The Constorium of Greater Minds

i can’t remember how i stumbled across leonard cohen’s stuff…i think it was through a preview for the documentary that was recently filmed about him. the lyrics of the below three songs are what really get me; they are moody and evocative in a melancholy kind of way that’s great for a rainy day. and of course there’s the new york city theme that caught my attention…chelsea hotel…famous blue raincoat, “new york is cold but i like where i’m living. there’s music on clinton street all through the evening.” three of my favorite cohen tracks:

chelsea hotel #2

famous blue raincoat

so long, marianne

Leonard Norman Cohen (born September 21, 1934 in Westmount, Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963.
Cohen’s earliest songs (many of which appeared on the 1968 album Songs of Leonard Cohen) were rooted in European folk music melodies and instrumentation, sung in a high baritone. The 1970s were a musically restless period in which his influences broadened to encompass pop, cabaret, and world music. Since the 1980s he has typically sung in lower registers (bass baritone, sometimes bass), with accompaniment from electronic synthesizers and female backing singers.
His work often explores the themes of religion, isolation, sexuality, and complex interpersonal relationships.
Cohen’s songs and poetry have influenced many other singer-songwriters, and more than a thousand renditions of his work have been recorded. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and he is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honour.

There were only two Americans staying at the hotel. They did not know any of the people they ate breakfast with in the mornings. Their room was on the top floor of the three-story building, facing the plaza. It also faced the public gardens and the fountain. There was a maze of waist high hedges lining the garden. There were five benches in a line at the center, facing out onto the plaza. An old lady sat in the center bench; she had a bag of breadcrumbs and was feeding the pigeons so they created a wild frenzy at her feet. Families from the surrounding neighborhood would fill the plaza on the weekends to let the children run while the parents sat at the café. The men would talk urgently about politics while their women discussed the latest society scandal. The fountain splashed coolly in the mid afternoon heat. It was early summer and the sun shimmered on the worn marble of the plaza. The old woman threw out her last handful of crumbs and watched as the birds pecked madly on the gravel path that ran between the bushes. Across the plaza in the doorway of the café a waiter stood looking out at the quiet square.
The American girl stood at the window the afternoon sun warming her bare arms and face. Behind her and across the room the man that was not her husband sat tying a shoe. When he was finished he stood up and walked to the dresser. Standing silently he inspected the collection of records that lay strewn on the floor beneath the stereo that sat atop the dresser. He chose one and placed it on the turntable where it began to spin silently. He studied it for a moment as it turned and then brought the needle to rest gently on the outer edge of the vinyl. The lazy base and carefree piano of Oscar Peterson’s ‘Easy To Love’ drifted idly from the speakers. At the window, the American girl sighed and looked down at the empty plaza below.
“Catherine has an exhibition opening at the Whitney on Monday,” George said, watching the LP bob and spin on the record player.
The American girl didn’t shift her gaze from the marble below.
“It’s really great for her. I mean it’s really great for her career,” he continued. “It’s set to run for a month.”
There was no response from the window. George turned away from the dresser and faced her. Her back was to him. He saw the back of her neck clipped close like a boy’s. He liked her the best with her hair like that he thought. She had always worn her hair like that during the summer.
“You know, I’m sure she’d love for you to see it. It being her first major show and all.”
“Shut up,” she whispered.
“What’s that?”
“I said shut up.”
She turned, her gaze still cast downward. Her back leaning against the edge of the open window, naked arms folded across her breast.
George moved to the bed and sat down on the corner. He could almost reach out and touch her but he refrained and placing his hands on the bed’s edge he shrugged forward gazing at her face and tightly cropped brown hair. She turned back around and leaning her head against the frame of the window resumed to gaze at the plaza below.
George pushed his weight off the bed and stood up strait. He stepped forward and placed his right hand on her waist, his left he rested against the spot where her neck met her shoulder. She didn’t move away as he expected her to, she only stood completely still as if nothing could break her concentration on Madrid and the baking marble below. He kissed her left temple and she looked up at him for the first time that morning. For a moment their eyes met and then suddenly it was his turn to look away. Releasing her from his embrace George walked to the door, picking up his sunglasses where they lay on the ottoman. She watched as he went.
He paused for a moment to look at the record spinning, the side finished and the speakers silent, the room silent, then he opened the door. With his body halfway through the threshold he stopped and looked back at her. She stood facing him in a pool of light that spilled through the window.
“I fly to New York tomorrow,” he said, and stepped into the hallway, leaving the door just slightly open behind him.
From the third floor of the hotel the American girl watched the man that was not her husband walk across the worn marble of the plaza. His shoes clipping with each step, he looked back once, at the window on the third floor and for a moment she was possessed with the urge to shout to him, but it passed as quickly as it came. When he had disappeared around the corner and on to calle de la esperanza she turned away from the window. She saw that the door was open just slightly; the American girl walked across the room and pressed her right hand and forehead against it until it clicked shut.

