ones and zeroes

hey

2006-12-21T13:40:00.000-05:00

Originally uploaded by KelleyA.

hey

Wonder Boys

2006-07-10T12:10:00.000-05:00

As the film began to roll on I quickly fell in love with the main character, Grady Tripp, a failing writer serving tenure as a writing professor at a small Pittsburgh college who happens to have a serious pot habit. There was a romantic attraction to the life he lead. A life where relationships were tenuous at best, and solitude was supreme, and the best friend he had in the world were the joints he smoked with great regularity. That's me, I thought, down the road.

The movie went on, and on, and I realized that Grady Tripp was kind of a fucktard. And I didn't want to admit it to myself, but it seemed quite obvious that a lot of why he was fucking up, and making bad decisions, was directly due to the copious amounts of marijuana he ingested. Eventually, the main character came to the same conclusion with a little help from Katie Lopsided-Mouth Holmes.

That's when I started picking and choosing what messages to receive and which ones to actually soak in and listen to. I was so in love with this character, and the swamp of writing he was mired in, but in the end I didn't want to identify with him anymore because he had to stop smoking marijuana to return to his previously productive nature.

But when I woke up today it was glaringly obvious that I had a habit that is now an addiction, and moreso than an addiction it is a crutch, it is a comfort zone. I leave for Europe for a month on Sunday. I'm down to one last bowl's worth of pot. I was gonna buy more, to last the week until I leave. But now I'm not going to. It's time for a break. Yet again. But the goal during this break is to channel that energy elsewhere. Pen and paper, pen and paper. I don't want to quit smoking pot forever.

But I do want to get my priorities straight.

"It's important to do more than tread water, even if you drown."

I'm sinking.

terrible dream

2006-05-24T23:57:00.000-05:00

i am sitting at my computer, listening to the blues.

my door bursts open. a man. a gun. a shot. I am standing beside myself, looking at my body slumped in my chair, blood oozing from a wound in the side of my head. I cry. I don't miss myself. I miss the things I was connected to. Everything is behind me, and it wants me to come to it, it wants me to let go and let myself slip away inside it and become part of it forever. THere is me, and there is Was, and there is Everything, and I look at Everything and I say but I want to stay and I want to know love like I've known it, I want to be with Lucy and I want to hold her, I want Love and all its physical truths, and Everything starts to drift away from me, and I have to go with it, or be a ghost forever, and I don't know what I did because I stopped thinking then because I thought I was going to cry if I let this dream continue.

confession.

2006-03-21T11:21:00.000-05:00

A lot of the time when I say I had a dream about something, I really just sat around imagining it over lunch.

A lot of the time, when I say "a lot of the time," I mean most of the time.

I know a man named Detroit.

2006-03-16T12:16:00.000-05:00

I don't know what it is about Detroit but from the first moment that I laid eyes upon him, I felt some sort of distant kinship with the man. It was a mix of pity and curiosity, I suppose, and the clincher was simply the reading I gave our eye contact moment.

It was early in my tenure at Google when I got off the F line at the 42nd Street subway station one day and got in line with the rest of the ants for the long march up the stairs. I saw Detroit sitting there with his back against the wall on a platform between sets of steps, holding a paper cup and smiling hopefully at all the passersby, not begging so much as trying to make the briefest of connections. I opened my wallet and emptied the contents of one compartment into my hand, a dollar's worth of change or so, subsequently dropping the change into his cup.

His gratitude was sincere, and there was just a certain rapport between us, some sort of je ne sais quoi.

Sometimes he is there, sometimes he is not. I try to give him money whenever I can, and it's funny, because there are other homeless "regulars" in my different daily routines who I will ritualistically snub in much the same way I will ritualistically give to Detroit.

One day when I was leaving work I went down into the Subway and saw him there. I pulled out my wallet on reflexand he put his hand gently on my arm and told me, "You a good man, you know dat? I know you look out fuh me 'n ah really 'ppreciate that. You don' hafta be givin' me money every time you see me, cause I know you lookin' out for me." It kind of killed me. It stirred up a whole mess of wonderment on the train ride back home that evening.

I started wondering about my own subconscious motivation. I had felt a little good, a little proud, to be told by this poor soul that I was, in his eyes at least, a "good man" but I knew I couldn't let that get to my head.

I still see Detroit now and then. I didn't even know his name was Detroit until yesterday. Leaving the subway in the morning he stopped me.

"Yo' name's Mike, right?"

"No, my name's Danny."

"Danny. Danny. Oh, okay...yeah, you a good man Danny, always lookin' out. They's a few of you who's always good to me and I really thank y'all for it. There's a Mike, and a Ted, and a John, and a Jonathan, and y'all really helpin' me out. Ah kin only hope to get myself fixed up one day and repay y'all somehow for yah kindness."

"I hope you can, too.." I said, meaning fix himself up more than find a way of paying me back. "What's your name?"

"Mah name's Detroit," he answered, with a sharp accent on the DEE. "I ain't never been there, neither, but my daddy came from Detroit to New York and that's what he named me. Not many people got this name."

The crowd swelled around us - another F train had come and gone, depositing commuters to empty out in to the streets where they would breathe crisp winter air only briefly before ducking into systematically ventilated office buildings. A breeze washed over the two of us as we shook hands, and I could feel the toughness of life in his dry, ashy skin.

New Job

2006-03-13T11:22:00.000-05:00

Keywords: (a.k.a. flavors of the week a.k.a. the sum of all things dismal)

Data Entry
Salesforce
Product Excellence Knowledge Mangement
Senior Vice President
Ramon Colon (prefers to be called Ray, you know)
Rice rocket (don't ask, related to various acts of skullduggerish spicericery)

(Thomas Mills carried two sets of business cards on him at all times. If, in his networking adventures, he came upon a person or group of persons exceptionally deserving of his minutely divided time, he would open his card holder and pull one of the ivory, thicker-stock cards from the back of the pack. Other than an extra degree of slippery gloss, the only other thing that differentiated the two card types was the inclusion of a cell phone number on the fancier batch. If you were important enough, you could even buy Thomas' time away from the desk. Dinners at the Mills household could sometimes be a nightmare - a melange of screaming babies, the Spanish chatter of maids, and the all-too-familiar default ring of a Cingular cellphone.)

After a trip to the local supply cabinet, I am ready to take on the fucking world. Balls to the wall, toes diggin' down in the dirt, pens and scissors and sticky notes galore. Ancient man fastened a rock to a stick and felt the universe shrink down to the size of his palm and here we are now, and Google or not, shit seems cheapened. Once upon a time we were embarking on a great adventure, an exploration into the expansion of our psychic energies to involve the objects around us so that we might sculpt them to advance our efforts to simply Be. Now, we have cubicles.

I feel pretty cheesy? trite? something? writing about that, too, because it seems that nowadays we all want to be Chuck Palahniuk and write that "cool" book about the guy who's not a "cog" in the "machine" and shit is all fucked up and dark and we might not have hope but there is reason we should find it..

Would you read that? Again?

I had a dream the other night and in it I went and visited Ben in Portland. But I don't even remembr if he said he lives in Seattle or Portland now. Either way, we got mindbogglingly drunk and I convinced him to smoke weed in the midst of a tequila foray and he ended up puking a shitload but we had a good time and we were drunk the way I always imagine Faulkner and Hemingway and that fucking asshole Nathaniel Hawthorne drunk - proclamations aplenty, the thrusting of chests into the air as the universe was simplified into beautifully slurred sentences, and then in the morning it was time for me to go and everything was blurry.

Have I not read his novella yet out of fear, or sheer laziness? A little bit from column A, a little bit from column B.

Is that human, or male? I guess it's human, and I'm experiencing it through the male viewpoint, being that I was born with testicles and all. What I'm talking about is when you have so much in common with a person yet you still feel a competitiveness that is irking as all hell, and distracting as well. It happens with those you know but also during random moments on the street. You pass by another guy your age, you're both dressed in the similar styles of the day, both have headphones on, who knows? You could both be listening to the same new Wolfmother EP. But there's that look in the eyes, a slight raising of the head, a skeptic stare that almost erupts into gloating but remains ever silent, and you pass each other, and wonder - What the fuck just happened?

The Advertising Council
Ad Marketplace
Advertising Age
Advertising.com
Advertising Database

Tiramisu for dessert.

In an ideal world Ben and Larry and I would all live in the same city and form a triumvirate the likes of which would be a creative dynamo heretofore unseen upon this green (+brown+blue+othercolors) Earth.

2006-03-06T12:01:00.000-05:00

I love itsmatt.typepad.com, and if you read my last post on there, it fucking shows.

That's how foreign writing is to me these days. Show me one little thing and I'll emulate it because I can't even remember my own fucking flavor...

Mixed Up

2006-03-06T11:57:00.000-05:00

Happy yesterday, sad today. Who knows what the deal is? Matt cooked up some fucking killer burgers yesterday. I'm talking these things were seriously good grilling on the ol' Foreman. He's got the Burger Touch, as the ancient nomads of the Eurasian plains were known to call it.

Started a mix yesterday when I got stoned and went out for a walk. All I could think about was Lucy and Eileen so I guess that's what it's "about" since I can't ever make these things just for fun, no, no, always themes and overarching emotional ranges but still a little random switching up the tempos and the sounds but something holds it all together. Got 4 songs in on my blitzed jaunt through the village before my fucking iPod died, I was in a rhythm too, that should teach me to charge the fucking thing. Slapped on another 4 or 5 songs this morning which means we're at least half the way to done if not beyond. One of the transitions made me want to fucking cry my brains out on the subway this morning, not sure why...people are strange, when you're a stranger.

Overqualified and underwhelmed.

2006-03-03T13:55:00.000-05:00

Let's start here, and now, where I am standing (as I do the whole day long, only sitting to eat and shit) and staring out over Broadway and down the length of 40th street to the distant river. It could be summer out, judging by the looks of things; blue sky, radiant sun, the air itself even looks warmer than I know it to be. This city is a junk heap in some ways, I keep seeing things fluttering around in the sky anytime I look out the window. Tin foil, plastic bags, who knows what else? Maybe the faint glimmers I see out of the 20th floor window are just pieces of ourselves we're letting float away.

I don't want to be here. And yet, if I was where I wanted to be, I wouldn't even likely be doing the things I most want to be doing. In order to develop a sense of satisfaction with myself and my place in this world, I must being to accomplish. I can realize that, and talk about it all I want, yet I am waging the same old battle. I need to Will myself to Action. I expect that to come easier than it does. Yet I also know if I was to enforce my Will upon myself enough, it would become the simple act of Being. I wonder, sometimes, often, all the time, if the people around me are so concerned with their own identity as I am. Who Am I, What Am I Saying, How Am I Perceived, Am I Communicating Myself Properly, What Are The Rules Of This Game, Who Is Keeping Score, Why Am I Asking So Many Questions?

One week left at Google. I haven't looked for a job for more than a second. Lies. I haven't looked at all.

so here I am again

2006-02-09T14:06:00.000-05:00

And what is it that I am doing?

Work is dead. I have nothing today. Today may be the first day in my Google history that they have not had a single task for me. And I can't stand it. I need to be active, I need to do something, I need to fucking explode. Fuck. I don't think I can write fast enough, right now I am typing well over 100 words per minute and saying absolutely nothing but it feels so good and I wish i could just keep doing this forever, and actually crank out something that means anything. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Why don't I leak more, why don't I bleed more, why the fuck don't I do this? I am dying of suffocation.

last night's drunken scribbles

2005-08-23T11:45:00.000-05:00

written under the poor light of the dylan prime bar between the slurping of gin and beer

we raise our babies in a state of aspiration,
upward facing

On our backs they put us, and
there we feel both helpless
and hopeful. Our mental
disposition aligns itself
to our body's center of gravity
and up is heaven and down is hell.

Does this mean we're all born suckers?
Or that, if we do not
achieve some pre-determined concept
of greatness, that we are failed
stars?

[later]

God. I'll write anything if
it means something. What the hell
am I doing w/my time? I feel
like a drooling fuse, dripping
everywhere but where there's one tiny
spark ready to light the whole
fucker up. This feels foreign to
me, even. This pen. Writing. Why do
I do it?

Ha! Why don't I do it?

And then I stop . . .

It was a good day.

2005-08-11T01:42:00.000-05:00

We watched the Yankees, ever valiant, even in defeat. It's so strange to me to love a sport so much. I wasn't raised that way, surely. Sports were never mentioned or discussed, perhaps they were even discouraged. My mother wanted me to play them at school, but never assumed I would be interested in them as a spectator, and neither did I. But now I get a rush from it.

It's like watching a metaphor for the human drama unfold itself, every game a showcase for the forces of duality, two sides of one coin clashing head-on. And the goal, of course, is domination. And I'm not sure what I think about that - on the one hand, sports offer a healthy alternative to social combat, or nationalistic combat, or any sort of violent/unhealthy conflict in our lives. And on the other hand, it also possibly embraces and encourages the one-sidedness that is the trend in human thought, that need to have a side, a team, Your Side, Your Team.

My team lost in extra innings and then I showered, meeting up with Lucy afterwards to take a trek down to South Street Seaport. A beautiful walk on a beautiful day, Lucy sipping a margarita all the way, barely any food in our stomachs, hungry for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. We watched the water be for just a bit, and like usual with water I felt the cares the worries the ego the everything drifting with the shifting currents, it's easy to be what you see sometimes.

We made it over to the stage in time to hear Sam Champion's "Company Dance" rocking out of the speakers and found Noah on the other side of the soundboard as flabberghasted as we were. Some indie rocker crooned some tunes, his name was What It Is and then Lucy and I went to restock on beer before Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. On the way back from the beer stand, the crowd parted like the Red Sea, and there was David Byrne standing, waiting for the rock to start. I felt my knees get shaky, and I could feel Lucy trembling even though we weren't even touching. We walked past him and a smile crept across my face that I could barely control. It was one of those ultra loose smiles that only come at the choicest of moments or through the relaxing of the mind via drugs. David Byrne is my drug of choice.

Lucy and I split our attention 3 ways - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on stage, a dancing drunken fool up on a balcony, and David Byrne to our left. I felt that his very presence was beneficent, like a fountain of youth made flesh, I was lucky to be so close to him. My mind felt clear and elated at the mere confirmation that he existed.

The show ended, and we trekked our way up to the Brooklyn Bridge. There we sparked two joints, one for each of us, and puffed our way across the river, our sense of space and time distorting with each passing step, each pulsating inhalation. The bridge dropped off behind us and we wandered through a foreign land to a destination called Grimaldi's.

pepperoni, pepperoni, pepperoni

One long trip home later it was time to watch The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

It was a good day.

8.5.05

2005-08-05T13:04:00.000-05:00

Today is a good day to move.

2005-04-15T10:55:00.000-05:00

Asobi Seksu had finished her set of poppy rock, laced through and through with these eighties-ish organ-like keyboards that had me bouncing and shaking my head like there was no tomorrow, drinking Sierra cause it tasted so mighty fine refreshing. Johnny whispered something into Lucy's ear, she signaled to me, and the four of us - Johnny, Daylen, Lucy and myself - all went downstairs into the back.

The door clicked shut and we took our seats where we could. Johnny pulled out his batty and a baggy that, when opened, filled the room with an odor I can only call "You can't wait to smoke me." 2 solid lungfuls of smoke later, we were headed back upstairs to catch the rest of a set by MONO, this awesome post-rock band I had been told was similar to Mogwai.

I leaned against the cold brick wall along the right-hand side of the room, feeling an all-body all-mind high rushing over me, aware of all my capillaries and arteries as they chugged along like organic steam engines to keep me running keep me standing while my mind was bathed in sound. I fell right into the music, the slow droning guitars, the building bass, the declarative and undeniable drumbeats, and understood deeply and wonderfully that music is truly a Temporal art, and in that moment it replaced time. Anywhere it went, I went. Anything it felt, I felt. If a note was plucked, it was a reflection of how I felt. And how I felt was a reflection of the note just plucked.

I started writing words inside my head and fell in love with language all over again. It seemed to me that language suddenly didn't even need to be something so concrete, a concretization of the abstract - it could be abstract and temporal itself, and I was writing endless poetry inside my head. And as the music sunk into a dark and morbid moment I was struck by the sensation that I would forget these words. They would slip into the history of a marijuana haze and be forgotten in the morning. But even these thoughts were coming through poetically, temporally, moving with the music, a confluence of all energies and beings in time and space around me resulting in art created that would never leave my mind.

The show ended. We went out on to the street and while Johnny ran upstairs to get his coat a beautiful black homeless man came over to us, singing an old love song from the 1950's, the tune of which escapes me already, sadly. He talked to us for a long while and when Johnny came back we all were talking like Real Human Beings. Status, that meant nothing. We were all just talking. No one was even thinking about who was homeless and who wasn't. After about 15 minutes we needed to leave and he asked if any of us could maybe spare a dollar. The three of them each gave him something, and I opened my wallet and was sorely, sorely dismayed to see that I only had 2 twenty dollar bills.

"I'm so sorry, I don't have anything.." I said.

And he wheeled towards me, his eyes wide and white and bright and said -

"Don't you never be sorry! What you is giving me, this? [holds up the dollars] THat's just material possessions, that's just something that can help me get by day to day. But what you gave me most of all that's more important than that - is yourselves. We talked like real human beings. We had a real connection here and that is a beautiful and rare thing. So you don't be sorry none. You just go on and have a good night."

[all of us]: "You have a good night too."

"Don't put it all on me! Y'all have a BETTER night!"

I slept like a baby last night.

2005-04-13T13:51:00.000-05:00

and life i learned was like a pomegranate bitter healthy dark and light so somewhere inbetween the pages i would find an answer like a riddle like a kind of blistered beauty fading into separations inbetween the smoke of things since when i came here it was in the body of a wingless bird a phosphorescent flapping phoenix nightmare dream a lazy boiled down experience progressing towards a day when none shall be but wings upon the nighttime daysky gibberish shall be the tongue and insufficient all the words this is not amanifesto this is not fiction poetry biography no no no no this is NOT BIOGRAPHY and I will not let it be i will not show myself as words or photographs i am so much more than tangible what justice can be done to me to you to all of this i know we know what god is that is not the issue here the issue is the situation is its wordless wordy wordy birdy flirty dirty nature nurture future pictures will not show us in our bodies crying BINARY BINARY BINARY finite is alright finite is all all all right and each of us is one tiny apocalypse of cocks and lips and sometimes i assume i boil down to shit and semen nothing more, just eat fuck eat fuck eat fuckm, this causes breaks and pauses i can not allow a pause i cannot allow a moment of my nonexistent time to spend itself inside itself it must all be forgotten, i must leave myself to move into myself to once again just drop myself and fly myself and cry myself and dry myself myself my self i could have written myself on to this page but instead i gave you this, which is myself, these pauses will not be tolerated commas are a question of an ethic in the judgment of our morals i find fault my good is evil and evil good but those are two and we are one i laugh at this, it makes me laugh, no pause just laugh this is my mind reflected how i think in ink how funny funny tralalalalalalalala believe me when i lie to you and lie to me if i begin to believe you that is how we'll start our own game our own life and planet in the beginning there will be light and in the end there will be nothing that is how the game is played the rules are clear my love my love my love is one long film about eternity this will not end this will not end because i write the moments as they come and they shall never stop so tra tra tra tra la la la fa fa mama mama if you only knew, but she is a pause, we will not pause the past we will progress the present, this is a present, stop it we cannot afford to wait your history is all a lie and this getting tired but it never stops just like sine it ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs and all around and side to side and somewhere up above i lied but if you took the time to find it you would already have lost i would be gone an eon a peon a psychedelic freedom biter wrighter writer righter riter smiter of the written i could burn this i will not burn this i miss her like rain right now the sun outside the thought of clout of cloud of star and shroud where did you find me where did you love me how did you need me where are you now what are you now i know the answer to every single question and i keep them somewhere i am not permitted to remember but i found a teacher and he taught me that

here we go again.

2005-03-22T12:36:00.000-05:00

If I was a bastard, I would bore you with the day-to-day details of everything that's gone on since I last posted here. But when have you ever known me to be a bastard? Perhaps that question should go unanswered...anywho...

Here's a quick rundown of what's gone on since the last time I frequented this strange cybernetic place. The night of my last post I saw a mediocre Apollo Sunshine show - the boys were WASTED and it showed. Their cover of Built to Spill's Big Dipper was beautifully messy. The next night proved to be a much better show as we caught the Epochs, who blew me away with what I thought was truly original sound, and then HOOD who played a mellow psychedelic set. Johnny gave me and Lucy a pot cookie to split for that one, but I don't know if anything happened.

I spent that weekend visiting my mom at home, smoking a late night bowl out my window and watching the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies. I shut it off halfway through and went to sleep, then woke the next day and decided to go to Bedford to visit Lucy a day early. I got really stoned before the train ride up there, had a burst of inspiration while listening to Explosions in the Sky, and came up with ... well, more on that some other time. Monday morning I woke up and snagged me and Lucy a couple of floor seats for U2 @ MSG which was definitely a nice consolation prize for poor Lucy who, that morning, had had all four (plus a bonus fifth) wisdom teeth pulled out of her mouth. So we spent the rest of the week doing NOTHING - hanging out with Gizmo the love-pod-dog while Lucy ate vicodin to numb the pain. For a true synopsis of Monday-Thursday, I give you the movies we watched, with brief reviews and links to iMDB:

Fatal Attraction - Always a classic, always fun to watch. Plus, Johnny Beach has a cameo in it, where could you go wrong renting this flick?

In the Bedroom - I had been waiting a long time to see this film and I'm glad I finally did. Some excellent insights into the nature of grief, and a story that moves slowly but surely.

Traffic - The first time I saw this film I was in the company of hecklers and simply could not enjoy it, but watching it with Lucy in front of the Beach fireplace was perfect and I absolutely loved it. Two thumbs up.

Riding Giants - Ever listen to surfers talk about surfing and wish they would shut up? Sometimes it drives me crazy. But this documentary was great and made me truly amazed by surfing. It focuses on breakthroughs in Big Wave surfing, and the last 20 minutes is PHENOMENAL!

American History X - Lucy hadn't seen this before and I was excited for her to see it but I must say it was the weirdest viewing of this I've ever had. I kind of realized that Edward Norton is disproportionately the single strongest aspect of the entire movie.

Ladybugs - 'Nuff said.

Shattered Glass - Hayden Christiansen was a big bag of SUCK in Star Wars Episode II but he totally rocked this movie. I've been resisting seeing it for a while but finally Lucy convinced me too and boy was I glad.

There were some others which I've now forgotten, and Lucy isn't around to refresh my memory, so I guess that's that. Lucy slowly recovered, eating apple sauce and mashed potatoes while I used my teeth the way they were meant to be used, ripping apart burger meat and chomping down on eggs and bacon and the like. Finally on Thursday night I headed home, renting the Sopranos and I finally lost my Sopranos virginity. What a cool fucking show! I really enjoyed it. Friday night Lucy returned to the city and we watched Collateral, which was awesome for about 40 minutes and then went down a vortex of suck. Like Lucy said, too much flies in that movie that could never really go down.

So then it was Saturday. And if you're ready to read about Saturday, then get ready. It's long, and it's intense. And I want you to read the whole thing, I think you'll find it entertaining. Ready? Step inside.

The Vernal Equinox (or
how i lost my mind)

It all began at one AM, but the waiting game had gone on far longer than that. Lucy's apartment, waiting to drop acid. She wasn't going to drop with me - but soon my friend Ani arrived, and with her a girl named Julia. Now all that was left was Larry. Larry, who was in town for the weekend from Pittsburgh, my best friend who I get to see about twice a year, who was also the first person I ever took LSD with. He was aiming to get to Lucy's about 10 PM and didn't get there until 1 AM, which meant it was officially the Vernal Equinox, the first day of spring, a day for rebirth.

All night something strange had been in the air - outside you could hear people hooting and hollering, and after two bowls and a gin and tonic we all agreed that we felt fucked up in a way that was stranger than being stoned and a little drunk. There was energy in the New York City atmosphere, and you could feel it coursing through everything around us. Finally the clock hit 1 AM, we were all exasperated from playing the waiting game, and Larry rang the doorbell. When he came in, Lucy Ani and Julia grabbed him by the arms and restrained him. I approached him slowly, and he grinned, pretending to struggle as he opened up his mouth and I placed two tabs of acid on his tongue. Then I took my own 2, then Ani took hers, and Julia took hers. We were ready to begin.

We smoked a bowl, waiting to feel weird. It was about 30 minutes later that I first felt an undeniable quiver in the deep down center of my soul. I was restless and couldn't hang out in the kitchen with everyone just standing around. I wandered around the apartment, watching things, waiting for the slightest changes, while the Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin played from Lucy's stereo. Things were definitely getting strange. I walked by the bar, which has a mirror mounted above it, and watched the reflection of a trippy drawing of the word "STRETCH" . . . as I walked by it, it did just that, stretching outwards into the mirror-world, and I knew that something was certainly beginning. Soft Bulletin ended, we listened to Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles, and then I put in The Arcade Fire's awesome album, Funeral.

At this point I was feeling what I can only describe as glittery and jittery. I was shaking a little bit, my heart was almost racing, and I felt it coming on in a rush. Antsy and needing a change of scenery, I suggested that we all move into the ultra-trippy living room which Lucy and Eileen had decorated to be a very chill smoking den. The CD was playing on the stereo in there, and the room was covered in psychedelic tapestries and posters, with no windows, and multi-colored lights. We were in a tripping box.

Once we settled into that room, the acid started taking full effect. Ani and Julia weren't sure if they were tripping, seemed to have a tough time settling into it at first, but Larry and I would make eye contact that silently said, "Wow. We're back."

Lucy was taking awesome care of all of us, just watching over us and making sure we were comfortable, and she gave me a necklace of hers - a suede necklace with a large glass heart hanging from it, full of bubbles inside. I knew immediately that this was my tripping toy, my buddy, the thing that would always keep me safe, and I clutched it, feeling like it was giving me such good energy. Then Lucy gave us her Game Boy Advance, and Larry and I started taking turns playing Ms. Pac-Man while Ani played Mario Kart Double Dash!! on the GameCube. As usual, videogames were fun while tripping but at the same time felt a little too artificial, and I soon started to be a bit annoyed by all the electronic screens I felt surrounded by. And then, as the Arcade Fire CD came close to its finish, everything went BONZO.

