A week of tedium

Footie talk is of no use there, innit? :) How does a man save himself without his trustworthy "How about that Oliver Kahn heh?"

Happy New Year, Omar! My colleagues are Brits, but not interested in the beautiful game, so no chance even for dull-ish "so who'll win The Premiership this season" chat.

Could you not be a football missionary and get Conneticut into the Premiership, or EPL as they call it, in a big way? Either that or go to Hooters a lot.

why not announce on the first night that you are delighted to be here, as you have been corresponding with a local group of mormons/scientologists/aynrandians for some months, and now your old group of friends can at last co-mingle with yr new.

I accept this will not tackle the weirdness problem, but you will at least be free to do what you want. If need be on the final night you can rush in w.your tie askew and yr hair sticking upo and declarer you have just realised yr new friends are mentalists and thank god you are going back to the UK again.

This plan is perfect, except for the tie (never wear them) and my hair is too short to *stick up*. Never mind - I can express dishevelment some other way.

Alternatively can you come with me, mark? You could pose as local "brit-exile schoolfriend" (right age!)who left the UK to practise witchcraft or summat in New England.

Happy New Year to you too Dr.C (okay to everyone - that settles it). And you call that colleagues? I feel your despair: without automatic conversation pieces (footie, music or the seasonal one, let's say: wot about that bastard Jackson leaving Tom Bombadil out of Fellowship?) one could well feel lost. ;)

yes! take MarkS with you and then proceed to do what RickyT and i did last night: get v drunk and talk incessantly about Lord of the Rings until 1am! GUARANTEED to make people shun you like the plague.

or even, take me and RickyT with you, and sit near us! i'm sure we could both do with a break to sunny Connecticut! but, er after Friday as that's when we're going to see the film innit :)

Sunny Connecticut, they say. Feh. (Though, actually, there isn't much snow up here as compared to, say, Hotlanta & other southern locales, and it's pretty sunny right now.)

I'm all for record shopping & stuff, though the pickings in CT are quite slim. Please note that I'm not the one to ask about bars & such stuff, either. (Dear God, WHY are you going to CT?)

Depending where in Connecticut you are, I bet you can sneak into NYC if you want to easily enough, and there's some great stuff happening next week... notably the Arts On The High Wire benefit (w/ John Zorn, X- ecutioners, Laurie Anderson, Don Byron, etc.) on the 11th, and the Mission of Burma reunion shows on the 12th and 13th.

Dr C: "I'm delighted to be in Connecticut because I'm a huge John Zorn fan, and tomorrow I've arranged for everyone to go and see his new show..." Dr C's so-called colleagues: "Auurgh! We preferred it in Grongingen when he was suddenly all into Rowlfing and wanted us to meet his Dutch deep massage gurus!!"

Douglas, as usual, is on the money. Your ticket to salvation is the Metro North Railroad Line - there are stations from New Haven to all points west of New Haven that have trains running every so often into Grand Central Station. These trains usually run until 2 or 3 in the morning, too, if my memory serves me correctly.

For a look @ the schedules, click on this link, which features the schedule for ALL Metro North trains (as well as other NYC transit options).

Please also note that the Mission of Burma show on the 11th is SOLD OUT (I think).

But I was interrupting - Mark, please, more on the Dutch massage gurus.

PS - Click for lines EAST of the Hudson River.

Thanks for the info David. I used to visit Stamford CT thru work every 6 weeks ago, but owing to a 'change of role' (read : demotion - yay!) I don't travel as much as I used to (which is fine by me!). So I know all the record shops around Stamford (my favourite is Disc N Dat for used bargains, although I always seem to spend a fortune in Tower as well). My fallback strategy is to get the car which we'll be sharing for an evening and drive to these two.

However, the company I work for has moved further up the Merrit Parkway to Shelton, CT and I've never been there. Anyone know if there are any decent record shops up there?

Also - what's nearest Metro station to Shelton which would get me down into Manhattan? It's not clear from the link.

Mark - how DO you know about Grongingen?

I grew up in Stamford, CT, then moved to Darien and finally Westport before coming to San Francisco. I can't say I've ever been to Shelton. My friend Chris's great record store Secret Sounds (t-shirt worn by Dave Grohl on cover of live Nirvana LP) closed a year or so ago, it was in nearby Bridgeport. I guess you could go to a park, or to the beach, except it will be freezing there. I don't know how to tell you how to get to the nearest Metro North train station from there... you may have to drive down route 8 to Bridgeport to pick it up. I could be wrong, though.

There was a Secret Sounds in New Haven, wasn't there? I think it relocated to a smaller space (sharing a cramped store w/ some hipster shoe salespeople, near the Yale campus). Now, they're gone gone. (I think Chris is managing the Butterflies of Love.)

Dr. C - go to Expedia.com and find a map of Shelton, CT. I'm looking @ one right now, and, from the looks of things, you're about 12 miles outside of New Haven (which would be your best bet for Metro North service). You COULD drive all the way to Stamford for Metro North service - it'd be much cheaper (about $8 one-way) than getting on @ New Haven ($25?), but would make for a longer drive back to Shelton, obviously.

New Haven (around Yale) has this store called Cutler's. It's OK, with a decent selection, but a bit pricey. Outside of that and two cellar-dwellar-type places in Waterbury (Phoenix Records & Brass City Records), I know eff all about purchasing music in this fine state. (If you own stock in Newbury Comics, feel free to send me a thank-you note.)

David--yes, Secret Sounds moved to New Haven after, well, sad to say, not being able to afford the space in Bridgeport anymore. I feel bad just typing that. One of my very best friends, Doug DeMille, used to work there... ever meet him? Chris does indeed manage the Butterflies of Love, and has released some of their records on his Secret 7 imprint.

Phoenix and Brass City are decent, but driving there and back was a project that took me an entire afternoon, so I didn't do it too often.