And the Heavens Opened.....

Every day I walk from Vesey and Church to Wall Street for work. I thread my not so slenderness between the teeming hordes of macabre Nebraska high school girls basketball squads trying to snap a picture of the World Trade Center pit, the sweaty Wall Street traders looking on the edge of jumping out a window, Ben Bernanke and his phalanx of NYPD that, for some reason, are always dressed like a Tom of Finland recruitment poster and the botoxed PR guys rushing to their offices to work on convincing the idiot masses that Miley Cyrus is more than what she should be (a cute Tennessee diner waitress with dreams of hitting it big). Okay, so not really any different than the average NY commute, and I've learned to take a certain Taoist approach, becoming the stream that rushes quietly around the intervening craggy rocks, but one thing drives me completely insane....makes me grit my teeth, immediately upon hearing it, and that is car horns. I'm all for sound, addicted to it actually, but the pointless honking in New York is maybe my second biggest pet peeve (after umbrellas), and lately I have been having this little day dream, that I would like to share in hopes that if it is said out loud it will somehow come true. Thank you for your patience. If you would like to skip down to the gigs, please feel free at any point, I don't mind.

My day dream starts pretty grounded in reality, walking down Church to work, but then some jackass (re: livery driver) lays on the horn because he is shocked that there is a red light and this seriously inhibits his ability to do his job which is to drive a car in New York City, which has red lights in it. I walk over to his car, gently open then hood, and proceed to rip out the horn with my bare hands. Now this is where things start to get a little testosterone, so if there are kids around, please make them jump to the gigs now. As I'm standing in the viscera of the handily dispatched car horn, a red film covers my eyes and I move to the next car and repeat the process, and the next, and the next, and the next, until I am a whirring mass of silent destruction, stripping electrical cables with my teeth, flinging small plastic air horns hundreds of feet into the air as I move quickly up town in a crisscross pattern, leaving no horn unturned. Finally, it is dusk and I am laying in a pile of shredded cheap plastic, gasoline, and well, it's new york, so probably urine of some sort. My fingers are nubs and I am breathing in short but thankfully quiet gasps. The people of New York lift me gently on their shoulders and carry me to midtown. They sing William Basinski's tape loops using the syllable "lu" as a Norse chariot comes flying out of the sky pulled by a million unicorns. Leif Erickson, Zeus, Don Knotts and Alyssa Milano (of course) gently lift my depleted carcass into the chariot and kiss my brow as we fly heavenward to an eternity of rest, relaxation, indian food and matlock reruns. The people cheer and all is right with the world.

Shanda thinks that this wouldn't actually happen if I dismantled every car horn in New York. She runs on a different set of religious principles than I do. However, since I usually blindly believe anything a proven pragmatist tells me, I will learn to live with it and maybe even become friends with the cacophony. Maybe I'll start this week with these two gigs:

Tonight
Brooklyn Lyceum
227 4th Avenue
8 pm

Adam Lane's Full Throttle Orchestra
Taylor Ho Bynum/Nate Wooley-cornet/trumpet
Reut Regev/Tim Vaughn-trombone
Avram Fefer/David Bindman/Matt Bauder-saxophoneAdam Lane-bass
Igal Foni-drums

and

Saturday
IBeam Studios
168 7th street
Brooklyn
8 pm

Tilt Sixtet
Rich Johnson/Nate Wooley-trumpet
Chris McIntyre/Ben Gerstein-trombone
Joe Exley/Jay Rozen-tuba

Also, Crackleknob is out!!!!!!! The new disc with Mary Halvorson and Reuben Radding on Hatology. Please go to your local sounderie and buy 9 copies. Seriously, you will break the first 8 with glee upon listening.

and finally, some folks have asked me to post these announcements on my blog (blogspot.nwooley.com) so that the whole world can know what a doofus I am. So, there you go. This will be up today. Tell your friends, especially if you've been having an argument about what a doofus I am.