Eileen came home, and with her came a whole troupe of people, about six in all. I knew that this was going to happen but was completely unprepared for it. It was a really emotional moment for me, too, because as soon as Eileen knew that we were tripping I knew she was upset we hadn't done it with her. I knew she'd be relieved to know that Lucy hadn't eaten any, and I couldn't bring myself to say anything to her except that. Eileen and I had shared the acid experience so many times - half the times I've done it, actually - and I was completely overwhelmed by the very thought of her.

Lucy put on the Hockey Night CD, which bugged us all out during track 4 or 5, when a voice on the CD suddenly says "Hi Danny." We laughed a lot. Things were getting extremely visual. Eileen's DJ poster was vibrating with every single bass beat, and the tapestries in the room were shifting and flowing like wild, but our time in that room was soon to come to a close, because some of Eileen's pack of friends were going to go to sleep in there, so we moved to Lucy's room, which was to be our psychedelic headquarters for the next couple of hours.

Everything seemed really shaken up at this point, and everyone was sort of scattered, though I felt really connected to Lucy and really excited to see her playing DJ on the stereo in her bedroom, picking awesome rock music for us to trip out too, Led Zeppelin and the like. Like I said, the four trippers all seemed scattered, and suddenly Lucy decided to play that Parliament song that goes "We Want the Funk..Gotta have that funk, ow!" And it was like the entire universe converged on her room. Suddenly Ani and Julia and Larry were all near me and we were all bouncing and dancing to the song, and it seemed to me that we all understood that YES! This was our SONG! We want the FUNK! Larry stayed standing for a while but Ani and Julia and myself got comfy on Lucy's big bed, and I started really looking around, clutching Lucy's favorite stuffed animal, a beautiful soft white owl named Ivan. I was holding Ivan in one hand, and my good-trip glass heart in the other, watching her tapestry swim in its reflection in the mirror on her wall, and watching Bjork move in and out of her poster.

It was time to listen to another full album, and we put on Phish's JUNTA, disc one, and this my friends is when I truly had the absolute LSD experience. It is almost impossible to convey what actually happened, the conversations we had, people moving in and out of the room, but it seemed to me that in between every single word that was spoken, and every single note of every song coming from the CD, that a million other moments were transpiring just for the four of us on LSD. Sometimes the rest of the world would actually move in super-slow-motion and I would feel like I could do a dance in the time it took for someone not tripping to pick up a glass of a water. Everything was completely connected, everything flowed into each other and I just basked in the glory of it, feeling like I was traveling along the story that the songs were telling.

Lucy had been taking great care of us as I said, and anything I asked for she would get for me and didn't seem the slightest bit annoyed which made me so grateful, because I felt pretty useless beyond laying there and simply being. So I asked her to bring me a book I had brought, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and I started reading it out loud while we all watched the pictures. But it was as if I didn't even need to look at the pictures, because as I said the words the entire story seemed to be created in my mind - I felt like I was a caveman creating a story for the first time, and that just by saying it, the story was coming into being. It was beautiful.

As Phish kept playing I felt like entire conversations were happening that no one besides us could possibly here. It was like I was shifting back and forth between millions of possibilities for the same moment in time. We were amazed, looking at these Wildly Emotional Monkeys.

I took my first trip to the bathroom, and was immediately freaked out by the sight of the toilet and the sink. I knew that trying to aim while standing up was simply a bad idea so I resigned myself to sitting down on the toilet and waited what seemed like forever till I felt like I could comfortably go to the bathroom. While I went, I stared ahead at the bathroom door and put out my hands, staring at them, and revelation after revelation poured down on me, making me feel endlessly lucky just to be alive. It was there, in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet that I felt pure and utter ego loss, losing myself to the flow of things and feeling a true understanding of the light moving between all things.

Then I returned to Lucy's room, and took a spot on the bed beside her, clutching my glass heart while putting my head against her hip. Larry seemed absolutely normal, as if tripping on acid was equivalent to his state of normality, and he kept on talking about lots of things that were just kinda blowing my mind. Then Phish ended and it was time for another CD. And another world.

Ani was doing something at the stereo and then I heard her press play and the opening notes to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief began. I shot Lucy a sideways glance and she understood just from that one look that I did not want to hear this album..it immediately reminded me of the hardest mushroom trip I'd ever had, with Ani and Larry, during which I went completely crazy to that very same album. I took a deep breath and got ready to listen to it. When the second song started, it really scared me, and I laid down on the bed next to Lucy , putting my head next to her lap and hugging her legs. She was playing with my hair, putting me at ease, tickling me now and then, and when I just thought about the fact that I was holding her and she was holding me, everything would be okay.

I thought of Timothy Leary, and felt all my limbs, and how I was experiencing life down to its deepest level. I was no longer me at those moments, I was just the latest incarnation of this role that had been played for millennia - the male. The male being, amazed to be alive. And Lucy was playing the other role, the female, and it made me love that duality, that need for a complementary half to one's own soul, and in my mind I placed Lucy and myself in every role. Mother and son, nurse and patient, sister and brother, lovers, anything I could imagine. She was the all-woman and I was the all-man, she was the earth-mother and I was the first man to walk the brown soil and wonder at the grass, and she just stroked my hair and said "Explore."

But between those moments of ego-less bliss, Radiohead was freaking me the hell out. And then it happened - during track 3, Sail to the Moon, Ani started saying why she loved that particular song. And I listened to her, and then sat up and interrupted her and said "We've had this exact conversation before." And we had. That time I had a semi-bad-trip on mushrooms. And it bugged me out, so we stopped talking about it, but the album continued to scare me. Lucy would make me feel a lot better but I was getting nervous and nervous, and as Myxomatosis was playing, suddenly I got up and ran to the bathroom, dropped to my knees, and puked into the toilet.

I'd never thrown up tripping before, and frankly, it blew my damn mind. I looked at my chicken and vegetable soup sitting in the toilet, looking purple and disgusting, and leaned my head out to the door. "Lucy, could you come in here please?"

Lucy came and I was so grateful for her to be there, and I just wanted her to take care of me and make me feel better. She touched my head and smiled so sincerely that I felt like I was melting, and then she turned the sink on and started splashing water all over my face and my chest. She was literally just throwing water at me, and then smearing it across my forehead and my face, and it felt utterly beautiful. I felt like I was shedding skin, like she was washing away all these levels of myself down to this inner being, this inner child deep within that was coming out to the foreground. I felt baptized, ready to begin anew, and we went back out to her room.

I was still bugging out a little bit and we all decided it would be a good idea to go to the roof. Eileen and her whole big group of friends had all retired for the night and so we crept out onto the fire escape quietly and climbed up one flight of stairs to the roof and some of the most beautiful visuals that I have EVER experienced. The city was wild and from Lucy's roof you could see it stretching out forever in all directions. Buildings were rising and shrinking, stretching and shifting, and I walked arm and arm with Lucy across the roof to the ledge overlooking 9th st.

We hugged, and I opened my eyes looking over her shoulder, squeezing her tight, and I could see waves of energy rippling the entire city, rushing towards that one rooftop, that one spot where the two of us were standing embracing each other, like we were the center of all gravity. I cried a bunch. Ani Julia and Larry came over and we stood there watching the city in the early morning - at this point it was around 6 AM - and all the pigeons swarming over downtown. As the pigeons landed on the buildings they would turn the color of whatever paint they were nearest too and melt into the faces of the buildings as if they were a part of them. Then they would become themselves again and fly off. It was insanely beautiful.

Ani and Julia went downstairs and Larry Lucy and I stuck around on the roof for a bit, talking. Finally we rejoined Ani and Julia, and I was struck with a sense of need-to-get-out-of-here. I felt like I had spent so much of my soul in Lucy and Eileen's apartment that I couldn't bear to be there any longer. I had touched God there in that room and now I couldn't stay. We all got our shoes on and went down to street level and took a walk to Tompkins Square Park. We split up again, Larry Ani and Julia taking one route while Lucy and I walked arm-in-arm and talked. I cried a bunch more, and we sat down on a bench in the huge clearing near the southeast corner of the park, right in front of two humongous tangled arching trees, I wish I knew what kind they were. The rest of the crew joined us and Ani wandered around listening to her iPod while Larry, Julia, Lucy and myself sat there watching everything.

In the distance two men walked by, and one of them threw his arms up to the sky, saying "God! God!" and I thought, "I know exactly how you feel." All of us did. Finally we got up to walk on, but first, in girl-boy-girl-boy-girl order, we all hooked arms, and walked in the shape of an infinity sign around and between the two trees. When we were coming towards the intersection point that marked our making a full figure-8, we all braced ourselves and I swear you could feel that we were sealing some sort of grand and eternal deal.

We couldn't go back to Lucy's apartment - or at least, I couldn't - and so we just picked up our pot and our bags and headed to mine instead, which was just up the block. On the way I threw up water outside a deli, and felt pretty shaken up. We went to my apartment and smoked and Lucy made me some tea. I drank a couple of sips of it, crying (Good tears, Good tears) while Larry played Neil Young and Interpol and all sorts of good songs. I needed to lie down and I asked Lucy if she would lay with me and we went to my bedroom and got under the comforter, just laying there and thinking about everything that had happened, talking about all of it. I felt completely happy, but at the same time it seemed so hard at that moment to still be tripping, so I just clutched my glass heart in one hand and Lucy in the other and breathed deeply for a few hours.

We could hear the rest of them in the other room, listening to music and eventually watching I Heart Huckabees, but I only got up a couple of times to go to the bathroom. I had to stay in bed, I don't know why, but I just needed to rest everything, body and soul. Eventually Julia left. Then Lucy went home. I went to sleep, and woke up when Ani left and stayed up with Larry for a while, then left to rejoin Lucy and see how I could go about rejoining the real world. It turned out that Indian Food and a Led Zeppelin DVD were the answer.

I slept through my first post-spring break of classes, needing to recoup, and then finally felt like I was back in reality after a hearty Boca Chica dinner and a night of rock at the Mercury Lounge. Jay spun good tunes, The Big Sleep and The Mobius Band were great, and the Mobius Band had a nice big audience for their show. The Go! Team...well...whatever. It was a grand night. A grand weekend.

we're not even halfway there

2005-03-10T13:41:00.000-05:00

spring break. woooo.

After caving in to a night of marijuana and a shitty movie Monday night I battened down the hatches Tuesday and studied nice and hard for my double-midterm-frightfest on Wednesday. I skipped out on seeing Stars @ the Mercury Lounge, hunkered down with my Linguistics books and papers, reviewed some Hemingway and then got a good amount of sleep. The tests both went well, and now school is over for about 12 days of Spring Break. This is the first Spring Break (I feel like I've said this here before) that I'm not spending outside of the city but it should be fun. First some Bedford action at the Beach house, and then Larry's coming to visit, at which point paper will be eaten. Yum.

successful sister story

After hitting the halfway point in my semester (though I'll still have to take one more summer class before I graduate), I showered and then Lucy and I headed over to my sister Nika's gallery opening in Chelsea. This was Nika's first ever independently curated exhibit (correct me if I'm wrong on that one Nika) and it was done in tandem with International Print Center NY and the Museum of the City of New York. It was a blast! They had some decent white wine and the place was PACKED!

It was cooler than words can tell to be surrounded by one of your siblings' accomplishments, plastered all over the walls, all her hard work for months coming to a head and I was glad to be there to celebrate it. The entire family was out in full force, including my Dad and his fucking annoying easily-drunk-getting girlfriend, my Mom who was the star of the show, our great-aunt Mila, and at one point Miriam even called from Italy and it was like the circle was complete, and it made me with that she was right there with me, my mom and Lucy while we played dodge Daddy and scurried around the exhibit. A lot of Nika's friends and colleagues came out and everyone was really enjoying the opening. The single best print was called "Symphony Orchestra" and was a very cool psychedelic black and white print of an orchestra playing while a deer, an angel, a horse, and a goat-footed devil flew towards each other above them in a swirling cloud. Nika even got her hands on a Muhammad Ali print that he drew in 1970, and it was hilarious. If I can find a picture of it I'll link to it.

Big kudos to Nika not only for having such a successful opening but also for Getting Accepted to Princeton for Graduate School. WOW! Way to go Nika.

and then i was drunk and sick

After the opening Lucy and I headed downtown to El Nuevo Amancer for some damn good Hispanic food. Jay freaked the fuck out of me when he came up to the window scratching at it, looking like some hungry hoodlum with his fingerless gloves and knit cap. He needs a culkin. After the chow we made our way to Bowery Ballroom for the Hot Hot Heat show just in time to catch a set by Louis XIV who were really entertaining in a passing-fancy kind of way. They had one jam that was so 80's it hurt. Unfortunately, my headache grew, my coughing got worse, and I all around felt like shit by the time HHH was getting ready to take the stage, so I bowed out early and had a nice quick cab ride home.

lost and found

-Cat Shoots Man. Fuck the fact that the cat did it - who leaves a loaded gun with the safety off lying around his kitchen counter? Idiot.

-Iraq has been gripped by a new TV sensation - Terrorist Reality TV.

-I would not be at all surprised if this was true.

-The War on Drugs is a colossal failure.

-Anybody else notice that The Cube Is Missing?

What Time Is Grey?

2005-03-08T12:27:00.000-05:00

The title of this post comes from a Philip Glass song, and I find it's a very good question as I grumpily look out my office window at a sky that hasn't changed its grayscale hue one bit since I woke up this morning and most likely will not change except to go from grey to blackest black. Today wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't juxtaposed with yesterday's beautiful weather. Beautiful enough that it got me to skip class and take pictures of the city from Lucy and Eileen's rooftop.

studying for scaramanga

When I woke up Sunday I picked up some pancakes and eggs at Veselka and headed over to Lucy and Eileen's. Ei left to go to work and Lucy left soon afterwards to meet Johnny for their trip back to Bedford, and I set up camp in the girls' deserted apartment with the goal of studying for my Linguistics mid-term. Not much studying was accomplished - I was done in by the availability of the internet and no on else around me studying so as to set some sort of academic example. The only productive thing I did was to write the post before this one all about my salvia experience.

After wasting a good portion of the day I spent 20 bucks on sushi and tempura, bought some PBR, took a couple of resin hits and popped The Man With The Golden Gun into the DVD player, my second Bond outing in a matter of a week. What a fucking weird movie. I used to think that Roger Moore was my favorite Bond but he's kind of a jackass. The movie's saving grace (and probably the reason for the title) is its villain, Francisco Scaramanga, who is played oh so devilishly by the wonderful Christopher Lee, and attended to by a freaky little French midget named Nick Nack. Together they run a psychedelic pistol duel funhouse. Check it out sometime.

Yesterday I woke up and I felt like it was summer. I was warm when I got up but remembered that, knowing good weather was coming, I had turned the heater way down for the night. I checked, and it wasn't on, and I realized that I was warm because it was actually nice outside. I went to my first class, but after that since I was coming down with a bit of a cold and not really in the mood to learn anything at all, I skipped the remainder of the day to once again hang out at Lucy and Ei's. I took the camera and tripod up onto their roof and got some footage and some photographs, though most of it was washed out by the extreme amount of sunlight, which actually was making me sweat. It was t-shirt weather!

After a brief trip to the Tompkins Square Dog Run me and Lucy returned to her domicile for the purposes of studying. Feeling like shit from being sick, that didn't really last, and it wasn't long till we were eating Thai food and thinking of a movie to rent instead.

martin scorsese, you can be a real dick sometimes

Cape Fear: perhaps one of the most mismade movies ever. What I mean by that is here you have a remake of an old movie from the late 50's/early 60's, with a pretty great story to go on. But what the hell happened? This was not the movie I remembered and lumped into a category with The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Fatal Attraction. No, this was some sort of weird damnation of the American prison system and ideas of male sexuality that was so convoluted that it confused itself. Not that the stories are anything alike, but if you compare Cape Fear with Shawshank Redemption, seeing as they both have the same ideas regarding prison as the backbones of their stories, you can't do anything but laugh at Cape Fear. Scorsese, what happened? You had Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and then you just started pissing it all away. Ugh. To quote Eileen, what a waste of 2 hours of my life.

better ways to spend your time than watching Cape Fear:

-The Village Voice has an awesome article dripping with cynicism about today's hip-hop scene, a social commentary under the guise of a review of The Game's new album. (Thanks Larry.)

-I can recommend a number of chemicals if you'd like to induce this phenomenon in yourself...but this lady's had it from birth.

-Invade MY campus. :(

-What the good god hell is wrong with New Jersey anyway?

-All the Calvin and Hobbes you could ever want.

-I saw this on ProductShopNYC.com and I am so confused...

one day i was a pawn

2005-03-06T14:46:00.000-05:00

It’s Sunday and I’m avoiding studying for mid-terms, so I thought I’d fire up the old’ blogger.com and write out a more detailed report of an experience I had a few months ago, something that’s been on my mind all morning while I walked around my apartment soaking in the sounds of Shpongle.

It was the evening of June 24th, 2004 and Lucy and I had made our way over to the Luna Lounge to catch some free music in the form of Sam Champion and These Bones. By all means it was a normal night, with normal beers and normal talks, though the fellow with the dachshund on his lap, seated on the couch in the barroom the whole night, was definitely a most welcome example of out-of-place-ness. There is nothing like a dachshund to make my day.

The regular cast and crew were out, I can remember seeing more than one familiar face – a couple RANA folk, Jay, Beach, Daylen, and of course Matt, who would bear witness to the insanity to come. After the show was over, a couple of beers having been downed, Lucy, Matt and myself made our way back to 9th Street and to my apartment where we were planning on taking a couple of hits before parting ways with Matt, who would go back to Brooklyn.

While we passed around the batty that I had picked up at one of the Saratoga Springs Phish shows just a couple nights earlier, the topic of conversation centered on the act at hand, as we bandied about stories regarding psychedelics of all sorts. Finally the conversation turned to Salvia Divinorum, some of which I had come into at the aforementioned Phish shows.

Salvia Divinorum is completely legal under US law, the bastards haven’t gotten to it yet, but in a way it’s more dangerous to someone’s mental stability than pot could ever be. I had never tried it, only read about it extensively, and Matt had tried it once before with only slightly fuzzy effects. Salvia, a member of the sage family of plants, is best smoked through a bong, with a deep intake of smoke that is held for something in the neighborhood of 30 seconds before being exhaled. Most people don’t have any sort of reaction to it (a break-through, it’s called) beyond fuzziness unless they try it many times, working up to a higher-powered strain of it, but some break through immediately.

Naturally, with my inhibitions lessened thanks to a couple of Brooklyn Lagers and Matt’s Brooklyn grass, I broke out both the salvia and the bong, which Matt and I resolved to each take part in. Lucy, more hesitant than us to quite possibly blow her own mind, decided to just watch. Looking back now it is painfully clear how wrong the set and setting were. I’d read enough about drugs and had the sensibility enough about them to know that if you’re going to do something, you should do it right. But I left the lights on, and I left Built to Spill playing, and eased the finely crushed black powder out of the long, thin plastic Ziploc bag that held it, filling the bowl to the brim. I had no clue what I could possibly expect.

It seemed so routine, so natural, like smoking marijuana, and I settled back into my chair with Major Tom (the bong) in hand and took a few deep breaths. Keep It Like A Secret kept on pouring from the speakers. I looked down into the glass barrel of the shotgun that was about to blow my reality to bits, torched the contents of the bowl and pulled a couple lungfuls of clear, white smoke down through the water and into my throat, cleared the chamber and held on to the vapors tightly, placing the bong back on the table. During the time the smoke stayed in my chest, nothing was happening at all, I was just concentrating on keeping it there as Matt filled the bowl up for himself since I had taken the entire dose to the dome. I remember, after what must have been between 20 and 25 seconds, leaning forward and expelling an obscene amount of salvia smoke into the air just as Matt was preparing to take his hit.

The moment the smoke left my mouth and my lips were parted, I started laughing harder than I had ever laughed before. It was senseless, meaningless, pure and utter laughter and I remember being struck by the absolutely uncontrollable nature of it. It occurred to me that no matter how physically or mentally strong I was, that the laughter had control of me and nothing was going to stop it until it was done doing whatever it wanted to do. Matt lit the bowl, and started taking his bong hit, while I leaned back in my seat.

Reality, from the top-left corner of my perception down to the bottom-right, was torn like some badly sewn silk curtain.

And in that moment, there was no memory of Danny, no memory of New York City, or earth, or any knowledge greater than the confines of my own body, which was now the body of a four or five year old child, sitting on a lush green couch in a living room somewhat reminiscent of the living room in the apartment I grew up in. The reality of it was absolutely pure. I could smell the smells, feel the couch, see just as clearly as I can see right at this moment, I heard the distinct murmur of a TV in the distance, and I could feel every inch of my body as being MY body. Beyond me, sitting at a table, were two adults who I could only see from behind as they were both simply sitting there and staring at a wall in the far distance.

I took in the deepest breath I could, and as I clearly, vividly felt my lungs expanding was stricken with a terrible panic the likes of which I have never experienced in all my life. Something was very wrong here – this was the wrong place, and I was the wrong person, and though 99 percent of me was there and then, that remaining infinitesimally small part of my soul that still remained knew that something had happened which was not supposed to. I remember thinking of the words “The Twilight Zone” and being convinced that those two adults would never believe me when I started screaming that I was somebody else, that they would hush me and make me be quiet and if they had to tie me down while I screamed forever that that this was wrong. All that thought, in the moment of a breath.

“No! This is wrong! This is all wrong!”

I started pushing back against the cushions of the couch, crawling against the fabric and the two adults rose and moved towards me with an eerie supernatural quickness. The entire world started shaking and melting away, breaking up into tiny particles the closer they got to me.

“Shhh,” they said, the one on the left putting her hands on my left shoulders, the other putting his hands on my right. Their faces were impossible to make out as the world behind them turned into a swirling mess and I could not escape the thought that this was death and that these creatures, be they angels or devils, were here to take me to my next stop, that the moment before death must be a return to childhood of some sort and now came the judgment. I tried to ask them if I was dying, but different words came out.

“Is this the moment of my decay?”

“No,” they said, shaking their heads and they pushed me down into the couch, which melted beneath me. I started sinking deep into it and it began closing around me, like they were pushing me down into some endless, hungry abyss.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.”

The phrasing of the answer from the male being somewhat comforted me, told me that I shouldn’t fear him or what was happening, but that was already essentially impossible. The couch closed above me, and what happened afterwards is almost harder to transcribe.

I fell, and was slipping through an endless array of lifetimes and lifelines and timelines. I was falling through an endless column of rows and rows of neon lights in colors that had never existed before, and every time I passed through one line of color it was as if I experienced eternity all over again. My mind began to associate each color as being a page of some great book, and it was as if every time I passed through a page I glimpsed some alternate life that I could have lived.

These lives are hard to remember and in fact the only one that comes through with crystal clarity was an instance where I fell into a light, and was suddenly some unknown item on the shelf of a department store, wrapped in packaging. A woman in a fifties-style poodle skirt was reaching out to pick me up and inspect me when I fell through that reality and passed on into another one.

This went on for longer than any of us will live, longer than any of us could possibly comprehend, and I resigned myself to the fact that it would never end and that this was death, and death was forever, when suddenly a voice was calling from afar. Some familiar voice was calling out to me from far below, from the place that I was falling to.

“You’re fine...you’re fine, everything’s okay. Everything Is Okay.”

Hearing that voice I knew that it was coming from my page, the right page, the page that I was really from, and it was at this point that I felt conscious of my body as being what was falling through the lifelines, as opposed to just my soul. I pivoted myself into a position that felt like I was swan diving straight down into reality and angled myself towards the voice.

When I fell out of the sky, and through the fifth floor of the building, straight down through the ceiling of my apartment and right back into my chair, I actually felt the impact. It was as if someone had dropped me out of space straight into my chair and though there was no pain associated with the fall, I felt as if I had just been thrown down hard into the chair. I could not move a single muscle except for my eyes, and that was when I looked down and realized that Matt was crouching in front of me and trying to calm me down and that it was Matt telling me that I was okay. At this point though, I still didn’t know who Matt was, or who I was, or where I was.

I heard a sound behind me as Lucy left the bathroom, where she had retreated after being freaked out from the “real” side of my experience. Matt told her to bring me water and she did. Nothing would sit still, and everything in the apartment was still slightly fluttering the way that pages down when you wave a paperback book by the spine. Matt was the only clear thing I could see, since he had called me back, and I looked suspiciously to my right at this blurry image of a person holding a glass, and I could not understand what was going on. Matt tried asking me questions, but all I could answer with was:

“Don’t ask questions...you don’t understand, you don’t understand . . .”

I was still convinced that I would never return to a state of normality. I took the glass of water, my fucked up barely-able-to-move mouth opening to drink it, and after saying I didn’t think I could drink it, I gulped the entire thing down at once. As soon as I had touched the glass it became quite real to me, and stopped moving, and soon that was extending to everything else.

And suddenly, just as the entire experience had started, some sort of razor tore diagonally across my reality and settled everything into its binary nature. The yins and yangs separated and balanced each other out. It is hard to explain beyond simply feeling that everything had settled into lefts and rights, ups and downs, and that when it was arranged that way reality was much easier to understand. I irritably asked them to shut the music off, suddenly realizing that I had heard it the entire time of my experience, in the far distance.

It took a minute or so for me to completely settle in and be able to move my arms and legs and again, and then the words started spilling out as I tried my hardest to recount the experience in the greatest possible detail, since I already felt it slipping away into incomprehension. Then I got their side of the story: I had leaned back after the laughing, and my eyes had rolled back into my head, at which point I gripped the armrests of my chair and started babbling a lot while rocking the chair violently back and forth, murmuring about how to get from A to B. The questions I had asked of the creatures they had heard – and answered, which made me realize that the entire experience essentially scrambled my brain and rearranged everything in my reality to form a new one, that the pushing into the couch was actually Lucy and Matt trying to soothe me. But of course, that wasn’t what it was for me, and that most certainly means something. When they told me that all of this had lasted only about one or two minutes, I wanted to weep.

I woke up the next day and I cried a little, then rolled around in bed soaking in the entire experience before going in to work. It was as if some indiscriminately tricky god had picked me up from my place on my chessboard and not merely moved me across the field but to another board entirely, to play an entirely new game for which I was not in the slightest prepared. I spent the day in a state of unease, riddled by the thought that at any moment everything could slip away and be shown to be a farce, that one day I could wake up and this all would be a daydream in some little boy’s head while he watched television with his parents. There is still more salvia in my drawer.

And it scares the living daylights out of me.

static in the box

2005-03-04T12:51:00.000-05:00

look ma, no hands

-In Roger Ebert's review of Be Cool, he not only convinces me where NOT to spend ten dollars, but also reminds me why he's my favorite movie critic. He's just so damn good about writing about why a movie does or doesn't work.

-NYU is warning its students not wear the trademark white headphones that come with iPods, claiming that they are thief-magnets for unsuspecting rich girls from the suburbs getting lost in the nitty gritty of New York. Not that they'll listen, since those sub-par headphones are more of an accessory than a utility . . .

-The issue of euthanasia is popping up everywhere these days...like Juvie death penatly, could this be coming to a head?

-I love the Mobius Band and it's good to see them get their just desserts in a spot-on Pitchfork review.

-Cool old RANA article I found through their website.

-Not only has our defense spending dug us into a hole of debt...the money isn't even being put to the uses we're told it is!

-Last night Matt (eg)G.(andcheese) blew my mind last nightwith this website that shows off some dude's homemade ultra-camera. This was made for some skyscraper-to-skyscraper peeping tom shit!

-According to the UN's Narcotics wing, the United States has the largest appetite of the entire world for illicit drugs, and recommends easing laws regarding recreational cannabis usage. Not that we ever listen to the UN...

-This guy's doing the program I'll be applying to eventually, JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program), and he keeps a hilarious blog detailing his misadventures with crotch-grabbing Japanese boys who think he must have a huge dick because that's what MTV tells them about black people.

repeat? smoke!

So, the last time we were together it was 11:30 AM and I was sitting in linguistics writing that last blog entry. Since then so little has happened that it almost doesn't merit mentioning its littleness, but then again, last night was a hardy helping of fun, and the night before, well, this is just getting off on the wrong foot.

Occasionally you'll read something I write about The Impending Future (capitalized here because it is also the name of an excellent mix Larry made for me which I am listening to right now). The Impending Future is my nearby graduation. I will be graduating on May 12th, though I'll have to take one last course in the first of the two summer sessions, and will officially be done with college at the end of June. I will be a 22-year old pot-smoking college graduate, and that is an eerie thought indeed. I've been getting sicker and sicker of school, but I think something happened - I hit rock-bottom when it came to hating school last semester when I took a midterm in which the essay counted for 60 percent of the grade. For my essay, I wrote a one-page treatise on why I felt I was unprepared to write said essay, and detailing my lack of enthusiasm for the class, accepting full responsibility for the results. I am such a dickhead.

Since then, I'm sensing a growth in separation anxiety as I near the end of my tenure as a college student. I'm lucky in that this semester, of my 3 classes, I really enjoy 2 and am only halfway annoyed by the third. I'm really enjoying learning and even more than that I'm realizing more and more that I'm going to miss being in a room with a bunch of English majors talking about nothing but one paragraph for an hour and fifteen minutes. I feel like the only place I'll have to do that after college is if I join some dorky reading group that meets for drinks, but I don't make friends, so I will never do that.

Wednesday night was a fun school night. It made me love being a student. Rather than go see M. Ward at the Knitting Factory, I grabbed coffee and some poppyseed cake from Veselka and headed over to the Palladium dorm's "Multi-Purpose Room" where my Contemporary British Culture professor, Patrick Deer, was having a screening of Dr. No, one of the novels we're reading this semester. We all filed in around 7:30 and the teaching assistants were late with snacks and drinks so Prof. Deer turned down the lights, turned up the volume, and that familiar Bond theme hit the screen, the silhouetted secret agent stepping out before the barrel of a gun and taking it down, head-on. I was giddy with excitement, it had been a long time since I'd seen a good Bond movie. Not to be down on Pierce Brosnan, cause Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies are smashing, but the last two were simply crap.

Dr. No was the first Bond novel ever adapted to the big screen, and Sean Connery was plucked from obscurity to play the role. He was a dock-worker when he was discovered and had to take classes in manners and, well, class, in order to play the suave secret agent. What was more fun than watching the film was the discussion afterwards. We turned the lights back up, everyone settled in with snacks and soda, and we had an extended discussion between the students, Prof. Deer, and Professor Cyrus Patell, another cool guy in the English department. Everything about the situation was just great. I found myself thinking - What else would I want to do on a Wednesday evening than watch a movie and then discuss it, analyze it, talk it down to death? The fire alarm went off, Palladium was evacuated, and I went back to Lucy and Ei's for some TV and then headed home to bed.

Thursday after work I had one hell of a bad excuse for a midterm review in my linguistics recitation, another debate about the infinity within the mind, picked up my paycheck and cruised over to 2A to enjoy the fruits of Happy Hour with Lucy. Matt called up and joined us mid-way through our first round, and after the nectars were drained from our glasses me and Matt headed to Sapporo East to grab some sushi-to-go while Lucy diverged in search of sandwich goodness. We picked up some rolls and six pints of PBR and headed to Lucy's where Ani had already arrived, and we all got nice and ready to watch the OC. Unfortunately (and this is where static in the box comes in, clever clever) the OC was on TWICE last night, back-to-back repeats. We all half-heartedly watched the first of the two episodes, back from the land of first season when I never watched the show, and I didn't really care at all. And I hate Paris Hilton. Most of the time we amused ourselves with conversation and once the show was over Lucy headed to Bowery to catch the Jayhawks show with Johnny, leaving me, Matt and Ani to our own devices.

Which led to me opening a drawer, packing a bowl, and we all took a couple of hits. Seeing as how I was already drunk when we did this, I was pretty far-gone once it all completely soaked in. We rocked out to the new Spin while talking about god-knows-what and playing an entertaining round of All Look Same. (Ani got 8, Matt got 6.) I was zonked out of my mind on the liquorweed combination when Matt showed me the link int he above section to the dude's crazy camera, and it was almost a bit too much to comprehend. I was grinning like a goddamn idiot. Ani and Matt escorted each other to the F train, and I went home, read some Dr. No, and passed on out.

i woke up and it's yesterday

2005-03-02T14:28:00.000-05:00

i am a scavenger

Blast! Foiled again! I was due to leave work yesterday at 4 P.M. but pre-sale tickets for NIN at the Hammerstein Ballroom in May were going on sale through musictoday.com, my newest nemesis. I shut down all my other applications so my computer would focus all its power on the imprtant task at hand. Much to my chagrin, starting at 4 P.M., I spent 25 minutes hitting refresh and screaming at my computer as musictoday.com was slowed to a crawl by hordes of fishnetted goths hoping to grab Trent Reznor's nuts from their spot crushed against the front gate of the pit. I came as close as "We're sorry, the configuration of tickets you have requested is not available, however this does not mean that tickets are sold out." Well, that had me pretty fed up.

I threw the mix I made for Larry into my headphones and headed uptown via the 2/3 to the fortress of wealth that is the Upper West Side. Usually I manage to catch the train earlier than this on Tuesdays but now I found myself packt like all too many sardines with the suits and ties, the short hair and the tired eyes. Balancing myself with just one in dex finger on a handrail, I went on reading Lucky Jim, chuckling beneath my breath and glad to find some British humor that didn't lose my interest too quickly. I caught the 1/9 and exited at 86th st., taking the routine weekly walk half a block past Greenberg's to the benches overlooking the Hudson. I breathed in the waves and then turned back and headed upstairs to Greenberg's study.

Yesterday I couldn't stop thinking that he looked like Fu Manchu, his facial hair having grown out a bit, and we talked about writing, marijuana, and love. That is the pyramid that forms our conversations lately, with movies floating inbetween all three. We had a good session, with a couple of those important moments that see me passionately and clearly stating my innate desire, and we talked about that primal urge to make things, to leave one's stamp upon the earth, no matter how small. Remember that awesome moment in 2001: A Space Odyssey when the ape picks up the bone and realizes, sans dialogue, that it's more than just a bone? That he can push the limit of his self out beyond the confines of his meager body and submit the material world around him to his will? Wow. Although, his first instinct is to beat the shit out of rival apes, but we don't all have to follow his example.

I headed back downtown where Lucy and I were to reconnoitre in order to fetch Gracefully sandwiches, but not before a brief stop at my neighbor's apartment. We hadn't talked in a while and he, Jason, told me about how he had just been laid off. We caught up and then, as if I didn't already have drugs on my mind enough, he told me that he had something I might like to see. Reaching into his little cubby of vicodin and pot, he pulled out a small baggy containing three small pink crystals. He asked me if I knew what it was, and I didn't quite know, at which point he told me it was DMT. DMT is a powerful psychedelic that actually already exists in every human being's brain! Our brain just doesn't use it the way it gets used if you synthesize it. Smoked, it induces a 30-minute trip that is apparently thousands of times more intense than LSD, and users often have similar experiences of encountering beings from other dimensions who guide them on journeys through fantastic landscapes. Jason asked me if I wanted to try it, and he'd videotape it. I told him to get back to me in a couple of months, grabbed Major Tom, and headed out to meet Lucy.

We got the sandwiches and after swallowing down my cheddar/pepperjack/tomato/cucumber/pesto hero I braced myself and packed Major Tom's eager-seeming bowl and took a solid binger right to the dome. And another. And another, passing it in a circle betwen me and Eileen and Lucy. Everything went bonzo.

stonerhawk

We scurried to the 2nd Ave. station in a timeless continuum, and I was walking three steps back behind my body, trying to keep up with everything around me. Luckily, the train was waiting when we got there; god knows what madness could have ensued in those dirty depths. Lucy and Ei sat side by side and I took my seat perpendicular to them, unsure whether I should look straight or left or close my eyes. The two of them were talking about Lucy's fresh haircut and I turned to watch them watch each other, watching as the textures of their skin shifted underneath the subway car's fluorescent lights, reacting also to the bars of light behind the windows as we went careening through subterranea in a quiet scream of metal grinding metal. They were telling me about the woman cutting hair; I thought, "My god, I'm tripping on cannabis," and nodded, trying dearly hard to turn the sounds from their mouths into facts and shapes within my mind. The space between stations stretched as long as all hell, shortening as we got closer to Rockefeller Center where we stepped out to a midtown never so magical to my eyes.

I felt like such a tourist, and a stoner, a stonerist, walking out on to 6th Ave with my neck craned back and my bloodshot eyes unable to do anything but take in the awesome scope of all these structures stretching up to scrape the sky, surrounded on all sides by the Moloch Megalopolis. Making our way down the block to the neon Radio City lights I found myself in love with NYC, that certain kind of love it's easy to forget in the middle of a surly snowy winter month.

Entering via the side door, Radio City looked nothing short of classy. We settled into our orchestra seats, the mezzanine overhanging us. It took me a minute to soak in the fact that there was a band on stage playing music. Blonde Redhead firmly reinstated and multiplied my sentiment that I was having more than your everyday cannabinoid experience Their music was so interesting - operatic, dark and synthy, very Sigur Ros-y, and I felt completely bathed in sound and light, sinking deep into my comfy chair as it was shaken at its very base by the deep percussive synth bass that pervaded all of their songs. To try and make out the physical features of the band members seemed a ludicrous feat to attempt, but the silhouette of her dress along with the rich tones of her voice (not to mention all the male hoots and hollers coming from near the stage) had me convinced that the keyboardist/singer was gorgeous.

Sitting between Lucy and Ei, serenaded from the stage, I slowly looked around feeling strangely locked within my senses yet aware that they were my only connection to the outer world. I let my eyes roam the innards of Radio City's architecture and felt as if I was seated deep inside some great and visionary bloodshot eye. The bands and performances that passed upon the stage over the years were like glimpses of some outer reality while the audience served as the collective mind behind the eye. With the building vibrating and the walls and ceiling stretched before me like this great ocular node, I now felt doubly locked within a world within a world. The lights came up and I was just too stunned to move. Lucy went to the bathroom for what felt like half an hour and then finally Interpol took the stage.

They kicked things off with Next Exit, the church-like keyboard filling every acoustic inch of the room, and Paul Banks' voice, the drums, guitars and bass fell in line soon afterwards in perfect time. They sounded beautiful. Strangely, the crowd stayed seated and though I wanted to stand I didn't want to be the lone wolf. Besides, I was comfortable and heavy as a rock. They moved on through the beginning of the set and eventually every body rose to their feet. The set was oddly paced and most of the first half, aside from Slow Hands, was comprised largely of the mellower side of their repertoire, and mostly of songs off of Antics. At a perfect opportunity to kick it into high gear they played Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down which was great but seemed a bit misplaced in the order.

The order of the rest of the songs is a bit hazy but the highlights remain crystal clear. They delivered a sick performance of Evil which Mr. Banks ended by saying, "Thank you, that was Evil," which I thought must be fun to get to say on stage. But it was then the touring keyboardist started playing this psychedelic, spacey wind-like noise that I knew I was about t witness the most rocking moment of the show. The sound, like some tempest from a digital underworld, made me feel like I was swaying though I was sure that I was still. Then Not Even Jail kick started with a huge bang of strobe light and music. The wall behind the band, which looked like crumpled parchment, had a huge grid of lights on it including none-too-painful strobe lights and they served the song just fine as it got me dancing between the seats again.

Interpol had 6 discoballs on stage and it seemed that they would never use them but finally the crowning moment of the evening came during a stellar performance of NYC. When, "It's up to me now, turn on the bright lights," was sung the mirror balls were shone upon and they flung little flecks of starry light across the hall as if the high-frequency picking of the guitars was the source of it all. They encored with some jams off of their first record, including a seriously bitching Roland. I love Interpol. All in all it was a great show but not the greatest I've seen from them. There were a bunch of points when Paul Banks really reminded of Lou Reed, and that had never occurred to me before somehow. Still though my favorite part of Interpol at all has to be Carlos D's bass, which can be described no more aptly then "cool." They also played an unrecorded (as yet?) track, Put Your Little Hand In Mine, which was really really good.

After that Ei treated me to a chocolate peanut butter milkshake at Johnny Rocket's. After some more bingers, and some Iron Chef and puppies on TV, it was time for bed. Today I woke up happy with my night but realized I don't care too much to smoke on weekdays for a long while. I got up good and groggy, got into the shower awful slowly, and headed to class antsy to write all this down, which was the greatest feeling of the entire experience.

rib it to me, baby.

2005-03-01T12:33:00.000-05:00

oh yeah, first of all:

The Oscars are a shitty telecast, but congratulations to Million Dollar Baby for taking all the awards it deserved. Kudos kudos kudos!

le friday

THOSE FUCKING KEYBOARD BUTTONS DID IT TO ME AGAIN! ARGH!!!
Anyway, Friday was a blah, Lucy and I just took a quick hop over to Sapporo East for a delicious-as-usual dinner consisting of loads of sushi and Yasai Udon. I took a momentary break from dinner to hop outside and say hello to David Briggs and pay him back a years-old favor of monstrously psychedelic proportions. Happy travels, sir. After that Lucy and I hit the video store (or maybe we did that first, meh, who cares) in search a movie and settled on Kalifornia, one of Brad Pitt's earliest forays into the role of a more than slightly crazy character. I just love the word foray, don't I? We didn't end up watching it that night, and in fact haven't watched it yet. We ended up catching the first half of Look Who's Talking, Too on TV which was pretty entertaining, though I'm a much bigger fan of Amy Heckerling's other two slambang successes: Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless, both destined to go down in history as classics of their times.

i had my baby back baby back baby back...ribs

Saturday was a day of highs, lows, highers, and mountaintops, so all in all that's not too bad now is it? While I would learn on Sunday that the biggest mistake I made on Saturday was not drinking enough water, the only real low on Saturday was overdrawing my account for 40 dollars and incurring a 30 dollar fucking penalty from my bank. Damn you, HSBC (when I'm pissed at them, I pronounce it hizbuck).

I started the day off startlingly early for someone of my immense level of lazy. I got up around 8 AM, showered, groomed, and headed off to Central Park armed with a bagel, coffee, my camera and my tripod. A fresh tape was in the videocamera and I was ready to record a good deal of the Gates for Larry, who's bummed that he's rooted in Pittsburgh right now and couldn't get up for the two-week stretch of orange art for everybody in the park. I know a lot of people who were pretty down on the whole thing, but I love it, and I especially loved the Gates while they were juxtaposed against the snow. Some snag in the charging process left my camera with only 32 minutes of battery power, which meant I'd only be able to tape about 30 minutes of the Gates, so I made the most of it, walking around while listening to a mix I'd just finished for Larry, another I'd finished for Ani, and another I'd made for myself recently. It felt great to be behind a lens once more and I fell in love with my camera all over again. I caught some great stuff on camera, including one thing that I captured right before my camera's battery died that I won't write up here so it'll be a surprise for Larry when he gets the tape in the mail.

After that adventure I scored some 5 dollar Walkmen/Features/Ben Kweller tickets at the not-too-punctual Irving Plaza box office and then met up with Lucy, Beach, Mandel, Noah, Builder and Shannon outside the 9th st. Path Station for our trip into dreaded Jersey. The PATH train let us out about 4 or 5 large blocks away from the brand new Chili's location where we met up with Jay, Cara, and some of her hoodlum friends, and feasted like fucking kings. Overdrawn account or not, nothing was going to stop me from having barbecue-basted baby back ribs, and I cleaned them all down to the bone while feasting on boneless wings, awesome blossom, and endless bowls of chips and salsa. The 3G's margarita went down nice and smooth and we all pigged out to the extreme. Our waitress gave us great service and next time we head there (which should be soon, considering it's an easy 20 minute, 3-dollar trip to get there!) I think we'll be glad for another chance to send the tip her way and give her another lesson in rowdy Chili's service. Since we took the PATH to go to Chili's...does that make us Bridge-and-Tunnel for Jersey? Weird.

As if the day couldn't get any more supreme, we coasted into the evening with gin-and-tonics, an America's Next Top Model marathon on VH1, and some light soup to drown the rumbly Chili's party happening in my stomach. After many proclamations of being drunk on my part, we headed to the Mercury Lounge to see Peelander-Z, possibly on of THE GREATEST BANDS EVER TO WALK THE EARTH.

After two or three beers I was wasted, which went hand in hand with Peelander's crazy Japanese punk spectacle from beyond the grave. Their costumed, nose-picking, thrashing antics were exactly what I could ever want out of a show and I had a huge grin on my face the entire duration of the show. Highlights were human bowling and getting to hear someone yell "Howa you like-a your good-uh steak?!" MEDIUM-RARE! Those guys have got it GOING ON! After the show I got home, sat down, and realized the room was kind of spinning.

and on Sunday, he puked

That's really all there is to say about Sunday, really. I puked. I puked a lot, so much that I missed the Luna matinee show which was a damn shame, and spent the rest of the night doing nothing but feeling slightly better, eating Thai food, and doing homework.

and the villagers rejoiced

But then there was Luna, which made it all better. A good deal of Monday was spent in pain and discomfort, though, because I puked with full freaking force on Sunday and my digestive system felt torn apart. I could barely eat, which didn't help things at all, and struggled to get through the day by getting lost in Lucky Jim, the book I'm currently reading for my Contemporary British Culture class. It made me laugh out loud a whole lot, raised my spirits, and then while the "blizzard" (more on that bullshit to come) slowly fell Lucy and I made our way over to Bowery Ballroom in the evening to catch the end of Tarantula's scary psychedelic Battles-esque set and Luna's last show ever. It was a sad show and like Lucy said at its close, it was really weird seeing a band's final show. It's hard to comprehend what that quite means, cause they're there, and everybody cheers, and then it's over. Highlights for me were definitely Moon Palace and 23 Minutes in Brussels, the latter of which was quite extended, and they rocked out a whole a lot. It was especially sad because you could feel this palpable connection between them at certain points during certain songs, these musical peaks where they were all completely on the exact same plane of space and time and something beyond, in a perfect groove together, and it was those moments that made you think "Well, damn...it's just...a damn shame." Beach, Daylen, Lucy, Mandel, Mia, Gigs, Sarah and myself all commiserated in the back along with Frank Bango who seemed to be really happy to be working that night of all nights and getting a chance to catch Luna's swan song. I still couldn't drink after Sunday's hangover hell, but it was a great show to be sober, mellow and melodic and thoroughly enjoyable. A beautiful walk home through the snow, and it was time to go to sleep.

stonerhawk

So here we are, it's March 1st and the Interpol show at Radio City Music Hall is tonight and it's the end of my 22-day Superbowl-to-Interpol break from smoking grass. Got a gram from Sam in the afternoon on Monday and I have to say, I'm not as excited as I was a couple of days ago. In fact, I'm halfway-hesitant, 50/50 split between wanting to smoke and not wanting to. The break has gone so well that I don't know if it's worth ending it at this point. Even if I do smoke tonight, I know I won't be smoking a lot in the month to come, that's part of the whole break itself, but I almost want to stay clean until Larry gets here the weekend of March 20th and then just go buckwild with him and laugh my ass off till dawn. I won't know till tonight whether I'm going to smoke or not, and you won't know till tomorrow, but either way Interpol is going to sound heavenly with Radio City's awesome acoustics and I'm glad for a chance to go back there after the awesome show Wilco put on there.

bits and bytes

-I think I'd rather lick a toad or even maybe surf the subway than do this.

-A step towards some semblance of moral sanity?!

-Good to see a good man cleaning up a bad mess.

-Buy your NIN Tickets today!!! Hammerstein Ballroom, May 15th and 16th!

-Hmm..maybe another reason not to smoke?

-According to Ambitious-Outsiders, former Spice Girl Mel C is collaborating with Franz Ferdinand, and hell has just frozen over.

-Snow storm my ass. This is worse than the other time when Bloomberg warned us all to brace ourselves for some sort of deadly fluffy snow assault. An ocean of slush on the city streets does not constitute a blizzard. Cars and buses are running, I had to go to work, and schools are in session. All meteorologists should be flogged for being sensationalist pansies. Except Sam Champion, he's cool. We saw a HILARIOUS commercial for him during the Oscars, it was great.

mama, please look at me

2005-02-25T14:26:00.000-05:00

strange days

I've had two classes with this kid Jason. I just realized I included my blog address in an e-mail once and maybe he checks it out. Oh well. I'll just say it, cause I hate being fake. He is in one of the worst bands I have ever heard in my entire life, who were just signed to Type A Records last week, and I encourage you to listen to them on their website after reading the following quotes from him:

"I really believe the best bands get the biggest record deals."
"My band is making the most interesting music in New York today." [I act flabberghasted, and mention Interpol. He makes a jacking off motion and says] "...we're so much better than Interpol."
[When asked about any awesome band]"Yeah, I heard their single, they suck."
[lyrics from one of their songs:] "Love's a powerful thing, like a rat on a string."

So there you have it folks. Check out Eulogy over at their website, listen and weep. The music business needs a culkin.

the politics of phonetics

I learned that awful news in my Linguistics recitation where I also was flabberghasted at Jason's ability to be absolutely closed-minded about anything. We got into a big class philosophical discussion on this statement: "The human brain is capable of creating an infinite number of sentences and comprehending them." He could not accept it. You know, the biggest annoyance here for me was that I feel like some thoughts I communicate are completely borne from the psychedelic drugs I've done, and they hit people like brick walls no matter how good the point is. How would you feel if I said this in class in front of you:

"The universe is infinite, and I believe that the part is just as great as the whole. Therefore, the entire universe is essentially contained inside the human mind as abstract concepts we can never truly understand, but, bit by bit we can concretize these abstract concepts into language, and art, and sentences. Therefore, since the infinite is inside our minds, we can create an infinite number of representations of the infinite."

I think only Tony got what I was saying, and I wanted to slam my head against my desk. Jason said that if you wrote an endless sentence, like "He was an old old old (repeat old forever) man" that it would no longer make sense because no one would comprehend it. I pointed out that this was like a tree falling in the forest with no one around, and that we're pompous enough as humans to think it might not make a sound just because our sorry selves aren't around to hear it. To which some girl replied "That's not a brilliant analogy." Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Fucking people!

rad zapping

After that exercise in stopping myself from screaming at the top of my lungs I went over to Lucy and Eileen's to get the important part of the day, the night, started. We got a big ol' bottle of Bombay Sapphire and mixed up some gin and tonics. Ani rolled in to watch the OC with us once again and it was awesome to have Eileen there to watch it with us. Usually she works on Thursdays and we have to tape it for her. She whipped up some pasta with vodka sauce and gave me a sizable helping of it which was sweet.

Larry wonders why I watch the OC and last night's episode I wish he could have seen. Pure entertainment. Like the good old days when I could watch TV without analyzing it for how it fucks with your brain, back when I could watch something and just laugh or arch an eyebrow. Seth's the best character, he makes me laugh a lot. And I hope Alex and Marisa stay together, cause that's one gorgeous lesbian couple. Woah, listen to me, I sound weird.

After the OC Lucy and Eileen and myself headed over to Rothko, parting ways with Ani who went to meet up with her sister. A band called Lucy was opening up for Hockey Night and we thought we'd catch the tail end of their act. Much to our chagrin, we got there at 10:40 and they were just taking the stage.

Lucy is the worst band ever. Lucy deserves to be burned alive. Lucy made Eileen so nauseous that she went home and went to sleep. Lucy herself, the lead singer, deserves the kind of Culkin action I heard Action got this past weekend - though 4 in 2 minutes is frankly too few for her. Her guitarist girlfriend sucked a big one, the drummer was a douche, and the bassist was just harmless enough for me to not rag on him. But for being in Lucy, he is condemned to eternal damnation. Worst. Band. Ever.

By the time they were done with their "performance," which consisted of shitty punky 50's-infused bad imitation rock and roll, I was thoroughly fed up with Rothko, but able to realize that was just because the first band I ever saw there was now one of the worst bands I had ever seen in my life. Thank goodness Beach and Daylen rolled in soon after that which was good for the ol' cheering-up. Then Hockey Night took the stage.

Those Canadian fuckers [note: Johnny pointed out their from Minnesota. Same shit, different state.] were Absolutely Fucking Awesome. If Lucy gets 1 out of 100, Hockey Night seriously gets like a 92. They non-stop rocked. Iw as wondering how their album would translate to a live show, and well, it didn't. I don't think they played a single entire song off of Rad Zapping and it didn't matter one bit, though certain lyrics and guitar parts were definitely lifted from the excellent LP. They were comprised of two drummers, two guitarists, and one bassist, and were arranged in perfect symmetry on the stage. At their most rocking-out moments the bassist would serve as the anchor while the guitars would either double solo or one would play complementary riffs to the other's screaming high-frequency rockoutfreakouts. The drummers were perfectly in sync, and everyone on stage seemed to be sincerely enjoying what they were doing IMMENSELY. And that counts for a lot, ya know? They had a total Pavement vibe around them, but not Pavement-imitation, just Pavement-inspired-esque. The lead singer's lyrics are especially Malkmussy though his delivery is all his own. He would pump his fist in the air to get the crowd rocking and the space between people and the stage, and between people and other people, kept on tightening as the set went on.

I had to sit down when they had three songs left cause it was fucking hot in Rothko and I was dead tired, but I still managed to stay awake and nod my head to their pure and unadulterated rock. But once the show was over and Lucy, Beach and Daylen were getting ready to head over to Del's party at Micky's Blue Room, I had to pull a Belin. Remembering that last week I ended up wasted at 4 AM and coming in to work unfathomably late, I went home and worked on a mix for Ani a little bit and then hopped into bed for a solid night's sleep. Good boy.

bitz and bytez

-Regarding my prison rant yesterday, read this article!

-And Kudos to Adam for summing up all my problems with writing in one paragraph:

PyrusNeoptolemus: seems like you have an overexposure to
inspiration too... too many great things to see, read, hear, taste,
experience in the city and not enough time to channel any of it

Hope Can Drive A Man Insane

2005-02-24T13:24:00.000-05:00

This computer at work has back-and-forward Internet buttons near its arrows. I just deleted my whole fucking post. Here we go a-fuckin-gain.

i get closer to my better days

Lucy and I are on a fucking roll here with the awesome movie-watching. More on that in a second. Yesterday I made the rounds and did the class thing, meeting up with Eileen randomly in the middle of the day and getting some sandwich action at 7A (where they've changed the name of the Austrian. Bullshit.) After some catching up I went to my last class, fell asleep, and then met up with Lucy for a few before confining myself to solitude in my apartment. Not quite solitude though, because I was in the company of those beautiful new One-Pint Cans of PBR. Even more beautiful than the cans themselves was the fact that THE DELI (village farm, NE corner of 2nd and 9th, best deli ever) still had them marked for the little can prices. Six pints of PBR for six bucks!!! Rrrrrock.

So I locked myself in the room, cued up Explosions in the Sky and Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool as my instrumental soundtrack and slapped my typewriter down on my thighs. It felt so fucking good to write something. I just let it all out as my fingers hit the keys, writing nothing at all and everything at once, letting my brain reprint its train of thought, trying not to think about poetry or fiction or films or anything and just write whatever I was feeling. The fact that my typewriter is manual made it even better since when I hit the end of a line a bell rings and I gotta slide that muthafucka back into its rightful place all by my lonesome, and then I've got a whole stretch of page to fill all over again. I churned out four or so pages, folded them up in my pocket and went to rejoin Lucy for some Two Boots, after which we headed to Hollyshit Video to rent a movie.

the tumblehawk prison rant, 2005

So we went and grabbed The Shawshank Redemption, one of the best thing a bunch of people with a few cameras have ever made in the history of film. Lucy hadn't seen it and I was quite ready to sit through it for the billionth time, albeit the first time in a while. I don't want this blog to start turning into Film Comment magazine so I'll keep my wish-I-was-a-cinema-studies-major rambling to a minimum and not go on and on about how Tim Robbins is excellent and the film is layered so deeply with interwoven imagery and symbolism that winds up as a tightly wound package with a healthy dollop of whip cream and a cherry on top.

Instead, I'm going to talk about this bullshit system we've got going on called prison. Prison is one of the oldest institutions in the realm of human existence. Back in the seafaring, colonizing days, prisons were one of the first 2 or 3 structures that would be erected when a travelling party arrived somewhere new, because problems were always expected. I'm not going to say that prison makes criminals instead of the other way around, this isn't a chicken-or-the-egg discussion.

I just think we've moved on. It used to be the human race was trying to set its flag down on the earth and try to survive, but now we've gotten to the point that we can all survive just fine, and the only reason some people do and some people don't is because we've taken physical darwinism and turned into bullshit Social Darwinism precipitated heavily by the spread of the scourge that is the capitalist system. Thing is, see, I think prison makes madmen and monsters, and that it takes a monster to control a monster, and the whole thing is an endless downward spiral, a self-perpetuating disease. Prisons are also one of the largest sources of incomes for every country, and so we sort of lean on them as crutches. This needs to be changed.

While I'm sure some criminals are so insane that they are beyond rehabilitation and require only control, the bulk need therapy, that's my opinion. Not petty criminals, but so many murderers and felons would benefit so much more from a stint in genuine, caring psychotherapy. And frankly, I don't think humans talking to humans is enough for everyone. I believe a lot can be achieved with the use of medication but also and especially the use of psychedelic drugs, in low doses and high doses, such as MDMA (ecstasy), psilocybin (mushrooms), and LSD (I like the full name, myself - lysergic acid diethylamide). If you're thinking this is just some halfway-hippie who likes those substances talking, and you don't think there's any answer to be found in those substances, ask me for a copy of Timothy Leary's research into just this kind of practice. Along with a team of researchers they dosed a bunch of extremely hardened criminals, many of them cold-blooded murderers and had repeated sessions. The criminals were volunteers who saw this as a chance to break the doldrum of prison life and eat some better food which they were offered, and a staggering majority of them had sensational breakthroughs in their experiences. They felt compelled to perform acts of love instead of hate, and the only reason the project ended up floundering was that when they were re-integrated into society, society simply doesn't accept ex-cons with open arms at all, giving them no support and no jobs and no nothing . . . so obviously prison isn't all we've got to change.

I'll leave you with this quote I saw someone post on Shroomery:

"The embarrassing truth is that consciousness is a chemical phenomenon. Everything that you have ever experienced, you have experienced because of a chemical reaction in your nervous system. Memory is a chemical process. Learning is a chemical process. Stupidity is a chemical process. "Stupor" is a chemical process. Normal awareness is a chemical process."
-Tim Leary

keep it like a secret

2005-02-24T10:50:00.000-05:00

Built to Spill @ Irving Plaza May 11, 12, 13, tix on sale now 20 bucks a pop, not listed on Irving's page for some reason . . .

you can take your blog and shove it up your ass

2005-02-23T11:35:00.000-05:00

I got drunker as the night went on so I can't remember all too clearly, but I'm pretty sure that's what Sean Bones said to me when I declared my fervent desire to Culkin him. Said desire has not abated, only inflated, in the wake of this effrontery upon my forays into the world of blogging. Where did all those words just come from? Weee.

So this morning I got to my Hemingway/Faulkner class really early, too fucking early, but thank god Linnea has the same problem as me (overcompensating fear of lateness and ending up at a place way earlier than you need to be). We caught up since she was sick and missed class last week and did the whole "where were you when you heard Hunter S. Thompson died?" thing. So take this with a grain of salt but here we go. Linnea's roommate, Viv, was supposed to have Thompson as a godfather, since her dad used to be his lawyer. (Not that lawyer, from Fear and Loathing, but a lawyer for him none the less.) Anyhow, her mom objected to his having that title due to Thompson being a lunatic, but still, the two families remained close. This is hearsay, but I'm gonna give it to you straight the way I heard it, I'm paraphrasing the exact wording, but the concept is still the same:

"Apparently he was having a big party at his compound as he liked to do, and they were having a big old barbecue when all of a sudden Hunter came out of the house and said, 'You better give me a damn good funeral.' He then went inside the house, into his room, took out a gun, and shot himself in the head."

The way the news outlets had it was that his son "found him" dead, made it sound kind of like he did it in a bit of privacy, but apparently everybody heard the gunshot and knew what had happened, and there you have it. The biggest "scoop" onesandzeroes is ever gonna have. For those curious and concerned, Viv is pretty shook up.

johnny's wife was playing keyboards

If what Beach claimed in his mid-set comment to Lucy is true, then he's going to be having some beautiful rockin' children.

The Shout Out Louds were awesome last night, and I didn't feel let down one bit despite the months-long build-up of excitement leading up to last night's show. We got to Bowery in time to miss their first track but just in time to hear The Comeback. When Noah waved us in, Lucy and I literally ran through the bar-crowd and headed upstairs and made our way to the front where Jay had his arm around Builder's neck and they were swaying back and forth like a couple of Irish drunkards. Standing behind them Beach and Daylen were doing their own little bounces and we commenced to join in on the Swedish dance party. Jersey Dan hugged us from behind demanding to know where we had been for the past few days and to know why he hadn't seen us in his time in New York. Well geez man how was I supposed to know! I barely know the guy. I hear about him in the RANA song Replacements more than I ever do in daily life. Mandel showed up not long after and Matt "I Can't Believe You Named Me Egg And Cheese" G. showed up a little later than he would have liked to, but still got to catch a good dose of Shout Out Loud rock.

They're a really fun band to watch, every single one of them. The bassist has this rigid hop that seems like he's on the verge of spasming and doubling over his bass that had me laughing on the inside a lot. Not on the outside, cause people would think "what the fuck?" The keyboardist, who at the Mercury CMJ show seemed kind of useless and annoying (albeit hot) was really cool last night though. She always looks like she's either a) riding the Xanax wave, b) half-heartedly interested, or c) wishing she was somewhere getting laid because the rockin' turns her on. A couple of songs into the set I decided that option (c) was probably closest to the truth, so a toast to Mrs. Swedish Beach.

The Futureheads were good background music for horsing around near the side-door but that's about all they did for me. They were kind of all over the place and I felt like they had three tempos - moderate, slowed down but about to explode, or frantic. They never settled but the switch-ups had no real rhythm to them and I was just confused. Plus, the Shout Out Louds were a really tough act to follow. All the pomp-and-circumstance and lights the Futureheads had couldn't even live up to the quaint, simple poster about the Shout Out Louds tour that they had set up on stage with them.

We spent most the Futureheads set drinking beer (which I got for free after the bartender dropped one and then insisted on giving me both for free. rock.) and plotting to Culkin Jay who was being way too cute for his own damn good. I got drunker than I expected to on less alcohol than I even planned to drink. How does that work? After some end-of-show banter with Jin, I headed out with Matt and Lucy and we took a stroll down Bowery headed northwards, discussing why the only cheese for egg-and-cheese is American cheese, processed down to the very last bit. Mmmm. I could go for one right now. Right now I am skipping Linguistics class to write this. Ha ha ha ha ha! I actually came pretty close to going today. I sat in a chair, took out my books, and then pulled a Belin one minute before class was to begin, in the middle of a conversation with my friend Tony. He was saying something and I turned to him and plainly said, "All right. I gotta go." That was that.

2005-02-22T12:46:00.000-05:00

Nine Inch Nails: The Line Begins to Blur.

..someplace between nowhere and goodbye..

2005-02-22T11:00:00.000-05:00

senorita swanky

Compared with Hilary Swank's mere beginnings in her destined-to-be-illustrious career as an actress, the details of my weekend are a blip on the radar, a speck of cosmic dust powdered with tequila and Corner Bistro, but we'll get to that once I get this out of my system. For a long time I held a grudge against Hilary Swank for absolutely no reason at all (though thinking about my linguistics class and accent prejudice, I do realize a lot of it had to do with her southern drawl, which tended to draw on my nerves). The weekend began, on an obnoxiously cold Friday night, with Lucy and I taking a trip to my family's favorite restaurant on Indian row, Calcutta, complete with the 15 percent discount. We scarfed down some chicken tandoori, samosas and kadi mix and filled up on Taj Mahal in order to warm ourselves for the long-ass walk to the Angelika.

Side-rant: recently, at the Sam Champion Luna Lounge show, Ramie told Lucy and I that he wasn't sorry to see Luna go because it was a shitty venue with overpriced beer, no matter how much nostalgia is wrapped up in it. When we got to the Angelika all I could think about was that if someone was buying out that space and closing down the Angelika, sure it would be a huge blow to the local indie flick scene but as a theater, I wouldn't be sad to see it go at all. The Angelika theater is a piece of shit theater. The seating arrangements are crap, there's always heads in the way. The sound system is perpetually plagued by slight fuzz. The screens have been too worn down for too long. And beyond the aesthetics of it, the whole Angelika crowd/scene needs a collective Culkin. It's like a bunch of snotty French people getting high off espresso fumes while trying to look mysterious and sexy.

Okay, so once I got past all that and we got to our seats, the movie was ready to begin. What movie, you may ask? Do you have a free night this week? Do you feel like you haven't spent 10 dollars (or, as the Angelika likes to charge, 10.25...that extra quarter pisses the shit out of me) and gotten your money's worth in a while? Did you look at this year's list of Oscar contenders and, like me, say "I haven't seen any of those." If you're looking for remedies to any of this problem, Clint Eastwood has made it and its name is Million Dollar Baby, and it wants you to love it like it loves you. Eastwood is a master. If you haven't learned that from the thirty years in-between his spaghetti western acting days and his ultimate western, Unforgiven, it's time to see what the hubbub is all about.

I'm going to vaguely tell you what Million Dollar Baby is about, because you probably think it is a boxing movie. Eastwood, introducing a clip from the film at the Golden Globes said that he did not think of it as a boxing movie. To him, it is a film about people trying to make meaningful connections in a forlorn age. It's a story about people, and that's my favorite kind of story. It made me laugh out loud. It made me cry. It gave me chills. It made me wince. It made me want to make a movie, or create SOMETHING, and isn't that the most important one of them all? And if you've read in articles or heard from friends about what some people are calling the "plot twist at the end," trust me, I half-ruined it for myself by reading an article before seeing it and it did not matter one single bit. A plot twist is a plot twist when the director is trying to pull the wool over your eyes in some fantastic sense. What Million Dollar Baby does is bring an absolutely visceral story about two lost people to a climactic close that hurts so, so good.

Fast forward to Sunday night: after some Sapporo East (rocking the udon and the dragon roll), Lucy and I return to her apartment and decide to surf the cable box to see if anything is on. Boys Don't Cry is on. Hilary Swank is in front of me again. And I know I didn't say anything about her in my above rant about Million Dollar Baby, but she was ridiculously terrific. Not only was she completely her character, but she played off of Eastwood and Morgan Freeman so, so, so well. Ever watch a movie and feel like the performance someone is giving is a treat you should be thankful for? That's how I felt. Anyway, Boys Don't Cry came on, and I knew the whole true story it was based on, how it ended included, and that was part of the reason (combined with my dislike for Swank) that I had never felt the need to necessarily watch it before. But on the heels of Million Dollar Baby I was psyched as all hell to watch Boys Don't Cry, and

She did it to me again! She made me smile, laugh, wince, and cry. Not just the story, but HER. She is AMAZING. She is officially one of my favorite actresses of all time. I spent Saturday Morning rolling around in bed trying to get my head around everything Million Dollar Baby did to me, and I ended up spending Monday morning trying to understand all the emotions that her performance in Boys Don't Cry brought out in me. My mind has been extremely blown.

i don't mind not making sense

The rest of the weekend was a hodgepodge. Lucy's friend Lara visited from Penn State bringing her friend Jeremy along for the ride and after they got stonediddlyoned we headed over to Corner Bistro where the wait was an hour to get a table. After 40 minutes, we were mysteriously yanked up past the entire line and given a table, much to the chagrin of the party of a gazillion and another party of 4 or so in front of us, who persisted in giving us dirty looks for a while after we were seated. Once again, the Bistro blew away all its competition and a bacon cheeseburger never tasted so damn good. After that, Lucy got hooked up with some pigtails, we knocked back some tequila (I'm a pussy, I did half a shot), and headed over to 2A for a bit, then over to Library, and finally headed to B-Side where Lara and Jeremy cued up Willy Nelson after some Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie action.

The next day started with Veselka: 2 pancakes, 2 sunnyside-up eggs, 3 strips of damn good bacon, two pieces of toast and a whole lot of coffee. After that Mike the Amazing stopped by for a wonderful transaction and then Lucy, Lara, Jeremy and myself headed to Sam's so Lara could stock up on nugget. Sam's this aspiring actor dude who just graduated from NYU and used to live down the hall from Noah sir Champion. He hooked her up with a sweet deal as is his modus operandi and then we headed to Central Park only to get stuck in so much traffic it was ridiculous. Lara and Jeremy headed home and Lucy and I took a nighttime stroll through the Gates, which I really enjoyed the sight of, watched some ice skating, and then headed home for sushi and Boys Don't Cry. I spent Monday writing a paper and then filming Eileen's Real World audition videotape. Best of luck to her. I think I'm gonna make one myself, even though I wouldn't want to be on the Real World at all. But it'd be fun to see if I could wrap my life up in 5-10 minutes without mentioning marijuana once. Challenge!

the past it is a foreign country

First of all, before I throw the bits and bytes at you, I just need to get this out of the way cause everybody's gotta chime in right? At first, I was SHOCKED at Hunter S. Thompson's suicide. My gut reaction was "that sucks." But I don't know if I'm so right to think that. It sucks for me that he won't be making any more wonderful columns and books, and that he isn't part of the living collective unconscious anymore, sure, but the man did it on his own terms much like he lived the rest of his life. So, "There he goes. One of god's own prototypes."

-The sign of a dying ideology? Good.

-I am so guilty of this crime.

-So soldiers get to do ecstasy? Yeah, this seems fair.

-The Gates: The Sequel goes against typical sequel rules: it's smaller, less sensational . . .

two for one is some peace of mind

2005-02-18T13:46:00.000-05:00

Lordy lord, what a fucking headache. I got wasted last night. But first let me tell you that Lucy and I took a cue from Jay's delicious-sounding write-up of Juanita's on Wednesday night and decided to check the place out. It rocked. The margaritas were delicious, and if you get there between 3 and 7, it's three dollars for a pint of margarita. Yes, that is correct, you are not hallucinating, you just read that. Wowee. Gotta get there on time next time!

Anyhow, Wednesday was the type of day that solidifies my being a waste of academic life. I had a paper due at 3:30, so I skipped my 11 and 12:30 classes to write it because I'm an idiot and hadn't done it yet. It was only five pages, and counted for very little of the total grade for the class, but yes - I managed to NOT finish it in time for my 3:30 class. That's even putting me in a favorable light. It's a little bit more like, I decided not to do it and just hang out with Lucy listening to music all afternoon. I ended up finishing it before we went to dinner, and handed it in the next day, but really, what the hell is my problem? Argh. After Juanita's Lucy got me psyched to rush back to her and Ei's apartment so we could watch (and tape for Ei) the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Special on Spike TV. I don't think I would have ever watched something like that unless I had the coolest girlfriend ever. But really the true props go to Eileen for awakening a love in all of us for Petra Nemcova, Marisa Miller, and all the SI gals that she posters up around the apartment. She's been accused many times of having lesbianic tendencies, but Eileen and Lucy are just two girls that can appreciate beauty. And there's not much more gorgeous in this world than a finely sculpted female body. By the way, Marisa Miller is a goddamn idiot. Anyway.

Yesterday after work I went to my Linguistics recitation where me, Jason, Tony, this girl with a really weird Brooklyn accent, and 2 other guys who don't give a good god shit about the class have formed a solid back-row bloc of snickering dissent. I kind of feel bad for my TA but she has to understand it's all out of love. We give her hell, cause the class is such bullshit. But I can't help it, I don't really care where the tip of my tongue goes when I pronounce my l's. I finally met up with Lucy afterwards and we headed to 2A to take advantage of the beauty that is Happy Hour. After a couple of Tanqueray tonics we parted ways so she could watch the O.C. while I went to have dinner with my dad and Nika. We went to Sapporo East, which rocked as usual, and I ate a sick amount of sushi downed with a huge Sapporo. Roooooock.

Speaking of which, it was definitely about time for some Rock, and I met up with Lucy in the ?!SNOW!? to go to Bowery Ballroom. We realized we hadn't been there since the Ray Lamontagne show on Jan. 19th, which seemed highly absurd. There were definitely a bunch of jackasses out for the show, and it was hard to enjoy Calla in the company of hecklers, but it was also hard to enjoy them cause I think they're still working out the new tunes. Yet, they played a similar set opening for Interpol and managed to really impress both of us and a whole lot of the Interpol crowd at Hammerstein. I can't wait to check them out at Mercury next month, I think it'll be a lot better than their opening slot last night.

This was my third time seeing the French Kicks, and whaddya know! They finally did it for me! I will go so far as to say that I HIGHLY ENJOYED their set. They write interesting songs and I think the lead singer has definitely gotten better at not holding an instrument. I never saw them when he was playing drums for the band, but I could tell the first couple of times that I saw them that he didn't know what to do with himself. Last night was a really great show though. The only disappointment was that after some good times with J Good Times, he got swamped at the merch table and couldn't join us on our way to Mickey's Blue Room.

It was the return of Kibbles and Bits, though only Kibbles was doing any DJ'ing at all. Mandel was throwing out all the songs you ever want to hear, as usual, and also threw us the new Spoon record, which I'm pretty sure Lucy stole out of my coat pocket while I was shooting pool. Either that, or I lost it and Del can you give us another copy? Hahaha. Beach and Daylen stopped by, but not before some random dude gave me his hip-hop CD: "I've been waiting all night to give this to the right person, and I can tell you rock out man, you're gonna like this shit." I think this was mainly due to the fact that when Del put on Nine Inch Nails' awesome song, Wish, me and the dude were both rocking out hardcore and had a couple of metal moments of eye contact.

Once Beach got there he showed me that I do not know how to play pool as well as I thought I did. I was getting drunker and drunker, the pooltable was unlocked, and he just kept beating me and beating me. I couldn't get sore though. Maybe after I clean his backyard tomorrow he'll let me try and beat him after he passes on the new British Sea Power. Oooooooooooooooooh mama.

I don't remember coming home. I came to work 3 hours late. My head is pounding. I'm having trouble eating this bagel with cream cheese. I want my mommy.

2005-02-16T11:49:00.000-05:00

gin-drinkin' bloodhound

Yesterday had all the sweetness of a toddler dipped in whipped cream, but no maraschino cherries please. I hate that shit. Work was work, you need not know about that, but I don't even need to let you know how frickin' gorgeous the weather was outside. So after conspiring to break out of work early, I decided it was time to take some detours on my way uptown to see Dr. Greenberg (that's my inimitable shrink, ya see). I fired up the iPod and decided to make a mix on-the-fly, using that wonderful On-The-Go feature.

1. The Magnetic Fields - Long-Forgotten Fairytale
(I'm walking out of work, and heading to the Chambers St. Station to catch the 2/3 uptown to 72nd st.)
2. Wilco - A Shot in the Arm (waiting for the train)
3. Neil Young - Barstool Blues (sliding uptown through the underground)
4. Pixies - Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons
5. Desert Sessions - I Wanna Make It WitChu
(I exit at the 72nd St. station, immediately flooded with memories of two Junes ago when Lucy and I spent 44 hours on the corner of 76th and Amsterdam waiting to get 2 dollar Radiohead tickets. I head uptown, towards 86th st where Greenberg resides.)
6. TV on the Radio - Satellite
7. RANA - Good Book
8. Talking Heads - I Zimbra
(Here I pass by Nick's Burger Joint and immediately remember how good our pizza was here when we took a break from the line. I decide to take advantage of the lovely weather, grab a table on the sidewalk and order a Cheeseburger with Fries. The pickles are fucking delicious. I sit, and listen, and eat.)
9. Shout Out Louds - Shut Your Eyes
10. Pavement - Rattled by the Rush
11. Asobi Seksu - I'm Happy But You Don't Like Me
12. Lali Puna - People I Know
(I pay the check, having devoured my meaty delicious meal, and proceed to walk down to Riverside Drive and the park beneath it, watching the strangeness of uptown life as I go along. Things are different here. It is New York in a different way. Uptown and Downtown are the only realities this city has. Midtown is a joke.)
13. Say Hi to Your Mom - But She Beat My High Score
14. Nada Surf - The Way You Wear Your Head
15. Sam Champion - Now Look At Me
(When the Sam Champion songs come on, it is precisely at the moment when I am faced with a choice between two paths each leading down to Riverside Park. One is a dirt path through trees and leaves, and the other is a neat stone stairway. I take a cue from the song and take the road less travelled. I pass by the tunnel where we smoked a couple of bowls around 5 in the morning, a couple of feet away from homeless people snoring in its stony shelter.)
16. Pulp - Bar Italia
(This song makes me grin and I've got a spring to my step. I realize this must be the last song of the mix even if I've still got a half hour till my appointment. The mix has finished itself. And it finishes itself by bringing me to a stone embankment of sorts looking across the river to Jersey. Jersey can only look lovely from a spot like that. The song finishes, and I take out my notebook, and for the first time in 9 or ten months, feel the urge to actually write something. And I do.)

It occurred to me that you could never see the river moving all at once, that it took on the illusion of opposing lattices to justify or make reason of its own intertwining. If it all moved uniformly there would be no movement, really, just a static stillness slightly flickering. So the roles must all be divvied up between the waves, with some seeming to stand still against the onslaught of the others while in reality there was no true direction, just a mish-mash of complements and supplements that we would bury underneath a word to make it clear, the river.
And while the river moved in seeming lanes, the shore beyond it lay upon its side just like the clouds beyond and the six striped lanes beneath me with the vehicles all jockeying for position, and behind me bikes and dogs and running men all in their places all leading to the sudden sickened notion that I alone was standing here in perpendicularity to everything and not in line with anything. But then I turned, and saw the buildings rising up to scrape the linearity they drowned in, and I felt not so alone.

german short-haired pointer my ASS

I went in to see Greenberg and we discussed some dreams that I'd been having, the pot I ain't been smoking, the stuff that I been buying, and the words I'd just been writing. It was one of the best sessions we've had. When I got back downtown it was just in time to join Lucy and her parents for dinner at Supper, which was fucking sweet. We ordered a delicious bottle of Pinot Grigio and I had the Priest Stranglers. Afterwards was the second and final night of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which was a joy to watch as usual. But I was very disappointed, as was Lucy, in the results of Best in Show. The German Short-Haired Pointer just did NOT do it for me. Meanwhile, I called my mom right before Best in Show to remind her to watch. She called me when the pointer was being shown and said that was the one she wanted to win. Lucy and I had bet dinner at Corner Bistro some night on the outcome of Best in Show, and my mom ended up winning. I don't think she's one for cheeseburgers though. Oh well.

long-forgotten fairytale

2005-02-15T11:35:00.000-05:00

frankly, here's friday through monday

Friday was the dullest day in the history of days, friends. I went to work from 10-5, and then I returned uptown, showered, caught some Chipotle action with Lucy and Nika, and then Lucy and I wandered around the LES trying to pick a bar to drink in but eventually realizing that for no reason we were both in a gloomy-let's-not-do-anything-but-mope mood. After lots and lots of nothing, I went to sleep while Lucy went home with a six-pack of Magic Hat.

Saturday was a completely different story. Saturday was marked by 4 completely distinct events, each holding their own degree of awesome significance:

#1 - I spent easily six hours cleaning my apartment top to bottom. I put cleaning off for a long time and end up doing it about two times a year and giving it my all when I finally give it anything. After gathering enough dust to choke a small country (anyone reading this is like - you used that line already saturday night) and spending half an hour on my shower alone (you don't want to know), I was thoroughly pooped. I had a great soundtrack though, sweeping and scrubbing to the tunes of Asobi Seksu, Lali Puna, RANA, Neil Young and Talking Heads' Fear of Music. Neil Young was important on saturday, because you see -

#2 - while rocking out to ZUMA and dusting off my bookshelves, Ani's friend's friend stopped by and hooked me up with 4 little buddies the likes of which I haven't seen since Nov. 1st, 2003, the night Lucy and I saw a dead body outside the Mercury Lounge and ended up wandering around the city madly for a few hours. ROCK. ROCK ROCK ROCK. We talked about the awesomeness of Neil Young for a bit, and then Mike went on his way. Soon, finally, the cleaning was done, and little bits of jesus were sitting in my freezer, and I met up with Lucy for the first time in the day to head over to Y uca Bar. If you haven't been to this place you're missing out big-time. I wolfed down the amazing Latin Burger, helped Lucy out with her second happy-hour mojito, and then it was time for the Champion.

#3 - as usual, an awesome show by the Sam Champion crew. We got to Luna Lounge in time to catch the tail end of Frank Bango's set and met up with Matt-and-Cheese, his entourage of Belgians, Kabir who I always run into through NYU people, Jay, Builder, Johnny, Ramie, etc, etc, etc. The place was fucking packed to see Noah and co. rock out, the crowd spilling out into the bar-room and people literally pushing their way to the front to get a better view of Noah's muppets-esque stage presence. Lucy pointed out the muppet-bounciness and from that point on I couldn't help but think of Gonzo everytime he went apeshit on his guitar. Scott from RANA joined them on stage for Neil Young's Vampire Blues, and it was as if Neil's soul had possessed Noah. I was really impressed by the fact that Noah didn't seem like a jackass without a guitar in his hands, cause that happens to so many frontmen who put down their instruments for just one song. Way to go Noah. I couldn't help but grin at the new significance Neil Young had taken on throughout the day. The set wrapped up with Cheadlebug, which is so far the best song of 2005 and makes want to see Hotel Rwanda.

#4 - Afterwards, we made our way over to the Loose Record afterparty at Hanger Bar, where Builder and Jay spun more Talking Heads than me on acid. -Zing!- It was a great gathering of folks: 3/4 of RANA, Ramie, Matt G, Say Hi to My Eric and more. Ramie got to see Lou Reed open for U2. What the good-god-fuck, man! Anywho, the PBR flowed on and on, The Faint got about as much airtime as David Byrne, and there was much tattoo-talk. I'm pretty sure I'm getting this done on my wrist, in black ink:

Homeward-bound with Say Hi to My Eric tagging along on his way to the L train, we ran into Beach and Daylen who were on their way to Hanger Bar from the Jens Lekman show at Mercury. We chatted it up for a while down the block from Two Boots, which made me really want Pizza, but they were closed. Bastards. Then, !, the night was over.

Sunday I woke up and peeked inside my freezer, wondering if it was all a dream. Eileen dropped by on her way to work, and she peeked inside too, squealing with delight immediately thereafter. Literally, she SQUEALED WITH DELIGHT! She also lent me 5 bucks, she rocks, and with that five bucks I went to Veselka and grabbed 2 Sunnyside-Up Eggs, homefries, white toast, and three humongous strips of crispy bacon. I ate this delicious breakfast in the comfort of Lucy and Ei's apartment, where I pretty much live, while watching Total Recall. It reminded me of growing up with channel 11's weekend movies. One day of comedies or family dramas, and one day of straight-up action-movies. Total Recall is such an awesome movie and Arnold Schwarznegger rules. If they change the rules and he runs for president, he will get my vote without a moment's hesitation. Schwarzenegger/Beach '12!!!!!!!!!

So Arnold kicked some ass while I did my Linguistics homework and then I laid around the girls' apartment for a long time reading A Farewell to Arms, which is a pretty wonderful read. I also listened to three discs' worth of RANA that Ramie had been generous enough to give me at the Sam Champion show, all three encompassing their 12.30.04 show at the Tribeca Rock Club. Which meant that I got to hear Vampire Blues all over again. Rock!

Lucy had been gone all day at a bridal shower for the girl getting married to her cousin in Mexico. She came back in the evening and we rented Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, which I had never seen and had always been reluctant to see. What is wrong with me?! While I still think the opening 5 minutes or so are almost too over-the-top, the film on the whole was wonderful. Too many filmmakers today don't understand how to modernize an older or ancient text. You can't just put the story IN modern times, you have to make it relevant to modern times while still preserving the essence of the story itself. Luhrmann does this, and also manages to perfectly cast each and every role, straight from the Prince to Romeo and Juliet to Juliet's father. Way to go Luhrmann. Too bad Moulin Rouge kind of sucks my left nut. Make another good movie! You've got talent, buddy!

week one: complete

Monday was the one-week marker of my three-week foray into herbal sobriety. Say that six times slow. After class I picked up a heart-shaped Valentine's Day cake from Blackhound and headed over to 418 to hang out with Lucy and Ei for a bit. When Ei went off to class Lucy and I picked up our personal choices for Valentine's take-out and she chewed down some Yaffa salad roughage while I gorged myself on Banjara's Murg Tikke Masala and a whole lot of nan. Dinner finished just in time for the greatest TV event of the year:

Maybe you're like my sister Nika and you think I can't possibly be serious about ignoring the rest of the world and watching dogs on TV for three hours - but if you are, then you, like her, are missing out on one of the greatest annual events humanity has ever orchestrated. I love dogs so damn much and if you do too, then grab a beer, or grab a bong, or just grab a bowl of popcorn, and sit back and enjoy the show. You missed a lot of good ones last night, but you can still catch part 2 of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show tonight, including the ultimate event, the Best in Show competition that will wrap up the evening. Of the four winners from last night's groups, three were particularly awesome: the Pyrenees, the Pekingese, and the Norfolk Terrier who goes by the name of Coco! Catch the rest of the excitement tonight, on the only place where you'll hear the word BITCH on television All! Night! Long! WOOOOOOO!

16 balls/16.5 fingers

2005-02-11T14:11:00.001-05:00

"only in America could you find a way to make a healthy buck
and still keep your attitude on self-destruct"
-MF Doom

I live in one of the most industrially advanced, educationally progressive, scientifically advanced nations in the world. We're so much further along than all those barbarians running around other parts of the world. We don't even believe in torture. Which is why we just outsource it to the barbarians instead. What a fucking sham. It amazes me how a Christian agenda won the election. Openly, the Republican party is declaring its desire to preserve Christian values. Christian values! Torture, discrimination, disrespect, racist policies abound! And don't get me started on the death penalty. If you want to think of yourselves as an enlightened nation, you can't sanction the killing of killers. It has absolutely no logic to it. And meanwhile, someone who wants to die can't even kill themselves or get help with euthanasia. Ugh. Anyway. I'm not even in the mood for politics right now.

Yesterday, if you read the entry below this one, you may have noticed I was really enjoying sitting at work. Well boy did things go downhill within an hour of that post. I have never been so fucking sick of work as I was yesterday. I went into a meeting with my boss, Dave, that snide little prick, and we were waiting to see if a phonecall would go through to this dude at MCI. Then, with absolutely no reason to say it, out of nowhere, he says:

"See Danny, business is everywhere in life, it's always going to be there and you're always going to have to be a part of it, no matter how much you want to run around doing artsy-fartsy stuff."

Well, you slimy little fucktard, way to be ridiculously rude. It's the equivalent of me walking into his office in the middle of the day and saying, "Art is the only true human purpose [and then taking a snivelly tone] no matter how much you may enjoy your business schmisness." Later on, during a pizza party meeting with a couple of our consultants, he was talking about a part of his knee that always hurts from running. He said, "I think it's the only design flaw the good Lord looked over." I said NOTHING, and he immediately followed it up with, "But I don't think Danny agrees with my terminology there." What the good god fuck, you white-picket-fence-SUV-driving-republican-voting-lying-to-your-customers motherfucker. I wanted to just quit and destroy everything I had been working on regarding this huge project we did for MCI. Of course, I didn't. I didn't even tell him I was offended by anything he said. Because it's not worth it. He'll always be an asshole.

After that rousing game of how-long-can-I-stand-this-fucking-place, I headed back uptown for some hummus and gin-and-tonics at Lucy and Ei's place, followed by pad thai from Thailand Cafe all leading up to some more gin-and-tonics during the O.C.. Jay sums up all my complaints in one tidy little paragraph. Lucy said it right when she noted that episodes of the O.C. tend to fall just short of excellent and leave you a bit disappointed. Granted I've only seen 4, but that's how I feel. Anyway.

I then delivered a pizza all the way to my sister's apartment at 5th between A and B, being the oh-so-wonderful brother that I am. In case you're wondering what could bring on such a case of do-gooderism, I had to give Nika much respect for helping to set up the big art project in Central Park that was designed by Christo. She's been up at 6 AM every day this week assembling the huge arches, draping the fabrics, getting rained on, and going to bed at 9:30 each night. So when she called me begging for pizza, I told her once the lesbians kissed I'd hop on over.

I then met up with Lucy once more to head over to Micky's Blue Room to meet up with DJ Del for our guest spot behind the CD decks. We got there a little early, just in time to catch some of the worst stand-up comedy I've ever been witness to in my life. I HATE stand-up comedy. What a waste of everybody's time. I could think of a much better way to get a laugh: Get some funny friends and have a fucking conversation. Do I sound angry today? ARGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

The night continued on with the hits being pumped out by the three of us. It was awesome. We had the back room all to ourselves while local folk mingled on the barside of the establishment. INXS, The Arcade Fire, The Walkmen, A Tribe Called Quest, what DIDN'T we play? It was truly sweet. The bartender even unlocked the pool table for us so we didn't have to pay to play.

Speaking of shooting pool, you may wonder why this entire post is titled 16 balls/16.5 fingers. Well, that's what was involved in the first three games I played. See, I shot three games of pool with a guy (I think his name was John) who had a left hand full-o-fingers, and a right hand comprised of a thumb and a semblance of a pinky. And he was damn good. I'm pretty good at pool myself, and though he won the third game on my scratch, he still managed to hand me a 2-1 defeat. It was a good time. Soon after that Daylen stopped by and we shot some more, even trying out a game of 9-ball which was my favorite back in high school. I gotta shoot more pool, period.

I went to sleep, and had some fucked up dreams that I can not remember, though I woke with the searing sensation that I had travelled enormous distances and performed astounding feats.

The World Beard Championships

the earth is not a cold dead place

2005-02-10T10:07:00.000-05:00

kibbles and bits

Usually if I used that for the title of a section of a post there would be newsbytes but this is to tell you to come to:

Micky's @ Ave. C between 10th and 11th @ 10 PM

to see DJ Del spin a set in a bar that has none other than beloved Magic Hat. Joining him on the decks tonight will be none other than Lucy and myself, and as the result of a half-drunken conversation at the Mercury Lounge, we'll be going by the name of DJ Kibbles & Bits. Apparently.

happy rooster

This is nice. I'm sitting at work, where the windows run from waist height to the high ceilings and look down over City Hall Park (once you get past the scaffolding that seems to have been here forever, that is). iPod hooked up to the computers speakers, Explosions from the Sky makes the grayness of this dreary cubicle quite fit with all the little raindrops flicking gently against the glass and makes me feel quite godlike as I watch the little beetles in their three-piece suits go scurryscurry all across the plaza, covering their heads with newspaper. I wonder if the papers will be legible when they get to their cubicles. Will they read them, and when they do, will they realize how sickeningly close we are to nuclear fucking holocaust? Will they realize the world went mad long ago, and continues to go madder with each passing day? That everything they do at work, pushing buttons, sending memos, chatter at the coffee machine, is putting all their energy in the wrong place? But then again, what am I doing? Writing this down here. Hm.

Where could all this be coming from? Only one place. My Contemporary British Culture class is in our early Cold-War Period, and I've just spent two days reading 1984 for only the second time. While I'm a big fan of Huxley's Brave New World, it's undeniable that 1984, as a dystopian novel, is much more functional in waking you up to the horrors-that-could-be. While Brave New World is more concerned with the emergence of rampant consumerism as the driving force of a sickly hierarchized society and the dilution of love as a a threat to the individual, the individual still exists in a sense. Orwell's vision is a world where individuality itself is a crime. Doing something for your own enjoyment, or being alone at all, is erratic. What's fantastic about Orwell is that he manages to drape you in this dreary fog and doesn't do it with characters, or plot, or even theme. It's the darkness of his language that puts you right in the midst of the gloom of 1984. I'm starting to understand that what I say is not as important as how I say it.

Anyhow, next to 1984, Brave New World is a shitshow blast. Have sex with whoever you want, recieve a daily ration of powerful hallucinogenic drugs, go see porn movies where scents that trigger sensation and color are pumped into the theater, and play games all the time. Wonderful.

humbug

Days like this make me work very little. I peruse music websites, blogs, discussions over at Kos, and manage to get very little done beyond ensuring the day has a great soundtrack. Not much to write in regards to yesterday - there was class, then a gin and tonic with Lucy and Matt, then Lucy and I headed to Sapporo East to celebrate the first day of the Year of the Rooster with some udon and the best fucking dragon roll in the city.

After that we made a last-minute decision to take in some rock and thanks to the generosity of the Beach were able to head on over to Mercury Lounge to catch Like Yesterday and a bit of Army of Me. We'd seen Like Yesterday once before, and they're fronted and drummed for by dudes from Actual Proof, who I always hear great things about. I vaguely remembered them being dark and good, Like Yesterday that is. Anyhow, both bands were swimming in a mire of mediocrity from which I doubted they would ever lift themselves. In a way, even though I liked Like Yesterday's tunes better, Army of Me was a little better in that they dealt out some standard Bends-ish rock without any pretention - something Like Yesterday is nearly oozing with. We returned to Lucy and Ei's apartment, where I couldn't help but think about the fact that if this was last Wednesday, I'd smoke a bowl before going to bed. Instead, I went home, cleaned my bathroom sink, and went to bed.

eat me drink me read me

- Awesome Radiohead interview from a Christian magazine called Third Way.

- A complete and utter lack of respect.

- Kudos to Larry for this fucking sweet-ass link. No pun intended.

i feel obnoxious when i say "poignant"

2005-02-05T18:44:00.000-05:00

love is k-mart

You know, I doubt St. Valentine ever saw that one coming. While people bitch and moan about the glass colossus being erected in Astor Place, K-Mart gets to equate itself with love. Pick your battles people - psychedelically twisty glass mirror, or ridiculous big K suckhole - who you gonna hate?

Hey, do you read David Byrne's journal? He has some nice things to say about the Arcade Fire, and knock-off designer bags. I've got nothing to tell you about Saturday except that I walked over 120 blocks in one day, smoked a lot of reefer, and got drunk and full of french fries thanks to Eileen being the best when I stopped by Dylan Prime to visit her. She hooked me up with a couple of awesome Sapphire tonics and then sent me on my way(sted).

the conspiracy widens

First the Red Sox. Ugh. Then Bush. BAH! Now the Patriots? What the fuck is going on here people? Everything about Superbowl Sunday RULED up until the last 2 minutes of the game. It started off at 9th St. Market, which is oh-so-conveniently right across the street from my apartment. I always see the owner (Todd, I think his name is) around and we're real friendly and he seems to like me very much. Like Jay says, "a strange relationship." He says my name a lot. Anyhow, Jay headed over around noon and after some final bingers (more on that later) we headed across the street, skipped the line and slipped in for brunch. Jay and Ei were both hurting from similar nights of booze-and-no-sleep but we all took down our food as best we could. After gorging myself on cream cheese, cucumbers and coffee we split up for the remainder of the afternoon. Puffed ourselves into oblivion till about six and then we headed over to Jay's. After an unsettling conversation with the deli-guy at the corner of Houston and A ("who is with who?! who is with who?!") we finally made it to 186 loaded up with PBR and Rice Krispie Treats.

Chips, dip, chili, lads and lasses all were present including Dan and Dana, Jay and Steve, and Matt "I Know Where the Best Egg-and-Cheese Can Be Found" Gallagher. The game was nerve-wracking through and through right up to the end when Jay declared "This is where Storybooks get written, kids." 24-21 with a couple minutes to go, but after a lame onside kick and a nail-in-the-coffin interception the Eagles were defeated. Lucy and I could only shake our heads and imagine Beach's pain. I bet Baltimore ran out of Petron that night. Well, the chili had been awesome and Mario Tennis was fun, and so I was still in high spirits. We headed back to Lucy's, where I was dreading the end of the night, because . . .

. . . i'm on sabbatical

Tumbleweed loves to smoke marijuana, don't get me wrong. When asked, a couple years ago, what his five favorite things in the world are, he answered: Sight, Sound, Drugs, Love, and Uncertainty. In no particular order. And the longest break I've ever taken since the habit kicked into regular gear during the summer before college, has been about 12 days long. That break's been taken on maybe three different occasions, two times cause of vacation in a potless country and once because of dire financial straits. So why now? Well, as my final semester of college winds down I am beginning to realize how much I need to make the moolah. And not just job-wise...that's a whole other story. I'm talking about write-something-and-sell-it money. Because that's how I intend to spend my life, is writing - stories, screenplays, novels, articles, whatever I can work my brain around. It used to be I could get stoned and the words would floooooow like guacamole at a Mexican wedding. I'd take some bingers, sit on my bed with my typewriter in my lap, and churn out 20 pages of prose or poetry, and six or seven of those pages would be top-notch, which is a wonderful ratio. It was almost effortless (this of course lending itself to my unwillingness to edit, which I need to work on). Well things have changed lately. I got nothing. Nothing at all. Put the pen to paper, and the well is dry.

I took Robert McKee's Story Seminar in October, and it was a great experience. It's the basis for the screenplay seminar in Adaptation. At one point McKee said of writer's block, "You do NOT have fucking writer's block. Nothing is stopping you from reaching your muse, or any horseshit like that. You can't write because you have NOTHING TO WRITE ABOUT! You need to stop trying to write, go read a book or see a film or just experience life, and then draw on those experiences to write." Great advice for lazy writers like myself. But the trouble is, I don't have much experience to draw on even if I am reading and watching and living, because lately I can't even separate the days without consulting the Mercury Lounge calendar and orienting myself show-wise. I am wandering through New York City in a complete haze and, frankly, I would be absolutely fine with that if it wasn't for the fact that I realize I need to develop a regular writing habit and start making my calling my job.

So when I smoked a bowl on Sunday night a little before midnight that was it for me for a while. I've set some ground rules for myself but I'm also allowing for flexibility. This may sound fishy, but I think I have a better chance of sticking to a no-smoke policy if I acknowledge that I could slip and do it sometime. So my loose ground rules are 1) No smoking the pots at all until March 1st - and only ON March 1st for the Interpol show. 2) After that, still no buying any pot until April 1st, but perhaps a toke each week, and each a week apart. 3) Spend 3-4 hours of alone-time set aside for writing at bars around the neighborhood and at Dylan Prime. 4) See how I feel after all that. BUT, also, since tumblehawk is tumblehawk, he has to make one final exception for himself, realistically: if someone tells me they have access to one of my two favorite psychedelic substances, I will throw aside everything I just wrote in this paragraph. Cause they just don't come around often enough anymore. Anybody listening? Grin. All right, enough about that now.

fast, cheap and out of control

No, no, no, I'm not talking about San Loco. I'm talking about Errol Morris' 1999 documentary of the same name. Before we get to that though, I spent most of Monday either in class or at the English department dropping my freaky Folktales seminar. I ran into Matt in front of the Stern building, and he was headed to a deli where he claimed there resided a man, nay a god, who would prepare the greatest egg-and-cheese in the area. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here to tell you he was right. The red-awning deli on Broadway between 10th and 11th has the best 2-egg-and-cheese I've ever had. Tasty fucking egg. We headed to Washington Square to chow on them, caught up a little, and then headed over to Shisha, the best head-shop in the city that I've come across. Matt picked up some tobacco, I drooled over bongs I couldn't use for 2 months even if I could afford them, and then we went our separate ways for the rest of the college day. The evening was spent resisting temptation while Lucy and Eileen smoked ridiculously good-smelling pot that Lucy had picked up back home and rocking out to the Magnetic Fields. 69 Love Songs is my new obsession.

Oh yeah! Rewind, and back to Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. Have you seen this fucking movie? You should! What a wonderful experiment. It was the exact kinda thing I would have liked to watch stoned, and it didn't matter one bit that I wasn't because it was really an amazing experience just seeing it at all. We missed the first 10 minutes or so but within another 10 I got really into it. The documentary is about 4 people in completely different walks of life, all eccentrics in their own ways: a circus lion-tamer, a ancient gardener/caretaker of the world's largest animal garden, a mad scientist attempting to create independently intelligent robots, and a weird dude in a bow-tie obsessed with naked mole-rats. By weaving together interviews with the four men (all of whom are dealing with "animals" in some strange way) along with a score that shifts between light-hearted and haunting, film clips from bad b-movies, and images that seem to be completely independent of the narration associated with them, Morris makes an intense cinematic statement about the interrelatedness of all aspects of life, especially by throwing out any notion of linearity in telling these men's stories. What could these four people possibly have to do with each other? By the end of the film, the question is more what don't they have to do with each other? First I have my Varsity Blues virginity stripped from me, and now this. I'm on a damn roll.

a kibble & a bit

-David Blaine's weird. And this clip is even weirder.

-Fred Durst is one of those people I love to hate. He writes the stupidest things. But why, Wes Borland?! WHY?!

new york cares

2005-02-04T15:26:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to let you guys know, since it has slipped under the radar of most news coverage today, that the New York County (Manhattan) Supreme Court has delivered a most excellent judgment today, essentially stating that no matter how other parts of the country feel, that the history of NY State and its treatment towards gays and lesbians cannot allow it, with good conscience, to continue denying them marriage licenses. We always go first.

Read the decicion here.

adderall xr 20mg

2005-02-04T13:42:00.000-05:00

i likes it automatic

RANA's three week residency came to a climactic close last night. The sick jams and a packed crowd immediately made for an awesome atmosphere as Lucy, Ani and I cruised in post-OC. We arrived just as DJ Logic was finishing up his opening slot with Scott accompanying on guitar and picked up a couple of tanqueraytonics while waiting for the show to start. Not seeing anybody we knew, we formed a defensive huddle in the middle of the floor until RANA finally stormed the stage and dove right into the swing of things. Soon after the set began I looked over and got mighty psyched to see Jay leaning against the near wall. Many times has the man tenderly asked for hugs in his blog and I'd like to testify on his behalf that hardly anybody gives as good a one as he does. Ani and I debated whether to puff or not and a friendly local weatherman settled the argument by leaning over to ask if I had any grass. We rocked the downstairs with Noah, Jay and Sean Bones (along with DJ Logic and Official Floozy) and surfaced to a changed world.

The past two Fridays I've lamented the fact that I know no song names for RANA, but really, who gives a fuck. They've got such a consistent sound and yet each song manages to have its own personality and I know what the song is as soon as it starts by nothing more than feeling. Highlights were the We Will Not Be Lovers cover, the awesome new jam featuring the Beach cameo and Matt giving me many chills while singing about being older as well as the entire opening out-of-control jam session that kicked off the second set. I don't know about anybody else but I personally couldn't figure out just what DJ Logic was putting into it though. Something about this show on a whole was the perfect close to a three-Thursday run. The packed crowd gave it an extra intensity and was it just me or was all the keyboarding particularly awesome throughout the whole night? Once second set wrapped up a couple of hip-hoppers took the stage and Ani and I were just not feeling it. Luckily Lucy leaned over just then to let me know that it was Corner Bistro time.

None of the three of us had ever been there and Beach took it upon himself to initiate our deflowering. We hopped in a cab and headed through the West Village maze, and I was confounded until Johnny started oohing and ahhing at the bright neon Bistro lights. Holy fucking shit what a burger. While Beach continuously declared his wastedness we waited for our food: three bacon cheeseburgers, three cheeseburgers, one grilled cheese, five orders of fries, and three beers later we were all stuffed, and Beach was still wasted and let the record show that he damned the name of tequila on more than one occasion. We headed back East and decided it was probably time to call it a night. So we did.

the world is full of crashing bores

-We can think of the U.S. as a stubborn, puerile teenager at this point in its existence...the kind of kid that never learned to share in Kindergarten.

-And that appoints Attorney Generals in favor of torture. Here's an NYTimes OpEd from the Editorial staff explaining why this is so stupid.

-This cracks me up. Dokken. hahahahaha!

-Echo and the Bunnymen putting out a new album? thighswideshut.org points out they'd probably fit in pretty well with this year's Coachella.

-Free movies or something. Unfortunately, it's chick flick month.

-Joe Perry seems like a douchebag. I'm just saying is all.

-Lucky for us, there are better Perries in this world.

dirty rock and republican suck

2005-02-03T10:46:00.000-05:00

politics is sexy . . .

Were you on the couch as bored as I was last night, wishing that your drink was twice as strong as Bush went on and on and on in his eerie 1984-esque style of political speechmaking? Didn't it all sound so great, so ideal. KUDOS to the Democrats for booing his proposals for social security. How often do we hear boos during a State of the Union Address? Really, that was an amazing moment. Gave me chills.

As much as I deplore the situation in Iraq and everything that got us in there, there is no denying the sentimental power of this image (minus Laura "FreakFace" Bush):

For those of you who weren't watching and are wondering who the huggers pictured above are, it was a strange moment in the speech when the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, a marine to be specific, hugged with an Iraqi woman who had been fighting the good fight against Saddam Hussein for about 20 years and whose father had been killed by Hussein's assassination squads. Propaganda during State of the Union? Yes. But truly epic? Yes, we have to admit.

Meanwhile, in my last bit of political commentary, I'd like to point you: here. Alberto Gonzales, once the legal counsel for Enron during their shadiest days, and also the judge that told the Bush administration it's ok to torture terrorist detainees because they don't have basic human rights. He is about to be your new Attorney General. This is probably unstoppable. But symbolically, all Democrats should be voting "no" in the Senate when this topic comes up. Yet Sen. Salazar is voting "yes" and the link earlier in this paragraph leads to a fascinating read comparing Salazar's ridiculously naive opinions ont he subject with Sen. Durbin's much more realistic and frank view of the facts. Read the post, sign a petition, do something.

. . . but RANA's fuckin' hot!

I feel like The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is coming out tonight....like after this, there's nothing left to live for...like all this time and emotion I've given over is going to come collapsing crashing down on top of me. But then again, I'm sure RANA will play again soon...but still, tonight's show has got me revved the fuck up. This is also partly due to my fervent anticipation of televised lesbian delight. Say that three times fast - or just say cunnilingus and be done with it.

