many drops on the head.  I'm trying to make it last until I can buy a 4S, but they still don't come out for several days.  Now it has almost no battery life, and the headphone jack is broken (I think it stopped working the day Steve Jobs died!) and I'm limping along on no music here in NYC.
• Nobody is calling me back on apartments.  I've called and emailed several places and… crickets.

Everyday, more cool stuff happens than I can even write about. Like, for instance yesterday afternoon I met Steve of the Rising Sun All Stars hip hop collective on the train. He was an earnest guy who told me about the studio they're building and their show that night.

I told him about Seattle hip hop group Shabazz Palaces and their awesome new album Black Up (I'm going to spread the gospel) and said I'd maybe come to his show after my "friend date".  Well, a couple hours into the friend date and I randomly run into Steve on the street!  We go see his show (after astoundingly insane opener The Black Fires, pictured above) the All Stars came on and rocked the stage.  It was a perfect end to a perfect day.

After noticing that I was taking photos they called out, "Five dollars!"

I struggle to understand its labyrinthine passageways.

I haven't eaten at this Manhattan burger joint yet, but I love the sign.

I'm going to have to change the "Seattle Culture" heading soon since I leaped off a metaphorical cliff and moved to NYC, for any readers who do not know me personally. (Are there any?)

First observation? It's a lot harder to get a truly good cup of coffee here! I did find at least one nice place in Manhattan where I'm staying though, at Cafe Grumpy. Not bad. Not bad at all. It's no Vivace though.

I've been exploring the Manhattan neighborhoods: Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, etc.

I love the street food. I got a kabab (bbq'd chicken on a stick, in a hot dog bun with BBQ sauce or ketchup) which was serviceable but sadly raw enough to give me salmonella. Then I had "chicken and lamb over rice" with some white sauce on top which was hot, vital and amazing. It's sort of like arabic teriyaki.

Lastly, my first night in NYC I went to see Portishead at Hammerstein. That was some serious shit. Always wanted to see Beth sing, and I was not disappointed. She did a stripped down no-beat version of Wandering Star that just blew me away! If you have never listened to their newest album, Third, and you like the idea of Portishead a little more abrasive and adventurous, I highly recommend it. They are still a hell of a band after all these years.

These aren't even hits, technically.

I listen to a whole metric crapload of new music, and I'm really diligent about marking songs with a star-rating when something really pops out for me.  Later, I go back and see that plenty of times only one song stood out to me.  These songs are often spectacular in some way, but the rest of the album just doesn't even register as something I want to write about.

These are some songs I've totally fallen in love with but ultimately can't recommend the rest of the album.

First up is indie darling Bear in Heaven, from their album Beast Rest Forth Mouth.  They were indie darlings last year, but they just sounded generic to me.  However, this song You Do You just sounds like some amazing modern Genesis song (minus Phil Collins):

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Next is from Blackroc, a vanity project by otherwise awesome The Black Keys working with a bunch of otherwise awesome rappers like Mos Def, RZA, and Q-Tip.  Sounded great but nothing really quite moved me except for the back-from-the-grave collaboration with some old recording from Ol' Dirty Bastard and a nice verse by Ludacris.  It's a crass rap called Coochie as in "That Coochie got me so confused I don't know what to do."  Note the reverb-dripping Black Keys licks.

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When this song, Fortune Teller by Forest Fire came on, I was so convinced this album was going to blow me away.   It didn't.  But I still love this song about "melting faces with gatlin' gun social skills," that asks the musical question, "why not kill someone you hate?"  I've been feeling like this socially a lot lately.

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Really this whole album by Citay is not bad at all, but nothing else on the album quite carries the spirit of an Angelic Choir led by a leaderless Van Halen.  Check the lovely instramental Careful With That Hat:

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Okay, this song is a tour de force.  I can't even believe someone good enough to do a song like this would do the rest of the songs on his album On Blue Fog as kind of a regular folk album.  The guy is Andew Ethier, and the one hit wonder is a song called On Lies.  I am not shitting you, this song is amazing top to bottom.  Amazing guitar work, amazing Dylanesque singing that runs from growl to howl like necessary, and a spectacular sax solo near the end.  This is a 6:15 journey that I wouldn't mind being on the soundtrack to my autobiography:

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Anyone else have any indie one hit wonders to recommend?   Disagree and think one of these artists has other awesome stuff?  Like or hate one of these songs?

Let me know.

In the nearly final final scene of the spectacular movie Fish Tank, perhaps even more amazing because it's on Netflix on Demand right now, the lead actress, played by the magnificent Katie Jarvis dances with her little sister and mom to Nas' Life's a Bitch (which you can play while you read the rest of the review):

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Dancing is an important part of the movie in its own awkward way, so her dancing with her more innocent sister and less innocent drunken mom ties the whole thing together.

Usually this kind of British poverty stricken youth thing gets kind of tiresome for me, but this movie is something special.  Its acting and writing is immediate and streamlined.  When it's sexy, it's sexy without apology.  It impressed me with its first moments, and I enjoyed it all the way through.

Check the trailer:

My friend Louie just hit me up on IM and the Ida Maria song Louie popped into my head.  I wanted to play him the song, and also realized that I'd never written about Ida Maria, and I really love her.

I can't help thinking she came out in the wrong era.  If she'd released this album alongside Blondie in the 80's I feel like this could have had big hits, and they'd be playing Drive Away My Heart at weddings across the country.

But maybe there's just something too spiky, too howling, too raw, too hookless to really be popular.  I think I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked was meant to be the hit, and it has a damn cool video, but I can't say it's my favorite song on the album:

Cute huh?  Ok, then let's get right to the Louie and play the Louie song for Louie!

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And then the songs I really like the most.  First of all the bomb album opener Oh My God. Weirdly when this album came out I used to like to put this on as I started off to work, and I'm sure if I were a girl it's the kind of thing I'd rock out to in the mirror while I put on lipstick:

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And her drunken send-off, Queen of the World, where she explains why she's so damn drunk:

I got no plans for tomorrow
I got no plans in sight
In fact I'm free this week
I'm free this month
I'm lonely
Lonely this year
I'm lonely forever

But you know, tonight she's Queen of the World. She bumps into things. She spins around in circles.

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I'm not sure why Ida Maria Sivertsen's songs have stuck with me for so long, but to each his own right?

When I first heard Kurt's Vile's album, Smoke Rings For My Halo, I was so expecting something vile.  I was almost disappointed, so I hardly even heard it.

I went back and listened though, and I'm glad I did.  This is some really passionate, low-key Rock n' Roll that makes Kurt sound like some kind of veteran.  Like, he already got famous and this is an album he did years later.

Not really though, Kurt's still an up-and-comer, and I'm about to listen to his other three albums, cause he has my attention.

I'm listening to Puppet To The Man:

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Jesus Fever

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Peeping Tomboy

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And a video from his first album: