Listening/Watching | sorabji at WSBJ.com

Is There Something You Forgot To Tell Me?

Favoritest album ever… at this moment. Joan Osborne: Relish. Remembering how Joan Osborne casually made it sound like she welcomed her male fans to bang her every which way. Was just a gimmick but it had me going thinking I had a chance with her for 90 seconds until completion. THERE ARE NO MISTAKES IN […]

Those Were Long, Hard Years

I transcribed this as accurately as I could. It’s a soliloquy on the subway delivered by a disturbed but gentle individual. I connect with people like this on some level, but I’ll have to think about it some to determine what that level is. I did not make eye contact with this gentleman, and I […]

Rag

I left the theater emotionally exhausted. I think it was a matter of timing, or time and place. Seeing Ragtime performed by a cast of high school kids was far more of an experience to remember than I expected. I assumed the kids were talented, since this was the Frank Sinatra School for the Performing Arts, founded […]

Lots of Astoria in This Film

Started watching Five Corners thinking since it was a 1980s film set in NYC it would have some payphones and phone booths. Oh, did it. But that’s not what drew me in. I started hitting screen captures when I recognized one Astoria location after another. Turns out a large part of the movie was filmed in […]

Black Pant

Today’s flâneur afternoon on the MoviePass featured Black Panther, the title of which was shortened to Black Pant on the theater’s LED sign even though there appeared to be plenty of room to to finish off the word “panther”. Even an extra letter H would have sufficed to keep certain of us from thinking about black pants […]

Moviepass Compliance? And “I, Tonya”

Does MoviePass intend to make money from data mining its subscribers’ movements? Of course they do. Will they or do they already monitor how many people leave a movie after 20 minutes, 40 minutes, etc.? I imagine MoviePass has a “Subscriber Compliance” division staffed with individuals in surveillance bunkers monitoring movements of subscribers from the […]

Mysterious Radio Signal

I tuned the kitchen radio tuned to 900am, a frequency not used by any New York City broadcasters. I was listening for the in-betweens, the momentary leashing in of stray stations from far away broadcasting at 900 or leaking over from neighboring frequencies. I heard those type mixed signals until, mysteriously at first, a 1940s-sounding […]

Léon and his Assassin

I finally made it all the way through Léon: The Professional. I got about an hour into this film a few years ago but either gave up or got too drunk to remember watching the rest of it. Well made, filled with numerous obvious impossibilities and goofs, but as a romantic fantasy it’s good fun with […]

Trouble With Cats

Maybe the trouble will be mine. I don’t know. I posted a story I knew would pique some interest at CityBridge. I just don’t know how they navigate their doublespeak. After my story posted a newer press release went out with slightly different wording, basically saying that there was a new “special app” that let […]

Joe Frank Is Now On The Other Side

Joe Frank has been in my head since about 1993, though I cannot say exactly when I first heard his programs. I estimate it as 1993 because I found a cassette tape with that date on it containing one of his programs in my storage locker. I don’t think a day goes by in which […]

I Know Why The Box Fan Sings

I know why the music is there. It’s for the The Team. (That’s what I am calling the stuffed animals from now on: The Team.) The Team needs music for their dancing. That is why they summoned it, and the fans and air filter provide it. The Team only dances when I am asleep. They […]

And Then There is This Guy

I was never a fan of Evgeny Kissin until I heard his interpretation of the Beethoven “Moonlight” Sonata, released a couple of years ago. I knew his Carnegie Hall début recording, and all the ones in between. Then, as now, I thought of them as technically agile but not much else. I thought the piano […]

Yuja Wang: Rock Star

She’s not new to me but watching this performance tonight confirms what the critics and even the skeptics say: She’s all that. It’s like she’s dancing up there, dancing like The Wild Thing but not that wild that she becomes annoying. Here she is looking for a cue from the conductor, Temerkinov, who has barely […]

Trapped in a GearVR Phone Booth.

I picked up a Samsung GearVR headset a couple of weeks ago. I do not have a lot of money these days, but when the price was marked down 50% for one day only I figured what the hell. I click clicked and had it noon the next day. It’s good stuff. I don’t think […]

A Mile of Sound: 20 Outdoor VOIP Phones Heard All At Once

What do you get when you open up 20 or so VOIP telephones along Third Avenue in Manhattan and listen to them all at once? Some might call it a wall of noise. I actually find it surprisingly engaging. I just wish sound quality over VOIP didn’t sound so squeaky and shrill.

Springsteen: “Before the Fame”. Yug…

Springsteen has certainly had some dud songs along the way but this stuff was different. By the third or fourth song I said to myself “This stuff is really horrible.” He sounded sick. None of the songs seemed to make any sense.

Overheard Rehearsal at the Old Sony Plaza Public Space

This was a pleasing thing to walk in on. The now-unnamed public space at 550 Madison Avenue was chosen by a religious folk-type band as a place to rehearse its songs on Thursday night. I only caught the end of one song and all of the one heard below. At the end of song the […]

Was I?

Was he drunk? Was he handsome? And did mother give me hell?

Alkan: Song of the Mad Woman on the Seashore

I have to admit, Spotify was a lot more fun and interesting to me when I was still on Facebook. Even if it was only an illusion I enjoyed the possibility that others were paying attention to my relatively eccentric listening patterns and thinking “My, what an interesting individual.” Alas, like most everything else on […]

Funicular, by Fernando Livschitz at Black Sheep Films

The Roosevelt Island Tram is sliced, diced, and concatenated into a caterpillar-like transit vessel in this short film, Funicular, recently posted to Vimeo. I know many people who say you could not pay them enough money to ride the Roosevelt Island Tram. This video might convince others of the same, should they be fooled into […]

Elton John: Ticking

Elton John’s Ticking is a life-long favorite song that I remember listening to as a first-grader in Laos. This live version is one with which I was unfamiliar before now, and which seems a little disjointed compared to the studio version, but certainly acceptable. I have been digitizing my LP records and sending most of […]

Adele: “Hello”. It’s All About the Phone Booth

“Hello” is all about the phone booth.

Sharon Ridley: “Stay Awhile With Me”

I discovered this song at the cemetery today, listening to never-before-listened-to Usenet downloads from ~20 years ago on the iPod. It is a beautiful sentiment. Love should be like this. I do not like “pleasing you is all I have in mind” but everything else from “Stay Awhile With Me” represents what I think should […]