Post All-Girl-Tonsil-Hockey you best all be sure to cruise on down to Tribeca Rock Club for not just RANA's unique brand of rock but also DJ Logic, and perhaps even get to see the birth of a lovechild between the two. If you missed out on the first two weeks, don't fall even further behind. You know you want it.

quickies

-If you haven't gotten excited about the new Nine Inch Nails album yet, but you love Dave Grohl, check out how psyched he sounds about it.

-Larry offers you the most disturbing link of a lifetime.

-Beloved Petra is out of the hospital! Amen.

-ProductshopNYC pointed me to this HILARIOUS Op-Ed. (All those of you too lazy to register for access to the NYTimes website, get on top of that already, it's free and you get to read the whole fucking newspaper AND magazine for FREE.)

Remember. RANA.

pitcher punditry

2005-02-02T19:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday could not have gone better, starting off in the most mundane fashion and ending in a burst of out-of-the-ordinary outrageousness. I sat at work doing a great load of nothing and pretending to a lot from 9 to 3:30, enough to fry any thinking man's brain. The highlight of the workday goes to Warren, our 70-something year old editor and consultant, who had given me a copy of Beck's Odelay a month ago which he found on the street, and a copy of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters a little while later since it was a little too funky for his tastes. Well yesterday morning I came in with a CD titled Thelonius Monk: With John Coltrane which I thought he would appreciate even more than I do (and besides, iPod and all that). A couple of hours after I gave it to him, Warren, a straight arrow straight out a time machine coming from the 1940's, comes up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder saying "Man, that CD's great. Makes me want to smoke a big fat joint! Hahahahaha!" That made my day. I knocked off early after skipping the option of a lunch hour and headed uptown.

fire on the green

I recall a Simpsons episode where Troy McClure says of Patty/Selma's lizard Jub-Jub, "He's everywhere you wanna be." That's how I feel about the Arcade Fire. After reading Good Times Roll earlier and learning that, a few hours after I write this, David Byrne will be performing with the Arcade Fire at Irving Plaza, I want to cry. BUT! Last night's show was goddamned great and absolutely makes up for what I may be missing today. It's 7 PM and I feel too hungover to go into any detail, and plus, if you click on the link from a few sentences ago you'll find that Jay has reviewed their show spectacularly. I was really glad to see them start off the show with Wake Up (the jam!) just like they did at their CMJ Mercury Lounge show, which was probably the best show I saw last year, Coachella aside.

After the show we hung outside with Uncle Mike and friends for a few moments and then headed over to Grassroots, the site of Kyle's Culkin mishap. The bar was feeling very low-key at this point in time though, and we were four of only a few people there at all. Double Beach Power, Daylen, and myself grabbed a table and Beach picked up a pitcher of Brooklyn Lager, and we began to play Pitcher Pundits on the topic of Coachella, Bonnaroo, and music festivals in general. After a while Daylen decided to retire for the night, but we made up for the missing person with another pitcher and a bowl of popcorn, and conversation shifted from music to sports, with Beach getting all Dashboard (copyright JGoodTimes 2005) about the Eagles and the Superbowl. After an hour of beer, popcorn, and the jukebox cheating us out of many of Johnny's selections, we called it a night. Lucy and I went back to her apartment, took an unnecessary lungful of smoke and then passed out until today, when our President is set to give an empty, pointless speech in a couple of hours. Enjoy.

war, what is it good for?

2005-02-01T13:34:00.000-05:00

Absolutely nothing.

everyone deserves to DIE!

2005-02-01T10:33:00.000-05:00

with dignity, that is. Isn't this case related to this case, to an extreme degree? It seems to me this country's views on suicide and the death penalty are both highly convoluted. Michael Ross, the serial killer in one of the aforementioned articles, is an interesting case because here we have a man who (at least for a long time) has insisted he wants to die, to put the minds of his victim's families to rest. Now (in a move brought on by a desire to protect his lawyer's bar license) he is having his mental "competency level" reviewed to see if he can really make that judgment about himself, that he wants to die. I've heard this man speak, and I don't think we can doubt his competency even if he did strangle and rape a number of women years ago. There's a fine line between incompetency and insanity.

With the Golden Gate Bridge story - come on. Look at the first line of that article: "San Francisco officials are again grappling with an issue as old as the Golden Gate Bridge: how to stop people from killing themselves by jumping off the city's most famous landmark." They're intiating a study into erecting an "anti-suicide barrier." What the good god fuck? This has nothi9ng to do with preventing people from killing themselves, it has everything to do with not assocating sad/bad things with a national landmark. If someone wants to kill themselves, they're going to do it. The problems are at the bottom, not at the end of the road when the person is standing over a body of water waiting to plunge themselves into oblivion. This is the type of senseless reaction I will never understand - building a physical wall to stop people from committing suicide. Argh. It seems that the interest is more about protecting onlookers from emotional scarring than it is about the people who want to kill themselves.

the luckiest guy on the lower east side

Well I booked my flight to Coachella along with Lucy last night, so once Saturday rolls around it's all set. In fact, (almost) every day of this coming week has some sort of landmark event tied into it:

Tuesday: The Arcade Fire @ Webster Hall (after the show catch them on Conan)(thanks Jay)
Wednesday: get excited for . . .
Thursday: RANA @ Tribeca Rock Club Pt. 3
Friday: Rogue Wave, Dirty on Purpose, Sam Champion @ Mercury Lounge
Saturday: Coachella Tickets Onsale
Sunday: (9th St. Market) Eagles Win the Superbowl (Boca Chica)

Lookin' good, lookin' good. Meanwhile:

-Dr. Alexander Shulgin synthesized MDMA and gave birth to the drug known as ecstasy, and has spent a great majority of his life researching thousands and thousands of psychedelic substances in a cobweb-ridden shack behind his house.

-ProductshopNYC has this link to a really interesting article on Beck's Scientology streak. But hey, I guess if I think people should be allowed to commit suicide if they want, that everybody's free to join whatever shady cult they want.

-Terrell Owens prepares to show that the age of dissent is alive and well when the Eagles crush the Patriots this weekend.

-Cheech's better half hasn't smoked pot in two years.

-De Rosa, my erstwhile roommate from the Carlyle days, reports to me that he hears rumors left and right that people along the lines of Isaac Mizrahi are attempting to buy the L.E.S. wholesale, incluing Mercury Lounge and Luna Lounge. The first half of that sounds believable, but the second half sounds like bullshit, but I'd love to know if anyone else has heard anything of the sort...(and the only thing that prompted me to put this up here is the fact that Jay's reporting Tonic bowing out of the biz.)

stop breathing.

2005-01-31T13:01:00.000-05:00

As people across the world muse over the Coachella flyer over and over again, it's time to step back and really assess some 5 Good Reasons Why You Need to Go to Coachella This Year. Ignore all the hubbub about this year's lineup not being able to match up to last year's; if you went around thinking about things in those terms, you'd drive yourself crazy. It's not even a matter of "topping" things anyway - a festival should stay true to the roots it was built on and not just set its sights on grabbing the biggest names to top itself, and this year Coachella definitely seems to do that with a random hodgepodge..

(Uno). Breakfast Buffet>Joshua Tree

2. Jay Belin gets Culkined just as the words "say it ain't so" belt out across the desert.

three. spoon/MF Doom/Radio 4/Four Tet/Secret Machines/Mercury Rev/Bloc Party/Raveonettes/Sage Francis/Wilco/Weezer/Coldplay!

IV. Shout Out Louds/Futureheads/Fiery Furnaces/British Sea Power/The Arcade FireThe Faint/Black Star/Bright Eyes/Prodigy/New Order/Nine Inch Nails!

five.

2005-01-31T08:41:00.000-05:00

Coachella lineup officially announced!

Notably missing: Franz Ferdinand (Day 1 could use 'em).

Notably making me giddy: Day 2's orgiastic British Sea Power/Arcade Fire/Fiery Furnaces/Nine Inch Nails/Bright Eyes/The Faint/Shout Out Louds Combination.

sunnyside up, c'mon!

2005-01-29T13:08:00.000-05:00

a thunderous thursday

There are a few bands that I can think of who I would love to see anytime at all. If they threw a weekly party I doubt I'd ever get sick of them. !!!'s a prime contender. RANA's a no-brainer. Thursday night they offered up another rocking set and I was glad to have Ani on hand to expose her to the RANA goodness. As I've said before, I don't know the names of more than a few RANA songs but the absolute turning point of the show was when, before a song, Matt announced that the about-to-be-played jam was dedicated to someone named Allie and her travels. At some point the song unmistakably shifted into a jam that everyone knew would be absolutely sick. Ramie walked by and said something to the tune of here it goes, here it comes, now it starts, either way all I knew was he was excited and I was excited and Ani gave me the "yes, I too am finally excited" nod. Hook, line, and sinker. Couple of highlights were the Buzzcocks cover and the fact that this show started where the last one ended - with the new song Charm Bracelet, probably one of my favorite RANA songs.

After the show Lucy, Ani, Johnny, Action and myself reconnoitered outside and attempted to squeeze five people into a cab. We filed into our first try , at which point the cabbie started the meter, and then turned around and very slowly counted the number of people in the backseat. That jive-talkin' bastard wouldn't have any of it, and proceeded to eject us from his damn cab. Luckily our next dude was ultra-friendly and ultra-willing to break this silly little law. In celebration, we cruised over to Around the Clock for a 2 AM pigout. This, friends, was ridiculous. Starting off with a huge plate of loaded nachos and hummus with whole wheat pitas for the whole table, I followed things up by ordering a Belgian Waffle, 2 Sunnyside Up Eggs, and a side of Crispy Bacon. All that plus one of Ani's mozzarella sticks and I was stuffed till Friday afternoon. Action skipped off like a little girl to catch a cab and we parted with Beach a few blocks later. One bowl later I was out like a light and calling in sick to work the next day. Sweet.

aw geez, ya

Friday I met up with Lucy and Ani, who had slept over down the block at Lucy and Eileen's. We got some Dunkin' Donuts, smoked, watched the new Beck video (thank you Jay, Hell Yes! I say) and hung out till Ani caught a train home, at which point Lucy and I decided it was time for some fresh air. We walked all the way to Dylan Prime also known as my favorite steakhouse ever, where Eileen was working the dining room on one of her first shifts ever as a server. She hooked us up with some rockin' gin and tonics and a couple of rolls that reminded me that everything, EVERYTHING at Dylan Prime is top-notch, right down to the fucking bread. At that point we cruised back up town to rent Fargo and grab some pad thai.

Fargo, for those of you who don't know, is one of the Coen Bros' best outputs of their pretty prolific career. It's a beautifully told story that's about nothing short of human nature. Steve Buscemi pulls out all the stops as usual in a role perfectly suited to him, while William H. Macy works his nervous nerve up to a peak performance. And yet the actor doing the most striking job the entire way through the film is, in my opinion, Frances McDormand, someone I wish I saw more on the big screen. To the untrained eye her role in the film might seem a little tame, and almost easy, but she's a master of what she doesn't say. Her body language just astounds me, and the simple wisdom of her character, a pregnant cop in the frosty northern midwest, makes you really appreciate what the Heartland of America is supposed to be about. I think it's time to continue this Coen Bros. kick and rent Barton Fink.

Now, homework, The Sun Also Rises, and Brideshead Revisited. So long.

lightning struck itself

2005-01-27T10:50:00.000-05:00

telefission

Last night after returning from a rousing round of sushi, Sapporo and udon at Sapporo East with Lucy's old roommate Hyunju (how we missed her!) we slid back over to Lucy's apartment where we opened up a couple more Sapporos and proceeded to watch TV. First up was Katie Couric's special on sexuality and teens and parents, which was pretty entertaining and cheesy as hell. Then, after a little Real World action and some stupid-ass shit called My Super Sweet Sixteen that made me want to detonate Middle America, it was finally time for Conan O'Brien, who was running a repeat that included P. Diddy, Dave Navarro, and Interpol. We didn't manage to stay up past the P. Diddy segment, but what's really important is that we were reminded of a single freaky fact - La Bamba of the Max Weinberg Seven bears an uncanny resemblance to my very own father. Observe:

What can this mean? Well, obviously, Conan O'Brien is my uncle and I am officially way cooler than any of you due to that one illustrious fact. I wonder if I could alert Conan to this situation and somehow get on the show in a skit about my long lost Papa La Bamba. That would be the bee's knees.

scatter and shatter

- It's good to see that somebody cares.

-Hustle and bustle kills people.

-My good friend Ben who writes as much and as well as I wish I could has resumed updating his blog with my favorite things he writes, the ongoing series of Complet Thoughts.

-Ambitious-Outsiders claim to have the inside track on multiple Coachella confirmations, and is keeping track of many others announced elsewhere, including: Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Rilo Kiley, Bloc Party, the Bravery, the Fiery Furnaces, the French Kicks, BRITISH SEA POWER, the Futureheads and Ambulance, LTD. I'm amazed at the possibility that I might be able to see NIN at Coachella. That is so awesomely random.

-Don't forget to follow the hopskotch trail Jay is drawing all over the city sidewalks today, all roads of course leading to:

There, Larry, I hope that whets your appetite for the full-size flyer.

And I hope to see as many of you as possible at RANA tonight. I'll be headed over there just in time for their set with Lucy, Ani, and Ani's hippie chickadee friend Julia after sinking to the depths and watching the OC yet again.

quick notes.

2005-01-25T13:37:00.000-05:00

-Don't plan on riding the C train anytime in the near future.

-Eileen would like to announce that she engaged in a most successful booty call last night, with everyone's favorite Colombian Moe stopping by and managing to sit through a billion games of Mario Tennis without going crazy.

-Ani is taking "Circus Skills" to fulfill her gym requirement, which means she is officially enrolled in Clown College.

-Everybody should be planning on catching RANA this Thursday evening after slamming some free drinks with J Good Times.

I Pray, Ole

2005-01-25T10:05:00.000-05:00

pobody's nerfect

I don't know quite why this on my mind today, since I don't have the album myself and haven't copied it from Lucy yet, but if you haven't heard the Hockey Night album Rad Zapping yet, you're missing out bigtime. Last year we were all treated to the Unicorns' awesome Who Will Cut Our Hair When We Die? which was easily the most random CD I'd come across in a long time. Hockey Night takes the word random and makes a religion out of it. If this line from Pitchfork's too-poorly-scored review doesn't get you excited...well, I know Jay will appreciate it: "For you see, Hockey Night, the conceptual outfit of one Paul Sprangers, skips from genre to genre like little kids playing hopscotch." One minute guitars are thrashing, the next we've got Canadian whiteboy rap about Space Cakes and mushrooms, next thing you know you're lost in a trippy ambient instrumental, or listening to what sounds like black girls in a schoolyard singing jump-rope songs. And if you're willing to shell out the big bucks for the actual CD instead of sniffing out a friend's copy, the album art will NOT disappoint. Also, I'm pretty sure the words "Desert Culkin" show up on one of the tracks.

diamond dawgs

Last night after returning home, a pathetic scene ensued involving me, resin, and a lot of keyboard playing. I've been having a lot of fun spending any free few minutes I have trying to compose some random electronic little ditties, and last night I got too spaced out for my own good and ended up nearly giving myself a headache. So I leaned back in my seat and decided to tell iTunes to put my entire Bowie library on shuffle and see where I ended up. After skipping some Station to Station in hopes of something more upbeat, I found myself leaning forward inbetween my left and right speakers and closing my eyes while the song Rock and Roll With Me off of Diamond Dogs rocked my world. The last time I can even remember listening to that song so closely was a year and a half ago when Lucy and I came back from a steak dinner in Vancouver to our hotel room's balcony where we split a pair of headphones and a fat fat doobie. Time is a weird, weird thing.

Anyway, I got to thinking about it, and many people seem to think that Diamond Dogs is a blip in Bowie's career, an unfortunate failure nipping at the heels of such predecessors as Aladdin Sane and, of course, Ziggy. Essentially Bowie's version of 1984 (since the Orwell estate refused to give him the rights to adapt the novel into an album - yes, he really asked to), Diamond Dogs sees Bowie flexing his concept album muscle to the max, giving us a jazzy horn-filled barren landscape of the future. Bowie places himself in the roll of Halloween Jack (a real cool cat), who's up against the big bad businessmen, the Diamond Dogs. Bowie's downfall at times in his career is forgetting his innate ability to entertain and trying too hard. Well, he definitely tries very very hard on Diamond Dogs but in overshooting the mark, he manages to hit it spot-on, if that makes any sense whatsoever. So if you haven't listened to the double D for a while, I suggest you break it out and give it a spin.

empty stomach, PRB, drunken blog

2005-01-24T18:38:00.000-05:00

I was going to change the "PRB" in the subject to its proper form as PBR, but it only goes to further illustrate that when all you've had all day from 8:30 to 6:45 is coffee, OJ, and a raspberry muffin, one Pabst down the hatch will do you dizzy. Cheers.

"blizzard" bitches

Perhaps you heard about this fabled "blizzard" over the weekend. Yes, you probably watched the snowflakes fall and fall as Saturday progressed, steadily downward and downward, piling up, giving us all high hopes for no school, no work, no cars, civilization on shutdown. Well, folks, following Sunday's most anticlimactic close to this "blizzard" (bah!), I now wish to rundown my top 3 Blizzard Bitches:

Blizzard Bitch #1: weather.com, for being way off the mark, as fucking usual.
Blizzard Bitch #2: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for this:

"This really is a dangerous storm that is coming in," Bloomberg told reporters before the snow began falling at noon. "One of the forecasters compared it to the blizzard of '96, and it can be life threatening." In 1996, New York City received 20 inches of snow as records were shattered across the Northeast.

You asshole! Way to get me psyched for a paltry dusting of fluffy goodness.

Blizzard Bitch #3: Last but not least we have Matt Drudge of the infamous Drudge Report who, in usual tabloidesque fashion, had headlines liked "NYC: BIG CITY BURIED" and lied to millions of visitors to his webpage while I sat here looking out of Lucy's window thinking...no. Not buried. Not buried at all.

Anyway, though I was disappointed with the amount of snowfall, we made quite a weekend out of it. Saturday kicked off with many rousing bouts of Mario Power Tennis for GameCube, easily one of the best games I've ever spent time playing, ever. Jay didn't make it but we kicked his ass in spirit. While the snow continued to fall, Beach called Lucy out on one of the X-Mas gifts she'd given him: a promise to clean his entire apartment. So Lucy left, and at the same time Eileen came home, a pleasant surprise - she'd been let out of work at Dylan Prime early. Bringing 3 bottles of wine and a strong desire to see a good movie with her, she set the night up for its slambang finish. When Lucy returned the three of us played more Mario Tennis, then made our way over to Sapporo East where much Sapporo was drunk along with 2 steaming bowls of udon (Yasai and Niku, for those curious). Eileen and I also split a Dragon Roll (eel, cucumber, avocado draped on top) that easily, EASILY takes the cake as Single Freshest Sushi Roll I've Ever Eaten Ever Ever.

Fresh and full off our meal we sat down to a puff and some delicious chianti, popped Magnolia into the DVD player and sat down for an emotional thrill ride that led to tears slipping down my cheeks as Philip Seymour Hoffman made the bed of Earl Partridge, who'd just died. Philip Seymour Hoffman is every director's fantasy. Magnolia is Virginia Woolf's wet dream.

Once Sunday rolled around I was thoroughly annoyed that the snow had stopped falling. While weathermen had predicted continued snowfall through Sunday afternoon by the time I was up a little past noon the skies were silent and things had tapered off. Luckily, the Battle of the Birds turned out just the way that we'd hoped and the Eagles were headed to the Superbowl - unfortunately, no Pennsylvanian Subway Series could be hoped for as the Steelers sunk beneath the ridiculous passes of Tom Brady and the New England patriots. Damnit. New England's not even a state!

Once the games were over a famished trio of Lucy Eileen and Tumblehawk trudged their way through the shapeshifting slush to Boca Chica only to find it CLOSED! Motherfucker! Back it was all the way to 8th to trusty Yaffa Cafe, and the night found itself ending.

salut, sea ray, so long

On Friday, before any of this happened, we got to see a good, good show. Kicking off with Say Hi To Your Mom (Eric is our new friend), the Mercury Lounge was building up in energy as everyone anticipated the reason for the night at all - Sea Ray's last show. I'd only seen the band once before but I was definitely sad to see them go, ESPECIALLY following Friday night's performance. Following right after Mobius' Band performance (which I thought was solid, especially the vocals, something I've thought they needed to strengthen for a while), Sea Ray pretty much melted the crowd. The touching, moving nature of the show was simply palpable and there was nothing left to do but drink the night away. We shot the shit with Say Hi To My Eric for a while at the merch table, and looked pretty ready to go when Daylen was heading home, since Lucy and I live within a block of her. But then there was beer. And beer...beer is good! So we drank it, and went home, and then everything you read about above this happened. Pretty trippy, huh? Nah, not really.

oh, and

2005-01-21T10:47:00.000-05:00

holy gin and tonic I can't believe I forgot to mention this. This one's for you Jay. So last night before the three of us went to see RANA, Eileen convinced Lucy and me to sit down and have our first O.C. experience with her. And I never thought I'd say it, but hell, I'd watch that show again. It's no Beverly Hills 90210, no way no how, but it was still a pretty entertaining watch. And I think we may have joined the bandwagon just in time for the lesbian storyline, rock! RANA's three-thursdays-in-a-row residency may now officially turn into three weeks of gin+tonic+OC followed by RANA. sweet.

but first, we walk around the world

2005-01-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

the rana

RANA is so fucking good. Last night they played a lengthy and rocking psychedelic set at the Tribeca Rock Club that slammed my brain like time travel. See, I had returned to the scene of the crime, my first ever RANA show. Back then, March 22nd or so I want to say it was, Lucy and I had just returned from our previous stint in the Dominican Republic (way to sound spoiled, tumblefuck), smokeless for 12 days, and wound up rather out of mind standing against the wall of the soundman's booth chasing beer with beer and falling head over heels with every song RANA played. I was officially hooked. The guys were on last night, playing some new tunes that sounded great and all the old favorites, and had some cool as hell segues going on between songs. It was a really jammy set which I was really appreciating and there were moments so purely psychedelic that I couldn't help but grinning uncontrollably. After disappearing downstairs with Action (the only familiar face in the crowd, you punks) and resurfacing to a changed world, there was a moment in one song (I know the names of maybe 4 RANA songs, names shmames) where Matt rose up over his keyboards, grabbed the mic in one hand and sang something to the effect of "Get on up here!" as his other hand shot out and pointed to the crowd. I felt like some great and mighty rock god had singled me out of the crowd and it was in that moment I felt lifted off my feet, and had to fight the urge to just run up on stage and do the tumblebang between Ryan and Joe Russo's twin drumming. But I think RANA only allows dancers in red speedos since the Perry Incident, and I wasn't properly equipped, so I passed. I'll be back next Thursday. And next Thursday. RANA is an awesome band.

the pizza

After the show Lucy, Eileen and I trudged back through the cold to their abode, stopping by at the East Village Pizza and Kebab (which I live directly above) to grab a couple of slices. Lucy went to the deli across the street while Ei and I went into the Kebab, where I've been friendly with all the workers since I first moved in to my apartment. Lately I've noticed on late walks home they don't really wave anymore. And one of them seems genuinely pissed for no reason. And last night - where was the love?! The guy behind the counter gave Eileen a real dirty look after she said he didn't have to heat up her pizza. Less work = dirty look?! And then he gave me an attitude when I said I wanted mine heated up. Everything's falling apart in my world! Not really, I just scored Interpol tickets for Radio City, yet another show for the ninth street team to rock.

the flotsam

-Larry over at the Travails of the Astounding has put together a top-notch collection of photos and articles to create the uber-anti-Bush-inauguration post. The best part is the little factoid about FDR. George W. Bush is such an asshole.

-These people get to fucking vote.

-Sometimes I really wonder why, when everything points without question to one person, they still plead not guilty.

-NME visited this blog and that's how they found out that Coachella is indeed April 30th and May 1st. Seriously. But anyway, in that article those ostentatious Brits give some credence to the notion that both Coldplay and Franz Ferdinand will be playing the festival, and also mention that The Killers will be there for the second year straight to make up for what they felt was a shitty show they put on. Boy are they right. I can't take anyone seriously if they're a singing a song that actually has the phrase "indie rock and roll" belted out ballad style. Also, something about the album title "Hot Fuss" just pisses me off.

-Queens of the Stone Age, Webster Hall, March 24th. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

the jetsam

Quick random ramble, go: So of course the first day I can buy the new Nine Inch Nails album, With Teeth, I'm going to, but I can't help but wonder if this'll just be the last straw. I used to love NIN to a sick degree. Imagine little tumbleweed, without a tumbleweed to speak of, banging his crewcut away at one of hisefirst big big shows, NIN at Madison Square Garden for the Fragile tour, crying his first concert tears during the final song, Hurt. It was a great show and when I heard Reznor recently say he was a little disappointed by the tour and wanted to put on a better show next time, it got me real revved up to see them the next time around. So I've been trying to listen to them more lately, and I feel like whereas I once loved the lyrics and enjoyed the music, I now think the music is fucking excellently crafted and the lyrics are like.....my 10th grade poetry or something. And add to this that Reznor recently commented that With Teeth will be a "more lyric-based album." Uh-oh. Well, no one's in the office right now. Time to blast Closer.

!a moment for Coachella!

2005-01-20T13:45:00.000-05:00

All right. First of all there's this:

Second of all, British Sea Power's Pollstar listing of tourdates includes a show in California on April 29th, and a show in California on May 1st. In other words, we should all prepare to rock to those seafaring Brits on April 30th under the California desert sun or stars. AND, if you scroll down those pollstar listings you'll see this:

British Sea Power, Bowery Ballroom, May 13th, 2005. Grin.

everybody's making love or else expecting snow

2005-01-20T11:06:00.000-05:00

What a dark and dismal day to be American. Join in on Jay's call to arms and be sure to say Fuck Bush to yourself out loud today. It's the kind of weighted sentence that, if you say it outside, will probably turn the fog leaving your mouth into the words themselves. Maybe. Not making any promises, though.

What is the point of this website?

