Lindsayism.com

Stephen Colbert is a Huge Neutral Milk Hotel Fan!

What are three of our favorite things?

Stephen Colbert
Neutral Milk Hotel
My Friend Stephanie aka "Stiff" (if you know her)

Last week, Stephanie went to see The Colbert Report live. What follows is an instant-message re-enactment of our real-life conversation after the show:

Me: How was Colbert?
Stephanie: AMAZING!!! OH MY GOD STEPHEN SANG NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL TO ME!
Me: What?? (Beatlemania screaming face, actual screaming, etc)

Here are the facts as we know them. Between segments, the Neutral Milk Hotel song "Holland 1945" came on (as, apparently, it often does) and Stephanie began absentmindedly lip-synching along to it. A few seconds into the song, she realized Stephen was pointing at her and singing along. According to witnesses, Stephen and Stephanie continued to sing along to the song while making eye contact for over a minute until their reverie was interrupted by the end of the commercial break. During this time, Stephen:

- Appeared to know all of the words to the song.
- Moved his head to look around a producer when his eye contact with Stephanie was briefly blocked.
- Acknowledged his and Stephanie's mutual understanding of the sad nature of the song, which is about Anne Frank, by making a "sad face" and tracing the motion of an invisible tear down his cheek. Stephanie, in kind, mimicked this motion back to Stephen.

In Stephanie's words: "I can die now."

Geoff, a sketch comedian who attended the show with Stephanie and witnessed the event, had this to say:

"It was magical. Neutral Milk Hotel was playing, Stephanie was singing, I was singing. Then I looked up and noticed Stephen was singing. Then I saw that he was singing in my general direction, so I looked to my right and realized that he and Stephanie were singing to each other. So I told Stephanie, "Hey, Stephen Colbert is singing to you!" and she did her best job of shushing me while continuing to sing Neutral Milk Hotel with Stephen. I was about 15 seconds behind on all fronts. But still, pretty awesome."

Here is our very most favorite picture of Stephen:

And here is the song: Download 06_holland_1945.m4a by Neutral Milk Hotel.

The world just screams and falls apart!!

Drop Everything and See The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Really.

I don't really do 'reviews' of things this good. Things this good do not need reviews. Just take a moment right now and put The Devil and Daniel Johnston at the top of your Netflix queue. Or take out your little book and write "rent TDaDJ asap" in it. Or go to a store and buy it. If you're any kind of curious or interesting person this movie (and Daniel himself) will fascinate and obsess you. And I know that's an obnoxious thing to say - that's just how amazing this story is! (Read about Daniel and the movie here.)

ONE CAVEAT: You must watch the extras...but do not look at the extras menu until you're done watching the entire movie. I cannot stress this enough - when you get to the main menu just hit "play movie". When you're done, watch the extras.

Brilliant.

UPDATE: SEEEEE???

The (un)Luckiest Diner on the Lower East Side

Eater has put a deathwatch on LoSide Diner.

"the biggest problem they face is the one-two punch of bad food and zero authenticity."

Nothing against Eater, at all, but I think everyone has misunderstood LoSide Diner. And that misunderstanding has allowed me and my friends many evenings of leisurely dining for hours for very very little money.

Now if you're a rich person, of course you don't like LoSide diner. Of course you think it's unauthentic. Because you can afford to eat anywhere and the concept of BYO means nothing to you. But for the rest of us, LoSide Diner was/is the only place on the LES (that I know of) where a group of friends can meet (right off the subway!), sit in a big booth, bring their own cheap wine (opened, chilled and poured by the friendliest restaurant staff in the entire city), listen to 69 Love Songs and enjoy a decent grilled cheese or veggie burger unbothered by crowds or hurried waitstaff. And two hours later the bill for four people, entrees and appetizers, is less than $40. LoSide diner isn't unauthentic. LoSide diner is the MOST authentic. And if you don't believe me, just check out the art on the walls.

UPDATE NOTE: The reason we could stay that long was because nobody else would be there, and we always tipped like 50%. I understand that the things I like about LoSide are the same things that doom it.

Oh, and they have the best (and most authentic) Southern-style potato salad in New York City. So there. Save LoSide Diner!!

dust off the flask

I think I'm going to that tomorrow. I used to date a guy in my Williamsburg days who took me to the Mccarren Park Pool on the back of his bike on our second date, when I didn't even know it was there and the only way to get in was through a hole in a barbed-wire fence. The only word for it was "magical." (I'm not expecting magic tomorrow night, just good friends and Michael Showalter.)

(Word on the street is the beer license fell through, so bring your smugglin' purse.)

old school represent

Huge, enthusiastic, and slightly belated congrats to my friends Mark G., Scott, Maud and Mark L. for being chosen for Entertainment Weekly's 25 Best Entertainment Sites. Check out each of their own site picks - I love how they chose to highlight interesting sites that readers might not have seen, sharing the spotlight, spreading the love and sending the elevator back down, as it were.

(Unlike one biz-blogger on the list, who chose to tell us about his discoveries: Friendster and US Weekly. So transparently un-generous. So nouveau-blogger. I remember when this whole thing was about sharing - and clearly, so do Mark, Maud, Scott and Mark. So yay for them, and yay for Entertainment Weekly for being so cool.)

EW also has short interviews with Mark Graham and Maud Newton here.

so punk rock

This is so cool: you sign up for this email list that these UK pranksters set up, and when the list has enough people on it they'll choose a David Hasselhoff song and send out an alert. Everyone on the list is then supposed to buy the song off iTunes for 99 cents on the same day, thus catapulting an old random David Hasselhoff song to the top of the (UK) charts. The awesome thing is, these people aren't David Hasselhoff fans. They're just fucking with the stupid, meaningless chart system. And for that they have my undying respect.

And probably the attention of every record label and music promoter (For all I know record labels already do this, but I seem to get a lot of emails from record promotion companies who haven't figured out this isn't a music blog and I haven't seen a coordinated e-commerce attack of this magnitude yet. Not that I actually read them.)

So at first I was all "viva la revolucion!" but then I remembered that co-option by the Man is always just a step behind. Sigh.

"There's room for everyone. You can make it your own way."

I was just re-reading the amazing 4-part Patton Oswalt interview from A Special Thing on the subway this morning, and this quote jumped out at me because it's something I've been thinking about a lot and I totally agree:

"I'm still baffled by people that get jealous or angry at a comedian having success, when it's the kind of success that they would never want. You know, do you want what that guy has? Do you want to do what that guy has to do? That's awful. Be happy it's not you."

Insert whatever you want for "comedian" and it's still so true. (Well, unless you're an actual prostitute, I guess.)

Anyways, Happy Holidays!