Arthur slept in his clothes for the third night in a row. When he awoke sunlight shown softly through the rolladens and a warm breeze blew from the open balcony. It was late morning. Propping himself up on one elbow he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and took in the room, his senses dulled from too many glasses of champagne the night before. The room was enveloped in a muffled silence and there was a ringing in his ears. Somewhere in the distance water was running. Shifting his weight from his elbow he fell back flat on the bed. Thirty minutes later he woke to the telephone ringing in his ear.
“Pronto.”
“Buon giorno, Signore Adams. This is your morning wake up call.”
“Morning wake up call?” Arthur repeated. “What time is it?”
“Eleven-thirty, Signore.”
“Eleven-thirty, grazie.”
“Prego, Signore. Buon giorno.”
Arthur swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. His ears clear and his wits regained he could clearly hear the sound of a faucet running in the bathroom and the soft humming of ‘April In Paris.’ Christ, not again, he thought to himself, as he recalled the previous night’s events.
Placing his weight on his legs he straitened his body up stiffly from the bed and grasping the fingertips of his left hand with his right he reached for the ceiling, stretched his body out as far is it would go and then slumped back to his normal posture.
Turning towards the balcony he could see the south side of the piazza dei singori, and the Café Palladio filled with patrons. Ignoring the letter he could not read, he picked up the Tribune from the coffee table and walked out onto the balcony. Passing from the cool dimness of the hotel room into the late morning sunlight he was bathed in a pleasant glow and felt immediately reenergized. He placed the paper on the white marble breakfast table and walked to the balcony’s edge.
He stood, placing his hands on the balustrade. The hard stone felt good under his grip and he shifted his feet back so that his body’s weight was now partially supported by the balcony. Below him the marble of the piazza gleamed in the radiant sunlight. Peering down he could see that the hotels own café was in full swing, the sole waitress, running madly between tables delivering cappuccino and brioche as customers chatted loudly. In the center of the piazza children ran chasing after one another, every now and then stopping and turning their attention to the pigeons that would collect around them. The sound of jazz from the café’s radio mingled with the yelling of the children and the chatter of the customers below and together made a wonderful soundtrack to his view from the balcony.
The opening of the bathroom door broke the spell of the piazza. It was no longer April in Paris but now “Night and Day.” The humming grew louder then stopped.
“There you are, Dear” came a girl’s voice. “A beautiful day isn’t it.”
Why did he always do this? Why did he always return to these girls? Night after night it was the same story – it had been this way since he arrived in Vicenza one month earlier. Melissa was a fine girl, the daughter of a businessman from New York. He had met her at the teatro olympico his first week in town. They went out for drinks after the theater and ended up going home together. He had only meant it to be a one off thing, he really had, but then there’s never really a one off thing.
The letter he could not read arrived the next day and he ended up sleeping with Melissa that night, too. And then the letter sat on the coffee table all day and he saw it on his way out to dinner the next evening and he ended up sleeping with her again. And then, after that, it really wasn’t a one off thing anymore.
“It’s wonderful, Mel. Simply wonderful,” he replied
Arthur pushed off the balcony and regained all his weight on his feet. He turned and stepped backward so his lower back was now leaning on the balustrade. Melissa stood naked just inside the entrance to the balcony, a hand lightly gripping the top of the balcony door, her left leg raised so only the toes of her foot rested on the carpet and her left hand gripping the curve of her bare waist. The natural curls of her hair fell on her shoulders like a golden brown storm.
She was gorgeous, Arthur, thought to himself. He remained motionless, taking her beauty in, memorizing it, saving it for a time when it he would have to bring an end to things. She had the amazing breasts a girl of her age does, a waist, the contour of which could rival the Alps in grandeur and long, slender legs that got married men in trouble and all of her a wonderful golden brown. She was a beautiful animal.
“Come here, you,” she said stepping out into the full glow of the sun. She pressed her naked body firmly against his and gave him a long, deep kiss. He was reminded of why he found it so difficult to leave them.
As they stumbled back into the shadows of the room Arthur knew he would have to shake this, he would have to tell Melissa it was no good. He would have to read the letter he could not read. He would do it later. There was never a one off thing; he knew that.

