So I wrote my first web scraper. I’ve gone to the dark side, at least in a small, even insignificant way. It would take a long time to download the site I have in mind at the rate I am going but I thought it smart to start slow so mistakes don’t snowball or seem bigger than they are. Yeah. I have pursued this particular project because while others have copycatted it I still appear to have the greater link rank from top-tier sources. Or I could be on crack in so thinking.
I almost fell for a scam that I’ve come close to falling for in the past. What am I saying? I did fall for it. But I got my money back after threatening to cry to PayPal about refunding the payment. I can’t remember the name of the scam. I did not know it actually had a name until last night. But I encountered it a few years ago while shopping around for software that could turn my PDF files into the so-called Flipbook format. In the end I found a legitimate piece of software from an established company. But before finding that I had to get through a thicket of software packages which all seemed to do pretty much the same thing, which all looked like their website copy was written by the same writers, which all cost more or less the same save for one or two of them that were available for a limited time at a ridiculous 90% discount. It took me a while to figure it out but all these software packages really were made by the same central organization, all in Hong Kong. It was not until I paid for this other software package last night that I saw the PayPal receipt, where for the first time it is revealed that the company I just sent money to is in Hong Kong. Ten I made the familiar discovery that this software DOES NOT WORK and the seemingly instantly available tech support conversation gradually revealed itself to be a chatbot with no knowledge of anything except to tell me to send them an e-mail.
I think they make products that actually kind of work. But in this case, even if I didn’t see through their canard, I would have been extra skeptical of using a VPN product from a software company I cannot trust.
So the hunt goes on to find a credible VPN provider. There, it should be said, is a product that the criminals of the world must be chomping at the bit to get in on.
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At the Windmill, listening to ironically enough a radio piece about a group of homeless people who will be performing in New York. It’s some kind of feel-good thing where a real opera company or somesuch enlists the voices of homeless who can allegedly sing. I say ironic because here at the Windmill I sit between 8 or 9 homeless people to my right and a schoolyard of frolicking children on the left. Where shall the two crowds meet?
I slept some last night, but did not drink. I almost did crack open a Resin, and I even bought a fresh bottle of the VODAK. But then I remembered, it’s only the 2nd night. I can’t expect BP and anxiety to drop back to normal overnight. It’s never been that quick, though I’ve pretended it has. And I should get my annual checkup soon, which would come with a refill of the panic pills. I took another one last night. I think I have as much as 10 days worth left.
Far too many bugs out here today. Going for cover. Ghetto coffeeshop, I guess.
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Went to the library instead, after listening in to a BBC4 piece about Sandy Denny. I’d never heard of her. Listening in now on Spotify. Sounds like she did herself in. She fell down three separate staircases in 3 weeks. The third fall was her last. Must be a deeper story than there was time to outline on the BBC segment.
I could write songs like this.
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It’s the next day. Thursday. First drink since Sunday. I slept the New Sleep Monday and Tuesday, then slept like an almost normal person Wednesday. I can go back to sleeping 10+ hours a night, sans booze, in as little as three nights. Put that in the records books.I cancelled a doctor visit when I found I had enough of a supply of panic pills to last until next week, assuming I have as much as 11 straight days of panic attacks, which I will not.
Today was kind of classic me. I accumulated, accumulated, and just piled up the mountains of content to be used in some form or other at some time or other. I continued scraping a certain web site. I spied on Broadway via the LinkNYC devices again, this time gobbling up one side of a full phone conversation between a woman and I don’t know who. I could kind of understand what she was saying as it came in live but I’ll enhance it later for FULL DETAILS. It sounded like a soulful, heart-deep conversation.
First drink since Sunday. Sat at the piano for about 3 hours earlier, inspired by the encounter with the Elmo piano on 35th Avenue earlier. I played well enough but the feeling of playing in front of people felt slightly new. I was rusty, but so was the piano. There’s a reason they put these pianos out in the open. They are sacrificial. Hitting the soft pedal on that thing was almost like muting the thing. Some of the keys did not work. And there was Elmo staring at me. Yay. The sound from the piano vanished into the clattering void of that particular intersection.
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Now it is Saturday. I am at a POPS in midtown east. SInce last I was here a restaurant called ITAVOLO has appeared. The tables here also appear to be new. POPS = Privately Owned Public Space.To the south a woman is typing. To the north a security guard idles. To the east is the aforementioned ITAVOLO. To the west is the escalator down which I rode into this glorious place.
I walked here from AsLIC.
I’ve been thinking about piano music, and its role in my life. SInce playing on that ELMO piano the other day I’ve been at the piano for longer than has been normal of late. A confluence of consciousness-streams had me revisiting a notion I had long ago of putting a piano in a van and driving around the country entertaining the masses. I don’t think I could do that for very long. But if I somehow became itinerant I would pretty well have to have a piano. I go nuts without prestidigitational outlets. When I worked at Tower Records I’ll never forget how my brain lit up the first time they let me run the cash register. I got to punch in numbers and codes. It lit up what had until then been a pretty deadening job.
But the thing about piano music is that I never talk about it. Growing up in a jock-centric environment I felt that playing piano was just not anything I wanted to admit to. It was like a deviance. And that attitude has followed through to this day. I feel like talking about piano music alienates people who know little or nothing of it. If it does not alienate then it takes what I think is an even worse tone, which is that I am educating.
There have been very few people with whom I’ve shared my particular enthusiasms when it comes to piano music. And I don’t know if there is anyone but I who knows why I play.
Nowhere was the attitude about classical music more pronounced than at the college radio station. I was classical programming director for a couple of years, which was no big deal to anyone except a guy who I think was known as Red. The radio station was owned by the college but it was a “community” station. That meant that anyone who could get there (and who passed an audition) could host a show. “Townies”, as we called them.
I don’t know about everybody but on balance it seemed like a majority of the radio station denizens thought the classical group were all pompous pricks. I almost certainly exaggerate the comprehensiveness of that attitude but it was people like Red who made it seem like classical folks were needless outcasts. He would constantly pepper me with questions about my attitudes toward rock and roll or other genres, always with the implication that I must think all of it was crap crap and more crap.
Will continue this… or not… going to the Saloon at the Oyster Bar, even though it feels like I just woke up. Slept ‘til noon but was up at 4:30 playing Fishdom.
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Back from the Oyster Bar Saloon. I love that place. The payphones are still in the bathrooms. Yay. The main problem with the Saloon is that there is zero cell signal in there. Maybe that’s a positive. I feel like I missed the end of an era there. The first or second time I went I heard people asking where Chris went. He had just retired after 30 years behind the bar.
Anyway, so yeah, classical music has been one of those thing of which I seldom speak, although I think I’ve been a little looser about it in recent years. People just seem to think that someone who knows a lot about classical music looks down on those who do not, or thinks they are uncultured ignoramuses. I don’t think I think those things but it’s a stereotype that I don’t feel I need to provoke.
Aside from fellow musicians I remember getting into a spirited conversation about piano music with one person, only one person, in my entire life. He was at a party at Stephanie’s place, quite soon before she moved to Tampa as it turned out. I never talked to him again but his interest in piano was genuine, and he seemed to take my opinions to heart. Ogdon for the big impenetrable stuff but not for Chopin or Rachmaninoff. Ashkenazy for the Russians but not much else. Horowitz from the 1920s and 1940s, on vinyl if possible. That 4-CD EMI set from the ‘20s has some of the best piano playing I’ve ever heard, complete with snaps crackles and pops. Emil Gilels’ “Petrushka” is one of the scariest, most terrifying recordings I’ve heard. Throaty and hoarse, as is pitch perfect for the music.
It was not until the conversation ended that I started to think the guy I was talking to thought I was a pompous ass.
Just something to think about. Or not.
Been watching “The Keepers”. Details of the rapes are just enough to make me throw up. Those priests were goddam animals. More on that next time. Too dark in here to type.
