i learn through an email that a friend at the iscp does the artwork for a mike ladd show in a place called the kitchen. mike ladd is one of my absolute favourites in music. his music is a powerful hybrid of hip hop, spoken word, punkrock and jazz. i have seen him on stage in vienna twice. his first show which showcased his astonishing “welcome to the afterfuture” album was mind-blowing. the new show is about a conceptual band performed like an opera. i am looking very much forward to hearing more of his afrofuturistic sound.

finally i find a nice bar in midtown. after seeing a physical therapist my knee feels better. i can almost walk in a normal way and go to see a friend. he shows me a bar called the cutting room on 24th street. it is a spacious place with a nice bar. the room is more than 5 meters high. there is a mixed crowd of black and white people, it is the first place that i have been to, where this happens. in the back there is a concert hall. people queue up to get inside. as i go to the toilet i hear wild jazz music coming out of the hall. i like this place and especially the fact that black and white people mix.

i feel pain in my knees and limp for three days.
after getting better last week i catch a cold. i decide to stay home for two days. it’s sunny on saturday (like most of the times in new york) and i get out for a little walk. i walk towards the hudson river and get on the hudson highway. the lights turn red. i still want to cross, so i start running. suddenly sth snaps in my knee. i feel a very bad pain immediately. i make it to the other side of the freeway but i limp baaaaaadly. my right leg is rather stiff, i can barely walk. shock! i try to walk around a little on a hudson quai. it feels very bad.
i limp back home and call a friend. i am lucky that she had back problems recently and found out about a physical therapist who treated her. i put on some ice on my right knee. that helps a little.
on sunday my knee is badly swollen. i treat it with ice. my friend shows up and brings me breakfast and pills. i cannot get out of the house, it’s too painful to walk downstairs.
parallel to getting hold of that physical therapist on the phone i try to find out if i have travel insurance on my mastercard. apparently it does not cover visits to a doctor. i am afraid that i have to go back to austria to get treatment.
at the same time my girlfriend is having big trouble with getting a visa for the states.
on monday i feel a little better. at the same time my telephone at home decides to break down. that does not make things easier for communicating with my girlfriend in europe.

on friday night i go out a little. as i walk back towards home i pass by a cd shop which has its closing sale. it is 11 pm, i enter and have a look at the cds. there is some comtemporary music. most of the cds are on sale for US 2,99. as i skip through those cds a fortyish man enters the shop. he is very nervous and runs back and forth through the shop looking for rock music. he wants help in finding music. he yells around and finally says he has a very bad eyesight. he stresses out everybody around him. he finds out about the name of the shop clerk, who is a very nice guy called richard. richard! richard, this and that…
that man finally gets hold of a portable cd player which is on the counter in order to listen to the cds. i queue up and after some time ask him if i can listen to music.
he agrees. after listening to cds for 5 minutes he comes up again and wants me to hand over the headphones and the cd player. i tell him that i still want to go on. he lets me do that and finds out that he can listen to music on the shop’s soundsystem. thanks god he leaves me in peace.
another man enters the shop with a big freaky fur hat. he takes of his coat and his hat. i discover that he is bald and a bit crosseyed. he is dressed completely in leather, he wears tight leather trousers and a leather jacket, no t-shirt. also this guy has a bad eyesight. he brings his face very close to the cds in the rack sticks out his leather ass to the public.
around his waist there is a band where usually the undertrousers show (nowadays). i can very well imagine that he is naked in his paints. he seems to be in his late forties.

in the sink

on sunday evening (feb 26) i come back from a little trip across the hudson river. back in midtown manhattan the cold hits me with full power. the winds are strong and brutally cold. one minute longer in the cold and i die, i think, before finally my cousin shows up in his car.

already 20 cockroaches squeezed dead with my index finger. the mother still keeps hidden. she just sends out the little ones to distract me, i suppose. in the background she prepares the big attack…

the midwest monster potato

comes with zucchinis. first fry zucchinis in a pan. cut cheese in slices and cover the vegetables. put the squash in the oven and fry for 15 minutes. if a smell of burnt food comes out of the oven, open it and have a look. discover that the cheese is not even melted and leave the ensemble for another ten minutes in the oven. open the oven again…

suddenly there is a terrible noise in the appartment that makes me almost deaf. i run around in panic. it’s some kind of alarm. after a minute it dawns on me that it is the fire alarm. i run to the window and open it. the alarm is still on. i go looking where it comes from and finally discover the alarm box above the entrance door. i open the door. it stops. after a while i close the door and it goes off again. i run back to the door and open it again. it stops again. in order to break that loop i leave both the door and the window open.
i discover that i am running late for meeting with somebody. the monster potato was boiling for 40 min already. i run a fork test on it. well, it’s still not ready but i gotta eat. i finally have my dinner under stress with the cheese not properly melted and the potato not well cooked.

death toll among roaches: 9

patent pending…

cockroaches killed: 7
the mother keeps hidden (probably giving bith to another 1,000 babies). i prepare myself mentally for the big attack…

i go jogging along the hudson river heading towards south. as i run downtown i wonder about the coordinates of ground zero.

i run all the way down from the west village to battery park. in the park i find maps which lay out downtown incl. ground zero. i choose greenwich street to run back. soon the streets get more crowded. i approach the fenced off ground zero. almost no remnants of the catastrophe can be seen except for the big hole where the twin towers used to be.