Mark Zuckerberg just conned Microsoft into a $240 million deal to buy 1.6% of Facebook, valuing his 20% stake at $3 billion. If there was any doubt that we’re in the midst of the Web 2.0 bubble, it’s just been left in the dust by MZ ghost-riding the Bently Continental courtesy of Microsoft.

Seeing as Facebook has yet to turn a profit or publicly release revenue figures, and taking into account the non-zero probability that Facebook and the whole social networking fad fades quicker than NBC’s “Cavemen”, Microsoft’s only hope of making money on the deal lies in a Facebook IPO within the next year or so. If Google wanted to invest in Facebook it would have outbid Microsoft and since it didn’t, we can safely assume that Google knows what we don’t about Facebook and, given that information, thought $240 million for such a small stake in the company was too much.

Hopefully for both Microsoft and Zuckerberg’s personal Make It Rain fund, it’s not.

In any event, to the casual observer, the whole thing boils down to this: 1)The second dot-com bubble is definitely in effect, given the amount of money old, established white men are giving to young, computer-savvy college dropouts; and 2)The deal makes Microsoft look stale and outdated as Google, the maverick new-kid-on-the-block, casually walks away.

dom and the zushi crew at havaianas bar

and of course someone HAD to go and bust out the cello

a little dinner music

upstairs at havaianas

this is what things look like after too much shochu
zushi

a list of ish i find while shopping around and want to save for a later purchase…plus what you can get me for my birthday

billy and his new fixed that he put together in tokyo (we were in yoyogi park for a drink and a ride saturday afternoon)

pullin’ some trickster shit in the park

my first fixed gear experience and i’m hooked

i passed by a dude on his fixed gear and we kind of gave each other the “yo, what’s up my fixed-rider” nod – what a sham i am!

a close up of billy’s fixed

fixed’s around the city

more

not a fixed but just as cool

…and an advert for a fork lift….wtf?

interesting article found via hypebeast…
Fashion’s Next Big Bang

more fake ass ballin’

pretty woman…can’t you just see the shopper’s remorse contorting my face?

one of the many alley way markets

you don’t know what beef is, son

more street market goodness

makes you happy just looking at her

the elevator to aqua self portrait

this guy was making paper just down the street from the hotel…somewhere in hk there are still pirates running around

a double decker!

even the champagne bottles are empty in copy baller land…

view from the room

night view

that’s about it for this trip, folks. up next…fixed gear fun in yoyogi park

just a couple of copy ballers livin’ a lie in one of the world’s greatest cities…

sam and his son roshan of ’sam’s tailor’ fame. the man has made suits for presidents, actors and athletes…and now a couple of fake ballin’ ass junior officers

peter…or was it paul? of jimmy chen’s in the original and unrivaled peninsula hotel – fitting adam in what he will forever refer to as his ’suit of armour’

are you a basketball player mr. allen? jimmy’s

the finished product out for the night. a suit or armour?

gettin’ my grown ass man on

a fine suit begs a fine woman and an excellent meal…local model jill at the Felix in the peninsula hotel

and her friend holly…throwin’ that blue steal at the camera (holly, coincidentally is friends with jolie from nike ID fame…a small world)

the venetian macau…the worlds largest casino and second largest building! …it was actually kind of disappointing. aside from the two massage hookers we talked to for an hour while we were toasted at 3 in the morning there really weren’t that many people or single birds…it was a week night, but i expected more. ah, well. one more reason not to gamble

adam in a tux he had made on a previous hk trip…thinking about how he should have learned the rules to baccarat before putting down half a paycheck

from the front on the bus back to the ferry station…less than 24 hours in macau and we were a solid $12 combined up on the house…take that sheldon adelson

a full alligator skin! damn those shoes shoes are going to be hot…just call me iceberg slim. kidding…i only had a credit card holder made…out of brown alligator skin. am i a bad person because i like nice things?

another alligator and the leather man

alright, many more photos to come in the adventures of the copy ballers and the women who love them, then hate them a few days later…