So,

the greatest accomplishment of my life up to this moment, rocking Super Smash Bros. on acid aside, would have to be the awesomeness of the iPod (name: Jasper Jenkins) playlist entitled .walking. It's called .walking cause that keeps it right at the top of the list and it's chock full of 202 songs that always keep the feets a-moving, and is always growing, and when I get to the pearly gates I'll plead my case to God that yeah, I've been mean to strangers on the street. Yeah, I completely ignored that freshman yesterday who was asking me for help getting somewhere in Main building. Yeah, I've toked and drank, but hey - everytime I walk out my door, the walking playlist just telepathically links up to my state of mind, my destination, and the journey between, to offer me the best random smattering of music I could ask for. Even on a 10 minute trip to get laundry, it led me out the door with Primitive Radio Gods' Standing By a Broken Telephone Booth... all the way to Sew Good Cleaners, and led me back with Morphine's Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer. Nice work, Jasper Jenkins. Nice work.

Modest Mouse and My Morning Jacket are going to be at Bonnaroo? My birthday's two days before that...hmm..

my last semester?!

For a while there it looked like graduation wouldn't come to me until August but now, it seems to be clearer and clearer that for me, May is the end. I was sitting in class on my first day yesterday when that hit me like a ton of bricks. I've got a plan for a year from July, but all the time inbetween is an out-of-focus question mark swimming in secret sauce. Suggestions are quite welcome. Class rundown: Faulkner/Hemingway should be awesome. Linguistics is a good time to sleep. British Culture since 1945 will be awesome considering the first day consisted of a discussion of The Office and my teacher blasting Common People on the stereo system. Only one left to go is Monday's later class, Children's Tales and Folklore. Pretty good last semester, looks like.

addendum.

Renting Mario Tennis for GameCube Saturday. Looking for asses to kick - Belin's just gonna be way too easy.

build your own culkin.

2005-01-18T15:39:00.000-05:00

The triumphant return to NYC was ushered in beautifully. Dinner at Boca Chica, some goods, some wine, American Psycho, and then two nights of music - first Asobi Seksu (rock), The Features (awesome), and Razorlight (boo.) at the Bowery and the next night The National at the Mercury Lounge. They were good but the frontman's voice was definitely suffering a little from sickness. But definitely a good way to immediately plunge oneself back into the comings and goings of citylife. After being marooned at that house, as relaxing as it was, walking felt real strange - we walked more the first night we were back here than on any three days combined in the Dominican Republic. Long live lethargy.

Belin owes me a shot at his Mario Tennis title after totally skipping out on halftime gametime in order to see the Jets go down in shitty-kicking flames in overtime against the Steelers on Saturday, after which I returned to Jackson Heights to see if I could cure my mom's computer and get Ani really baked. All things were achieved and Ani gave me my first proper viewing of Ali G, yeshemesh. I greep, and pool. Sunday saw the Eagles mutilate the Vikings which could mean only one thing - Chili's. Oveis won the MVP award for driving Beach, Lucy, Daylen and myself to Paramus, NJ for a Build Your Own Monster Burger Bash. The burger concoctions were sick, as Beach managed to skip the Awesome Blossom appetizer and put it right on his beef. After filling up to maniacal proportions there was only one logical thing left to do. Oveis caught on to our mischievous ways and managed to evade anything close to a Culkin, which lead to me really want to culking SOMEBODY. So I gave Lucy a fake joking sorta push, leading Johnny to literally hurl himself down into the parking lot grass behind her. Way to go down, Lucy, way to go down.

The three day civil rights weekend ended at Barcade for Mia's dirty thirty. I gotta say, while they definitely did have some awesome games to boast about, I've got a couple of major complaints to lodge. Super Mondo Complaint #1 - MS. PAC-MAN WAS DOWN! What a sorry excuse for an Arcade to have no working pac-man game whatsoever, and then to tease me, YES TEASE ME, with MS. PAC-MAN (so superior to original pac-man it ain't even funny), and then have it not working at all, shame on you Barcade, shame on you! I guess the only other thing I wanted, and I know Builder wanted too, was for the game selection to spill over into the early-to-mid-90's era. Where was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Simpsons, X-Men, and even Street Fighter? Would that get the kids too rowdy? God, I can only dream of a day when I've got a Magic Hat beside me as I'm kicking ass as Raphael. The drink rests between the machines, speaking of drinks - brilliant.

Today Lucy had her first day of school and I didn't have class at all. I woke up at 12:45, had two sunny-side up fried eggs, home fries, rye toast, and two cups of coffee at the counter at Veselka and then bought all my schoolbooks. It's fucking cold out. Winter sucks. The end. I'll write about something other than what I did with whom and where some other time when I feel like ruminating, and not tackling Lucy for her Game Boy Advance.

ALERT

2005-01-13T14:59:00.000-05:00

This Just In

Lucy Beach Announces Her Engagement To And Pregnancy By Manuel, Our Dominican Gardener

how i learned to tan, et al.

2005-01-13T14:26:00.000-05:00

Let's get one thing straight - though you may see me after today sporting reddened skin and a healthy Carribbean afterglow, there is nothing about the feeling of sunrays soaking into my skin that doesn't freak me out. There's something absolutely eerie about basting yourself and then roasting out in the sun, literally baking yourself in the oven of the earth. But this time I just couldn't resist. Lucy and I, along with Nika and her friend Shupes, joined my dad and his great friend Martin at a house they'd rented in the Dominican Republic, and though when the sun was out it was in full force, we had to deal with multiple daily rains. Which made me so hungry for heat that I couldn't help laying out in the sun and doing absolutely nothing but getting color. Well, I'll admit it, I kind of enjoyed it.

mr. savage

The vacation kicked off beautifully, beautiful weather, German people, pool, terraces, fresh food, fried eggs every morning, and I dug into Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which made me think - George 1984 Orwell who? Bah! I bet Huxley's book gets the short shrift because he went from writing awesome novels to writing Doors of Perception, his excellent description of his first foray into the world of mescaline. But anyway, Brave New World's awesome and I recommend it to everyone who, like me, has nightmares of a world where everyone's the same, there's no mobility, and you're defined as good or bad by your contributions to consumerism.

If you want a homemade caipirinha, ask me. The reviews were rave.

mrs. dalloway

Then my dad's friend Lida arrived. She's from Russia and just really awesome. She gets the credit for all these wonderful photos (though more will be posted when I get my grubby paws on Nika's camera). All was well in the world, things were dandy, my dad was cool. Then his girlfriend came, and well....anyway, let's just say if I already loved Mrs. Dalloway in a number amount of 1 Million, then I loved it 1 Million more than I loved that annoying ?girl? Here's another picture.

That's where spent the bulk of our time. We were definitely stranded in the villa since we had no access to our own car, but that wasn't really a bad thing.

benjy, quentin, jason and dilsey

Junior year of high school I got second prize (Larry of Travails of the Astounding won first) in a Poe recitation contest after doing my reading of The Raven, which I'd memorized in its entirety and recited quite glumly, staring blankly ahead of myself while dressed in a black turtleneck, black pants, and black shoes. I used to be cheesily depressed all the time. Anyway. The prize was a leatherbound edition of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury which I finally got around to reading, five years later, on this vacation. And holy fucking shit. The human mind is a difficult thing to mirror on paper, but....he did it. I change the description of this blog in homage to Faulkner's inspiration.

The whole vacation was dotted through and through by all this awesome reading, which is all I can bring myself to really talk about since what really happens on a carribbean vacation? There's just keywords: rum, Presidente, limes, rice, beans, fish, paddleball, tennis, pool, swim, beach, drunk, Scrabble, WTF, looking through a window by chance and seeing my dad having sex, subsequently being scarred for life, pushing Lucy into the pool, pushing Nika into the pool, driving 120 miles per hour down potholed Dominican roads and speeding up for speedbumps (Martin did the driving). Here, and that's that for now:

this is the end, my friend.

2004-12-29T14:17:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the last week of the "year," the not-so-arbitrary-cause-it's-based-on-astrophysics measure for time that makes us decide that this particular Saturday is going to be a monumental change. The number of our anno is going to change from 4 to 5, and for that reason, billions of people will be wasted. Awesome. This is my first NYE legally able to drink, which makes it all the sweeter. The night will begin with the Flaming Lips, slide into Wilco, move over to B-Side, dribble beer over its chin at the Mercury Lounge, and then most likely pass out in a flurry of bingers somewhere around 6 AM.

To commemmorate this, another revolution around the sun, Lucy has drawn up her top 20 albums of 2004, which she'd like to share with you. So without further ado, the Lucy Beach has spoken:

Lucy Beach's Top 20 of 2004

Top 5 (in order):
1. The Arcade Fire - Funeral
2. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
3. The Concretes - The Concretes
4. Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
5. Shout Out Louds - Howl Howl Gaff Gaff
(the rest in no particular order)
6. Khonnor - Handwriting
7. Hockey Night - Rad Zapping
8. Battles - B EP
9. Wilco - A Ghost is Born
10. The Zutons - Who Killed the Zutons?
11. The Walkmen - Bows and Arrows
12. Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
13. The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free
14. Dirty on Purpose - Sleep Late For a Better Tomorrow
15. Bjork - Medulla
16. Interpol - Antics
17. !!! - Louden Up Now
18. TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
19. Asobi Seksu - Asobi Seksu
20. Midnight Movies - Midnight Movies

Not to be outdone on my own blog, so I've compiled my own list...which has a lot in common with Lucy's save for the top 5 and a couple of substitutions:

Tumblehawk's Top 20 of 2004:

Top 5 (in order):
1. The Arcade Fire - Funeral
2. Pixies - Live at Coachella 2004 (yeah, kinda cheating, but yum.)
3. Dirty on Purpose - Sleep Late For a Better Tomorrow
4. Wilco - A Ghost is Born
5. Hockey Night - Rad Zapping
(the rest in no particular order)
6. Kraftwerk - Tour De France
7. !!! - Louden Up Now
8. Lali Puna - Faking the Books
9. Bjork - Medulla
10. TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
11. The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free
12. Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
13. Battles - B-EP
14. The Zutons - Who Killed the Zutons?
15. The Walkmen - Bows and Arrows
16. Khonnor - Handwriting
17. Beta Band - Heroes to Zeroes
18. Interpol - Antics
19. Morrissey - You are the Quarry
20. The Faint - Wet From Birth

Plenty to look forward to in the coming year, especially with Broken Social Scene looking to drop a new one on us, and even Nine Inch Nails if Trent Reznor can a) stop playing X-Box b) stop being such a depressed teenager c) stop being a 'perfectionist' or d) all of the above.

Couple of quick notes:

-We're prosecuting a run-of-the-mill gangster as a terrorist; as long as the government can get away with things like this, the "law" is a flimsy thing indeed.

All right, I'm gonna end this with a note I picked up from dailyKos, regarding the horrendous tsunami disaster over in southeast Asia - by the way, that's 118,000 now presumed dead:

As John F. Harris and Robin Wright of the Washington Post cannily note, US President George W. Bush has missed an important opportunity to reach out to the Muslims of Indonesia. The Bush administration at first pledged a paltry $15 million, a mysteriously chintzy response to what was obviously an enormous calamity. Bush himself remained on vacation, and now has reluctantly agreed to a meeting of the National Security Council by video conference. If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia (which has suffered at least 40,000 dead and rising).

Indeed, the worst-hit area of Indonesia is Aceh, the center of a Muslim separatist movement, and a gesture to Aceh from the US at this moment might have meant a lot in US-Muslim public relations. Bin Laden and Zawahiri sniffed around Aceh in hopes of recruiting operatives there, being experts in fishing in troubled waters. Doesn't the US want to outflank al-Qaeda? As it is, the president of the United States is invisible and on vacation (unlike several European heads of state), and could think of nothing better to do than announce a paltry pledge. As Harris and Wright rightly say, the rest of the world treated the US much better than this after September 11.

Happy New Year everybody, we're all very lucky with our skyscrapers and our concerts..

Calling All Mac Users

2004-12-27T14:36:00.000-05:00

Does anybody have a copy of any of the following programs that they could, er, uh, lend me?:

Logic
Reason
Pro-Tools

It's time for some keyboardin' beyond GarageBand.

living up to the name.

2004-12-27T13:32:00.000-05:00

Tumbleweed's brain is a fuzzy fuzzy mess right now. It's been three Jewish days of smoky Christmas hedonism. If I'd been designing religion back when they were planning the whole racket, I'd have thrown in breath along with body and blood of Christ...nibble a wafer, sip some wine, take a toke. Not much different - whole lot better. Well anyway, in true messianic fashion, Larry rose from the ashes of a doomed weekend to meet the call to hang out, the call to smoke on New York City rooftops, the call to wander aimlessly down barren winter avenues in the chill hours between 2 and 4 AM, with a Hunter's Moon shining lunacy down upon us.

Upon arrival, Larry being two hours late (true to custom), we went to 7A were I wolfed down an Austrian and he leisurely sipped a White Russian. I flashed back to the last time we'd parted physical company, when our last moments together were spent drinking coffee and eating old fashioned donuts in Dunkin' back in Jackson Heights. Both instances made me imagine us as old men, doing the exact same thing, talking about...well, everything. So here's to growing old with Larry, cheers. Drinks and dinner finished, we made our way with the swiftness up to Lucy and Eileen's rooftop for a gorgeous night time view, a smoke and a clove cigarette. I'm reminded of that, Filter was it?, magazine article on Interpol, where they were all photographed on actual NYC fire escapes and roofs. Well yeah. Roofs give a city experience like no other and it was great being on top of one with Larry and the green monster once more. After some video games and an aborted attempt to watch David Byrne's True Stories, we took the aforementioned long walk. Up from 9th and A to 2nd and 16th, to Park and 20th, to Broadway, all the way downtown and back to Veselka for midnight muffins. The night capped off with an often-jumbled, occasionally-awesome jam session with Larry on sound module and Tumblehawk on his brand new keyboard. Techno dance party to the max.

Sleeping from 7 AM to 3:45 PM takes its toll on anybody, so I recovered with some videogames after Larry left and went to dinner with the pops and the awesome sisters, to some crazy French African place called Les Enfants Terribles. My dinner was called Korhogotefemougar! No, that's not snails marinated in pigjuice, it's actually a damn good steak rubbed in all these crazy African spices with yuca fries and this crazy dipping sauce. Two thumbs up.

It is now Monday morning, at 1 in the afternoon, the combustible supplies are running low and there is still nothing to do, no one is in the city, so I'm off to find a way to kill time until the Leafcutter show later tonight at Piano's. Goodbye.

!!!

2004-12-25T16:24:00.000-05:00

Larry Is In The City!!!

it's the most bittersweet time of the year

2004-12-24T18:50:00.000-05:00

Bittersweet Bittersweet Bittersweet. That is just THE word for this holiday weekend. Equal parts bitter and sweet. Neither one overpowering the other (though for the purposes of optimism, we should give it to sweet). First, the bitter.

bit·ter - adj. -

Having or being a taste that is sharp, acrid, and unpleasant.
Causing a sharply unpleasant, painful, or stinging sensation; harsh: enveloped in bitter cold; a bitter wind.
Difficult or distasteful to accept, admit, or bear: the bitter truth; bitter sorrow.

For a couple of days it looked really hopeful, that I would be headed to Pittsburgh so the two of us wouldn't have to do the absurd thing - spend a christmas weekend alone in cities that aren't too ridiculously far apart. But sleepless nights took a toll on me and I fell asleep Wednesday at 10:30 to wake up at 10 and find a message from Larry saying certain feats could be accomplished on his side of things. By the time I got in touch with Jay, he and Trevor were walking down the street to the car, and I was far away in Bedford. Sigh.

sweet - adj. - 1. Fucking awesome.

I've lucked out throughout the long, arduous, Jewish years of coming and going December 25ths, and found myself with a lot of friends close enough to be willing to take me in under their roofs and let me peer curiously at this strange ritual, this...Christmas. And usually, they've given me presents too. First it was Brendan, then it was Andrew, then I came to college and met Eileen and I got to spend an awesome Christmas at her house, getting great pants, great food, and all of it leading up to the single most insane December 26th in the history of December 26ths. And now this year and last year I've spent the couple days before Christmas with the Beaches. Who are too ridiculously good to me. Last year, I got a stellar set of jacks and a vintage Ghostbusters Ecto-1 toy complete with Ghostbusters figurines. AND a Superman safe. How awesome. This year though, they took it to the next level, and I just have to say thank you to them for being so dang fucking nice and letting a boy flex his musical muscles again for the first time in years.

Which is only the tip of the iceberg when you consider the iPod. Jeezum. I'm going to go plug that keyboard in right now, spend a moment with Major Tom, and tickle some ivories. Plastics. Whatever.

bowling for loco

2004-12-21T10:16:00.000-05:00

studyboy strikes back

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehaw. (Like a Donkey, soundly sleeping.) Finals are OVER! School is OUT for the winter, which only really lasts 11 more days before it takes a luscious sun-filled 2-week break. Yum. With school firmly in the rear-view, Lucy and I can focus on organizing an extreme water-baloon armageddon in the villa. Everyone will suffer now. Everyone will suffer now. You can't save yourself! (Sorry. Marilyn Manson lyric flashback.)

I made my Brit Lit final my bitch, and coasted along on Nat Sci as well as I could, all very much thanks to (this week's theme) Ghitman's generous prescription donation and more studying than anyone ever expects of me. Eileen and I braved the bitter cold at 9 AM to make it to the library and both walked out of our finals with grins that said to one another: it's time to buy pot! So we did, and the bowling was planned, and then...

And hour and a half wait! Here's where things get RANDOM. So after walking all the fucking way to Bowlmor lanes for the letdown of the month, Lucy, Eileen, Nika and myself decided to make our way over to B-Side and shoot some pool in the backroom instead. We settled into a game, and Lucy and Eileen handed the Elder Duo a solid defeat which meant they were the winners, who would now play the challengers: two guys named J and Loco, local folk from right around Alphabet City. It became clear within minutes that if J wanted to, he could have cleared the table in one single swoop, not giving either Lucy or Eileen a turn, but J had a quality in him you couldn't help but admire (even if he took it too far sometimes): rather then hustle a couple of kids playing for fun, he used his know-how to make it fun and teach us all some moves. It was a really random night, and J's brother, the indubitable Loco, was a jackass who was more interested in showing off that he was smoking in the bar than playing pool. But J kept making fun of him, and that was fun. Anyway, I couldn't have written that up more boringly, I swear it was a lot of fun.

intoxication rumination.

2004-12-19T13:32:00.000-05:00

Last night, went to No Malice Palace, hip little hip-hop hoppin' spot down on 3rd between A and B, to celebrate Nikasister's 25th birthday. PBR and Sierra were drunk, people were bumped, and conversation was had. I arrive a bit late after a puff-tough session with Ani and some Stop Making Sense watching, and I think Ani fell in love with David Byrne. Who wouldn't? Welcome to the fold, biatch!!!

So when I arrived there I mingled with Nika and her friends and got to be the considerate brother who brought presents including a Sex and the City box set which makes me, you know, sensitive and stuff, rock on. Finally found Lucy then, crammed up in the thinnest walkway ever between couches and tables with her friend RJ and we proceeded to drink and talk. Ani and I had just been discussing how there are three immediate topics of conversation between almost anybody, in this order: music, drinking, drugs.

Well one of the first things RJ talked about was that he had spent six years completely sober from drugs, drink and cigarettes after going a little too overboard. What self control! Kudos, I wonder if I could ever do it. (I wonder if I'd get out of control though and I tend to think not.) Anyway, so he was saying he thought sobriety was so important, especially a long stint of it, in order to achieve a certain amount of self-control and self-discovery, which I found interesting because if I put out a book of mottos, one would definitely be: self-exploration through intoxication.

One thing I've found over the years (starting in Jackson Heights when a couple of friends held an "intervention" after me and Matt had smoked pot like...seven times) is that when you've got people who are sober, and people who do drugs, you rarely find the people doing drugs saying that they think everyone should get fucked up. I mean, I think a little pot couldn't hurt anyone, and a psychedelic experience as well, but I also know for some people it's unneeded and unnecessary...some people find their groove without anything extra, and for some people drugs are a problem, and for some people drugs are just like...I don't know, TV or something.

So this has less to do with individual people, now that I really think on it, and more with...here comes the worst word in the English language...society. We've been raised in an atmosphere of drugs-are-bad so that even once you do drugs, and then go sober, you are preconditioned to think that sobriety has some sort of edge over intoxication. Well, naturally, cause the world runs sober most of the time, and people have important things to do. All this speaks to is the need for moderation. But why is that sobriety leads to a holier-than-thou attitude a lot of the time? (Not to say RJ had that attitude, but he did think what worked for him would definitely work for everybody else, and I just don't think that's necessarily true. Just like I don't think some mushrooms would do everybody the good I feel they've done me. Ghitman freaked out, for example.)

As human beings, were just little bits of a huge system. We're no different, in a way, than bacteria floating around in a pool. We encounter chemicals, ingest them, react, learn, adapt, and move on. Millions of Americans (and humans in general) every day are swallowing all sorts of chemicals. We live in an age of medication. Drugs, on the other hand, and I'm mainly talking psychedelics I guess, have historically had a much more "spiritual" connotation in everyday life. So where is anyone getting off deciding what's worth assimilating into your system and what's not?

I guess what it all comes down to is that I wish people would realize reality is way more flexible than it seems. Ani told me how her friend A didn't really have anything to talk about with person B. But Ani told friend A that she personally always could talk with person B, to which friend A responded "yeah, but all you talk about is drugs."

Do we see the problem here? friend A's response was actually "yeah, but all you talk about is______." Fill in the blank with whatever's considered taboo wherever you are in the world space-and-time wise. If it had been the case, do you think friend A would have said "yeah, but all you talk about is TV." No, she would have said "yeah, you guys watch a lot of the same shows."

So, to restate, and expand, and cut this rambling off:

self-exploration through intoxication within moderation

and then there were two...

2004-12-18T13:14:00.000-05:00

...finals, that is. Natural Science II followed by British Literature II, the twain separated by a mere ten minutes this coming Monday afternoon, then I'm home free. Just ingested another boon-from-Ben and now I'm gearing myself up to immerse myself in Victorian poetry, which is not something easily done. Two days of hardcore studying is what this weekend will be, but at least tonight I have Nika's birthday party to look forward to. I should have said this on Tuesday, but, HAPPY 25TH BIRTHDAY NIKITCHKA!

Pixies were great the third time around. We ended up a little further back than the other two nights, but really, once the guitars and the screaming begin, I could care less. The show was epicly awesome, especially the Head On>U-Mass section lifted right from Trompe Le Monde. I won't post the setlist cause there were very few changes, but throwing Head On in there really made a humongous difference.

As if three nights of Pixies rockin' weren't enough to make a week of finals and papers a little easier to deal with, Lucy and I took the ultimate trip back through time when we went up to Lincoln Center to catch The Big Apple Circus. Lucy's mom is some kind of awesome for getting us those tickets (and she makes a mean raspberry muffin too). Though our seats could have been better (we had one of those classic circus situations where the pole is right in front of you and blocking part of the stage) it was still an awesome time. Freshly ripped baked and burnt we made our way there and grabbed our seats in time to hear a lot of talk about charity, and then the good stuff began. Some of the shit these people do is insane. There was some trapeze, some horses, cats chasing birds and....THE GREATEST DOG SHOW IN HISTORY! We saw a snow white pomeranian do a handstand with a baton in its mouth, and dogs doing all sorts of crazy jumping tricks. The closer for the show (before everyone came out for the last bow) was this crazy troupe of Russian acrobats that were being catapulted off of see-saws to ridiculously obscene heights. Little freaks, they were.

The whole show was based on artists who have been inspired by the circus, which was cool. I think someone like Nika or definitely Eileen too would have been able to name every single painting being referenced, but I only sort of vaguely felt like i recognized a few. Some of the painters they referenced were Degas, Picasso, Toulouse Lautrec, Chagall and Magritte. I want to go to a museum! Oh my god...the circus did that. Weird.

What's cool about the Big Apple Circus is how unbelievably small it was. I mean, i was disappointed at first because for some reason I guess I expected a big big tent with two trapeze things that would swing towards each other and people flipping over a net and what not, but it was a pretty small event in actuality. What I think we both really appreciated was that in a day and age when even Reese's Peanut Butter Cups have changed their packaging to look more liquidy fluidy computer graphic cool, the circus hasn't changed NOT ONE BIT! You couldn't help but feel like a little kid cause they didn't give you any other choice. Three cheers for soda and popcorn and clowns.

By the way, Watch This!

We followed up the circus with a viewing of Grave of the Fireflies, a Japanese animated film that is easily in the running for Top 3 Most Depressing Movies Ever. I vaguely remembered it from days at Carlyle but this was essentially like seeing it for the first time. The Japanese are amazing when it comes to art - Lucy said it right, they just know how to express EVERYTHING. They can get across everything - feeling, mood, emotion, opinion, all through the tiniest subtleties in their animations. Definitely recommend it to anyone. At the same time that it made me fascinated with Japanese culture, it also pointed out so many things that are wrong with the way people go about their lives there...there's a real social darwinism to the whole thing, and it all seems very depressing. But I think Japan is on the cusp of huge change. More on that another time, maybe. (If I read enough more about it to feel like I know what I'm talking about.)

G I G A N T I C

2004-12-16T09:43:00.000-05:00

Oh, finals, how I looooooathe thee. Everywhere I turn, you're there, rearing your ugly British Literature/Natural Science head, making me - ugh - read, and - gah! - study. Damn you. DAMN YOU. But thank you Ben, for my little friend, the lady Ritalina. May she forever live in peace (dissolving into my bloodstream). Can we say...focus?!

Well, at least there's a couple of interesting things to look at on the net today:

-Mike Gordon picks his favorites of 2004. I have no idea who a lot of the bands he talks about are, but there are some choice moments in there, especially that his favorite flavor of Ben and Jerry's is the best one EVER!!! Oatmeal Cookie Crunch...cinnammon god that it is. You can also see lists by some other artists, like Jim James and DJ Logic. (What the fuck is Jim talking about re: the pixies though?)

-Marijuana-flavored lollipops - 'every lick is like taking a hit.' hahahaha! just in time to fill up the christmas stockings, too.

-Ever wonder why Japanese horror movies are so goddamn absolutely eerie? It's cause when violent things happen in Japan, it's always poignantly fucked up.

-When they first reported that ODB died, his colleagues said he had been clean off drugs...well, I guess not. I'd like to suggest that instead of being like, mm, drugs are bad, drugs killed ODB - that these articles should really point out that he combined a powerful upper with a downer, and that you CAN'T DO THAT.

i am pixie, hear me roar

Two nights of Pixiesloving down, one to go. I could see that band every fucking day for a month and I doubt I'd get too terribly sick of them. While the setlists don't look like they're going to be shaken up in any monumental way, the hits just keep on coming, and they're welcome to keep on coming, and coming, and coming, and coming. The only three songs I haven't heard yet that I'm really itching to are River Euphrates, Palace of the Brine, and most notably Dig For Fire which for some reason I don't think I'm going to hear later tonight. But s'all right. Where Is My Mind? one more time will be just fine. At any rate, for those of you who didn't get to attend, here's a taste of setlist goodness:

12/14:
In Heaven
Wave of Mutilation (uk surf)
Where is My Mind
BLOWN AWAY
Nimrods Son
Here Comes Your Man
Holiday Song
Mr Grieves
Vamos
Bone Machine
I Bleed
Crackity Jones
Monkey Gone to Heaven
Broken Face
Caribou
Veloria
Cactus
#13 Baby
Subbacultcha
Umass
Planet of Sound
Gouge Away
Dead
Debaser
Wave of Mutilation
Tame
Hey
Gigantic

La La Love You

12/15:
Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
(In Heaven) Lady in the Radiator Song
Winterlong
Here Comes Your Man
Nimrod's Son
Holiday Song
Mr. Grieves
Vamos
Where Is My Mind?
Bone Machine
Cactus
I Bleed
Monkey Gone To Heaven
No. 13 Baby
Velouria
Caribou
U-Mass
Crackity Jones
Isla De Encanta
Broken Face
Hey
Gouge Away
Debaser
Tame
Wave of Mutilation

Gigantic

fuck you, semester.

2004-12-13T09:39:00.000-05:00

newsbytes

It's back to high school for me - Hell if this is what high school is like these days, count me in. I didn't even start smoking pot till my senior year and here these kids are swapping acid for dimebags? And this is literally about six blocks from where I work. Where I am sitting right now. Let's go to the Waaaaall. You think the publishing of that article has spoiled it all? Probably cops scoping the place out now...dang!

An Excellent Read - Screw the Cowboys, let's all just play Indians.

Thou Shalt Kill Ragheads! - The US Elite Operations portion of the Army is recieving 10,000 specially made Army-specific Bibles that highlight military messages from the good lord Jesus Christ! I want to get my hands on that thing and see just how explicitly it justifies the killing of the 'enemy,' whoever that decides to be on any particular day in world politics.

Baby Jesus Is Missing - I think it's hilarious someone compiled this list, I wish I was one of the culprits, I'd love a stolen Baby Jesus.

Reform to Combat Terrorism - Colin Powell told leaders of the Arab world that they must introduce democratic and human rights reforms in order to combat terrorism. Well, congratulations US government...I AGREE! I've been giving this a lot of thought and while I hate to give in to any sort of Us vs. Them mentality here, I think that Islam (both extremist interpretations and some of its basic tenets) is poorly equipped for survival in and contribution to the modern and modernizing world. Take a look at the situation in the Netherlands, one of Europe's most liberal countries, which is experiencing a wave of extremist Islamic violence (someone was planning to bomb the Red Light district last week) because immigrants from poor Arab countries think that the Dutch are too immoral. This is what I mean by poorly equipped...you can't go around forcing your way of thinking on everyone else, and if you'd like to live in a country with your brand of rules, they exist - Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. But many Muslims don't want to stay in their countries of origin and emigrate elsewhere because they have less money and poorer conditions at home than they can have elsewhere. The future is going to be built on fluid cultural exchange on a global level...can the Islamic world become an integral part of that? I think so, if slowly.

week, end.

The weekend saw Lucy being a great student and me playing some video games and listening to too much Shpongle. Somewhere in there were a couple of excellent dinners and a strange electronic music show where nerds played downtempo electronica on computers for 20 people lazily sipping beers. But Lucy's boss came along with cranberry raising cookies and in the end, it was 3 AM and we were puffing with Eileen before she started her day. At 3 AM. In a nightclub. For the morning. Keep up the good work.

The one thing I got accomplished was that I filled out 95 percent of my application to the Apple Store SoHo, where I am absolutely dying to work. I'm tired of this shit job and this shit computer and this shit chair at this shit desk. I want to walk around that big open space with that awesome staircase and excitedly sell Macs to people for a sweet little commission, which, when combined with my employee discount, will quickly net me an iPod and an electronic keyboard - the latter one I'm aching for lately. I can't believe I completely gave up on playing piano after I broke my elbow in 3rd grade, but it was hard to get excited about something that you felt you were only doing 'cause your mom made you. Hopefully these fancy fingers still got some freaky flickin' in 'em.

last day of class

And it couldn't come sooner. Though I'm as frightened of the future as I am bored with the academic present, I guess I'd rather get school overwith than sit in anymore British Literature II classes doodling away. I can't even draw well, so what am I really getting out of class at all then? After work today it's Natural Science II, then Brit Lit II, then the semester is done as far as classes go. One more 8 page paper and two finals for the aforementioned classes a week from today, then I'm completely done. Hurrah.

toothbrushpongle

2004-12-11T13:44:00.000-05:00

toothbrush

When your aunt is your dentist, too, you have two reactions. First is - woah, weird, my aunt's hands are in my mouth poking around. The second is actually a bit of relief because you don't have to be so scared of either getting hurt or yelled at too much for not flossing. You'll still get scolded, but not made to feel like the dirt between your molars. What's funny though is that the conversation-while-you're-getting-scraped-and-cleaned is pretty much the same - how's school? when will you be done? what you gonna do afterwards? And, for once, the dentist seems to actually care about what the answers are!

I wonder if people wrapped up in tattoo culture feel an excitement spurred on by the buzzing of needles heard from the waiting room that is the exact inverse of the feeling of dread the buzz of a dentist's drill gives you as you breathe in the faint scent of fluoride and wonder how many cavities you just might have.

shpongle

Are You Shpongled? is an amazing album, and totally worthy of the nod it gives to Jimi Hendrix's album of a similar name. You may want money, fame, or power. You may want drugs, or sex, or rock and roll. But no matter who you are, when you give it a try, you'll discover you always wanted to be Shpongled. Shpongle is Raja Ram and Simon Posford, and here's what their website has to say about their musical venture:

A multi-verse not very far away where queues and noise don't exist neither pain nor fear, scary faces or bad smells…just peace and pieces, and perfect weather :) Sucking the big toe of humanity, your armchair turns into an aural spacecraft, catapulting you through the veils of reality and consciousness into a psychedelic adult theme park: Sonar Ballistickle, Soma sucking cyber sorcerers floating weightlessly on the threshold of bliss, creating psycho-geometric, atomic telepathic shimmering incandescent dream dilations. This hybrid exotic seretonin drenched electro-plasmic dripping brain forest moves with endless hallucinogenic changing patterns while, unnoticed a million angels dance on a pinhead. Fun-Shui, Phrenological escapology; the divine moment of truth…the inevitability of the unexpected - the vortex of the cortex. Knowing what we don't know, while sampling the cosmos; from the darkness to the light; from the unreal to the real….from death to immortality... Let's Get Shpongled!

Shpongle's music mixes awesome electronic tribal beats and psychedelic sounds with Raja Ram's crazy drum playing, sitar playing, and flute-mastery. It is simply unbelievable - just ask me, and I'll Shpongle you in a second. The Shpongle website hasn't been updated in a long time but a visit to their record company, Twisted, shows that their third album 'Nothing Lasts' will be released early next year. Meanwhile, if anyone can help me get a hold of their second release, 'Tales of the Inexpressible,' well that would be just dandy ass fantastic.

A big thanks to the Shroomery for turning (me) on, tuning (me) in, and dropping (me) out to these guys.

news that made my eyebrows arch.

2004-12-10T01:10:00.000-05:00

These things caught my eye in the last few days:

Ahem.

A Call to Jackasses Everywhere - One of the last safe havens from cell phones is on the brink of plunging into the wireless abyss.
The Apocalypse is Near - FOX and Clear Channel move closer together like two colliding toxic clouds.

Homeless Iraq Veterans - Already!

Crazy - Animals are being born with human blood.

quick thought.

2004-12-08T02:55:00.000-05:00

You know, it's too bad societies all over the world are as generally sexually repressed as they are. (God bless you Europe.) Cause with all these trips into space, we must ask this burning questios:

What's it like to screw in zero gravity?

Time to sign up for NASA I guess.

happy (c?)hanukah?

2004-12-07T13:13:00.000-05:00

Well folks, it's December Seventh, and when the sun falls down beneath the horizon under the weight of all this rain this evening, it will officially be the first day of that multi-candled holiday you know and love, Hannukah. I remember what a joy these eight days would bring when I was younger, and more specifically the loads of good presents they brought. My father would show up for a candle lighting or two, and otherwise my mom would shower me with action figures. Usually 2 a day and 3 on the first and last days. Top of the line, state of the art, Marvel Comic Batman Star Wars He Man goodness, god what a life! What a week! I'd actually be hopping up and down in excitement at the prospect of lighting one more candle on the menorah, just cause I knew what was coming right after that. A couple of solid dollar bills, and finally, finally, a Robin action figure! Sure he'e a pussy sometimes, but Batman's gotta have his sidekick sometimes.

So lately Hannukah hasn't been so exciting. Usually I want something in September, and ask for it to count as my present for all eight days three months in advance. I take my presents out like loans, and then still hope for a little bonus when December rolls around. So if anyone's wondering, or cares, or is....shopping! Here's a list, in no particular order, of Danny's top 8 Hannukah gifts, 2005.

#1
Game Boy Advance SP - it's been a long time since I had a portable system, and lord knows when my dad still lived with us the Game Boy was decidedly his. While he damned the TV as the "idiot box" (and still watched the Simpsons and news), he was often found slouched on the couch completely riveted by level 9-5 on the B mode of Tetris. I admit, that's the only video game he was ever better at than me. It was also the only one he played. Anyway, enough father obsessiveness! Damn family problems, damn! Anyway, I'm ready for a new game system to carry around, one that's colorful and has all my favorite old SNES and Nintendo games available for it at cheap prices. Come on!

#2
iPod Photo - I want a new iPod damnit. Mine don't work no more, plus it's about half the size of all the music I have. And photos, I wanna carry around photos. But you know, if this list was in a specific order, iPod would be last - cause they'll just change and get better as time goes on and I'll want new ones.

#3
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: Extended Edition - And this would probably be number one. With 50 minutes of additional footage, and closure on this most awesome of film experiences, Peter Jackson has offered up one of the greatest gifts the holidays have to offer.

#4
M-49 Electronic Audio Keyboard - Able to plug into Garage Band and a number of other programs, be hooked up to all the effects pedals Miriam left behind for her electric guitar, and perhaps even be hooked up to my techno dance party, this thing is just a fucking must-have. I want to make spacy weird noises and trip out in my room to the sounds of my own madness.

#5
You Had To See This One Coming

#6
A Train Ticket to Pittsburgh, Please.

#7
Anything here would be nice.

#8
Old Habits Die Hard

qwertyuiop

2004-12-06T10:10:00.000-05:00

bits and bites.

For all of you with some time to kill I've put together a few things you may want to take a look at:

Board of Education - it's really strange that these kinds of people still get into public office.

Mordechai Vanunu - I've just got a lot of respect for this guy for breaking out of his country's (Israel's) obsession with overreactive self-defense and spilling the beans...short little article on him.

Dena Schlosser and Doyle Davidson - You'll need an nytimes.com login for this, so GET ONE! Free, and all you gotta do is sign up once. Anyway, what a pair of names these people have, and what a pair of fucked up characters.

Hmm... - This looks like one classy read...thanks Ash.

Casino Hijinx - Who needs Ocean's 12 with stories like this? Well, frankly, I do.

Last But Not Least - Jambands.com treats us to an article about what the Internet has done to music in general and jambands in particular. I'd recommend anyone read it and skip the phish-specific parts if you don't give a shit, but the guy makes some great points along the way. This happens to be the guy who creates the internet Phish community's system of tracking personal statistics of what shows you'd been to, and which songs you'd seen and which hasn't...and he's sort of admitting he contributed to the death of much goodness.

Hey, I'd also take a look at a link I added to the Tasty Morsels on the right side of the page, the link called "Greg the Boyfriend." The most amusing blog I've ever read. The most recent entry on Miguel is great.

let's all go to japan.

This semester sucks the big one school-wise. This is how it's been for the past three semesters or so though. Excited about class in the first month, coasting in the second, losing interest in the third and finally scrambling to clean up the mess I've made in time for finals. All this periodically punctuated by me realizing it's happening and telling myself I'll turn over a new leaf or some such shit. Sigh. Who wears short shorts? Lucy wears short shorts. So does Eileen. I bet Larry does too, he's snazzy.

What I'm hoping is that I can wrap up this next semester nice and neat-like without needing to take on any extra classes in the summer. I want to be an NYU graduate in May of 2005. I want my diploma and my freedom, which will immediately become my fright as I realize I have no idea what I am doing with myself, at all, and try to scramble my way to Japan. Will I always be scrambling? I think I spend 355 days a year being a lazy bum, and the other ten a-scramblin'. And during leap years I spend that extra day trying to touch my nose with my tongue.

I picked up Chuck Palahniuk's new book, Stranger Than Fiction the other day. What I can tell so far is that as much as this man might get into repetitive grooves in his writing that get tiresome, he is a person that loves to write, and wants to inspire others to write in their lives. The book is a compilation of essays and stories about true life experiences he's had, different places and things and people he has witnessed, that have given him ideas for the books he's already written. In a way, he's killing the mystery behind "how did he think of that?!" which is a pretty cool thing to willingly do. It's like saying, "No, no, I'm no magician. Let me show you all my smoke and mirrors."

Makes me want to write. (Will I? Ho ho ho...) "Our technology for telling stories becomes our language for remembering our lives." He's right. I always think of my life in terms of being a movie.

Happy Trails

2004-12-03T11:19:00.000-05:00

Let's all wish Ani a happy trip into the forest with her fungus.

Onwards, Psychonaut!

Power. Courage. Wisdom.

2004-12-03T09:53:00.000-05:00

Back to the Future

I've been pretty absent from this little blog o'horrors for many-a-day now, so where to begin? Thanksgiving was without a doubt most excellent, followed by two delicious nights of The New Deal, and...god, my memory is fucking foggy. My mental diary of the past week is a haze of smoke, Super Monkey Ball Bowling, and Chipotle.

Anyway, there's really one thing totally dominating my mind, so let me share with you the joy of this past week of my life.

Once upon a time, I bought a game called The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, and found one of my top 3 favorite video games ever (alongside Final Fantasy VII and Super Smash Bros. Melee.) The thing is, I was at a weird point in my video game playing high school life. Though I'd always had this knack for videogames, could always pick one up and learn the systems the game worked on pretty quickly, whenever I bought these longer games like Final Fantasy VII or Zelda, there were just so many fucking secrets and little side quests. So...I'd buy the strategy guide. And instead of using it the second time around to get all the secrets, I used it the first time around so I could really COMPLETE the game, completely. The games were so awesome I wouldn't get bored even though I was constantly checking the guide to see if there was anything extra to get in a certain spot, but ya know, it kind of ruins the mystery.

So a few days ago, I stepped into the shoes of everybody's favorite hero:

Starting out as a little young Link, I set out on my quest to save Princess Zelda and the entire Kingdom of Hyrule from the evil clutches of.....GANONDORF!!!!!!!!:

And I remember now in a way I may have never known how absolutely fucking awesome this game is. I think anybody would love this game, girl, guy, young old, it's just...the best. It's a story about growing up, learning, developing, and rising to meet your fate, and damnit, if I don't know what I'm gonna do with my own life, I'm at least glad I'm playing as a green-clad fairy-boy who has it all laid out before him. Yesterday I finally opened the door of time...and now I'm all grown up:

Faucet Fuckers

I'm totally an advocate of handless things...such as automatic toilet flushers and automatic sinks. Cause if you think about it right before you wash your hands, you're touching the same sink knob that everyone else touched right after they were done grabbing a hold of their junk (well, for us guys at least). So great, stick your hands under the faucet, water pours out, it's like god in heaven or something. Cavemen would shit their pants. Togas. Sabretooth tiger skins. Whatever.

But why the fuck can't I adjust the goddamn fucking temperature? My hands are freezing. FREEZING! Then I come back to my desk, where the sun is shining right down into my eyes and I feel like a character out of Camus' The Stranger. Anyway. I hate my job. Here's hoping for the Apple store.

tell me lies; later, come and see me

2004-11-21T13:08:00.000-05:00

The other day I was all stoned and rushing to class, astounded at the world as usual, when I ran into Charlie Schulman, my old screenwriting teacher from about a year ago. We were grinning to see each other, as we'd had a certain kind of rapport between us, and stopped to shoot the shit on the sidewalk. I babbled, told him something about scripts and meaning to e-mail him, and then we went on our separate ways as I went to class.

That got me thinking. And then I got a package in my mailbox, a fluffy envelope with a flyer and a slim DVD case inside, the complete When Tyrants Kiss experience delivered right to my doorstep. Needless to say I was excited as fuck to finally get a chance to see the movie that Larry had labored so hard on. I'd seen a couple of clips and was quite ready to get on with the whole thing. On the back of the flyer accompanying the DVD were kind words that made me rue how little I actually make these days, and made me think of random words Lucy had scribbled on her dry-erase board the other day: sometimes he ached with the music he failed to make.

Well, Friday's trip to Red Lobster was far too ghastly to allow for any movie-watching afterwords; only passing out. Saturday was a FULL DAY! Breakfast, walking, buying Thanksgiving dinner clothes, walking for 4-5 hours, visiting Ei at warm-and-cozy Dylan Prime, then Lucy whipped up delicious dinner (couscous with corn, garlic and snowpeas; salad with peppers, tomatoes, greens) and we waited for Eileen to get back so we could watch When Tyrants Kiss. Time passed, clocks ticked, and finally we cracked and decided it was time to get down and boogie to this shit.

An odd experience watching a movie that someone who you're extremely close with has had a hand in making. Especially when their hand in the movie is the hand that moves the camera...being someone that wants to make films I already feel extra-aware of the godlike power of the camera to choose what is and isn't seen, and how those things are/aren't shown, it was doubly disorienting knowing that Laurence was behind a great deal of the skullduggery at work. You know, I'm not gonna put my review of WTK up here yet for two reasons: 1) I definitely need to see it again within the next 3 or 4 days, and 2) why would I tell you before I told Larry one-on-one? You punks!

So when I slipped into bed last night I had a hard time sleeping for a while, though the marijuana Pabst Blue Ribbon haze was thick around my eyes. I couldn't help but be so down on myself, for being such a goddamned lazy fucking sonofabitch. For being someone who's afraid of putting the effort in. It's hard to think of opportunities that may have been wasted. I should e-mail Charlie.

well, shit on me.

2004-11-19T14:44:00.000-05:00

The kinds of things that happen simultaneously in this world are ridiculous. Bombs are dropping, Eileen might be shopping, and a Dolphin is swimming with a prosthetic fin?!

buy me a puppy.

2004-11-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

A while ago, Oveis linked to a New York Times article about a couple of political bloggers who set aside the world of politics every Friday to blog pictures of their cats. Well, this ain't no political blog, and I ain't got no cat, but goddamn it it's Friday, and you people deserve a Dachshund.

Her name is Lucy! Seriously!

Anyway, here follow some interesting reads you might want to peruse:

-You could be addicted to porn.

-Sometimes there are these little news stories that will fade away into the nothingness of history but are so creepy and poignant.

-The official NYU newspaper may suck, but The Zutons kick ass.

Thought: If my father was a character from Lord of the Rings, he would be Gollum; having stumbled upon a fortune, he hoards it in his cave and eats fish all day.

playhouse (AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!)

2004-11-19T09:59:00.000-05:00

Last night, I saw Kasabian in concert. I knew very little of the band other than their name before last night. Lucy and I rolled in to a ridiculously packed and heated Bowery Ballroom, ran into Johnny and Daylen, and made our way to our proper place beside the bar, and I got excited by a very cool looking backdrop that was up on the stage. It looked something halfway between a terrorist, a flag, and a just plain angry man. This just might be cool, I thought!

I was pretty disappointed, but I spent most of the time wondering if I was really disappointed or if I was just being a musical snob. I was really torn. These guys came up with some good tunes and you got the impression that they'd get really high in the studio and jam and come up with some awesome combinations of sound but somehow it all just couldn't pull together. Apparently big fans of psychedelic mushrooms, the band had this combination british-rock (ahem, oasis) meets Pink Floyd sound, and all produced completely ready for the radio. And that's where the snobbery comes in because is it so bad that they're so commercial-sounding? (When did commercial become a sound?!) Isn't Franz Ferdinand succeeding in the mass commercial market? Then why do I looooove them ever so much? Well, cause they're fucking awesome. Oh well. I tell you what, Kasabian, I'll check you out again on CD sometime.

Following the show we caught Conan O'Brien for the first time in for fucking ever. Something about Conan is absolute magic. You sit there and this weird, hilarious red-headed freak of a guy is staring at the camera talking right to you, and all of a sudden, you realize this is what TV was made for...so you could sit in a room and not feel alone because this person is so entertaining it's like they're right in your living room. Woody Harrelson was a freak, a 30-second clip of Pee-Wee's Playhouse made me nostalgic as all hell, and the Flaming Lips made me wonder if I'll ever see them play a real show. I'm crossing my fingers that I get to see more than four songs on New Year's Eve.

Is the food at Red Lobster any good? Please, somebody comment on this before I go eat a lot of shrimp tonight.

2004-11-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

Hungry?

i see that you've come to resist me.

2004-11-16T21:59:00.000-05:00

Porter Goss, the new intelligence chief, has told Central Intelligence Agency employees that their job is to "support the administration and its policies in our work," a copy of the internal memorandum shows.

"As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," Goss said in the memorandum, which was circulated late on Monday. He said in the document that he was seeking "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road."

Welcome to the country that was built on dissent. OBEY!

it's only castles burning.

2004-11-15T17:23:00.000-05:00

The more I read about this war the more I hurt. It's that awful pain that reaches levels of intangibility that personal pain can't even touch. It's a pain you almost wish you could feel more, but there's a terrible distance between yourself and all of it. The US government is claiming there have been no civilian deaths in the assault on Fallujah. You know why? Because civilians who want you out of their city because you're destroying it without allowing them access to food and medecine are going to end up hating you too, and when you kill them as they try to flee you can say "oh, well..they're...insurgents, yeah that's it."

Read this if you don't believe that: Photographer Flees

Try and put yourselves in the shoes of innocent Iraqis as they panic, a normal human reaction to bombs dropping around you. And they run for the river, and they hear helicopters above them, which only increases the fervor of that panic, and so they decided to swim across the river away from this living hell on earth.....only to get rifled from above. Just shoot anything that moves.

FUCK!

there are many here among us who feel that life is just a joke.

2004-11-15T17:11:00.000-05:00

What a great few days. Let's put on the time travel goggles and look backwards. Thursday saw Dirty on Purpose and the Arcade Fire share the stage at the Bowery Ballroom with nothing but a troupe of gay Canadians between them - sounds something like the bulk of my wet dreams. While the volume for Arcade Fire was somewhat lacking, their energy didn't fail to find its way into my mind, my heart, and then down into my tippy toes while they shouted "Dance, varmint!" Track 7 (Wake Up) proved to be the absolute highlight of the night with Lucy, DJ Del and I being the most obnoxious drunk people in the whole of the Bowery as we hooted hollered and stomped along with their joyful chorus of childhood OHHHH!

Friday saw a return to the Hammerstein Ballroom to see Interpol about a year and a month after seeing them in that very same spot, and jeez. I love New York. So I love Interpol. They're...inseparable. They manage to encompass the very isness of New York in a way - their performance almost comes off as melodrama, with Carlos' jumpy bass lines grounding the absolute epic nature of the vocals and guitar, and it would be so easy to say, well this is an act. But those of us who know New York know that while everyone walks around wrapped up in the surface, there's the grit that binds it all together and lets masks communicate sincerity. I almost managed to succinctly say what I really mean. Damn! Maybe next time.

I barely remember Saturday, which saw Lucy and I checking out the Mercury Lounge for a full night of music, beginning to end, something I've never done before. We only intended to catch Midnight Movies, who definitely rocked - I remember Noah once saying there was no excuse for a band to not have a bassist (except the beloved White Stripes) but Midnight Movies didn't have a bass for 85 percent of their performance, letting synth lines take their place instead, and that was just fine with me. I have quite a penchant for any sound that reminds me of the inside of a computer. I want to play video games. The rest of the music that night was all right, and got way better once we got to Company where Del was playing DJ and granted multiple requests such as: Pour Some Sugar On Me, Gigantic by the Pixies, Spacehog's In The Meantime and Bowie's Jean Genie. One vaporizer hit later and it was time to pass out.

Sunday was lush day. Did nothing all day. Then, with not much money to spare in this world, Eileen and I split an eighth which was delved into hungrily as the three of us prepared for the ultimate end-of-the-weekend dinner - all you can eat at VATAN with a couple bottles of wine. We left the place clutching our stomachs - mine still hurt this morning from being TOO FULL!

speaking of splits.

2004-11-12T16:27:00.000-05:00

So I was relieving myself in the corporate bathroom this morning and had something on my brain, not quite sure what, and as I stood there I had one of those moments where you realize that you're always talking to yourself inside your head. This was spurred on by the fact that I had just uttered the words "Dude, can you believe that?" to myself in the course of my inner monologue.

Now, that got me thinking, is that two sides to me having a discussion? Or just one of me talking with myself? Is there even a difference? And does everybody do this? Why do I? Well, I got to thinking about my good old imaginary friend. He didn't have an exotic name like Duncan or a cool name like...Whiplash...but he was there all right, and I called him: Chris. Chris was an asshole. First of all, he was dumber than me. Second of all, he was really mean to me. All the time. Sometimes he would even try to beat me up and I would have these huge fights with him that would exist nowhere outside my mind. This was back in the grip of childhood when time and space weren't things you thought about, and an entire story could unfold over a matter of minutes from beginning to end. (Kinda like acid....eh?!) In the years that followed Chris would always be around, slowly dwindling away as I got real friends, and I wonder now if that's why I talk to myself. Am I still talking to my idiotic jerk of a best friend? And isn't that fucking crazy if I am?

welcome to the blogchine.

2004-11-12T15:35:00.000-05:00

Ah, blog, at last we meet.

Of course it should happen the day after I spend an evening at the Bowery Ballroom, sharing the same breathing space with David Bowie, David Byrne and the Arcade Fire all at once. Now I'm overflowing with . . . something. Anyway, welcome to ones and zeroes, where I'm always trying to put two things into one and unsplit myself.