The obscure object of desire

Something New

2009-07-27T01:26:00.001-07:00

Hello, all. I've started a new blog called The Wait. you can find it at thewaitnow.blogspot.com. It's about trying to get pregnant and weight loss and waiting for motherhood and all the little stuff that comprises this crazy period of my life. I'll keep this alive and will try to post here occasionally but I will be focusing on this new adventure. Come with me!

people leaving...sucks

2009-04-11T21:08:00.000-07:00

So, I'm at my cousin's "going away party" and I'm super sad, and I'm having one of those someone is leaving me and i can't deal moments, and i can't talk to the people who are actually leaving kind of things...so i have HUGE abandonment issues...and I don't like it when people leave me for any reasons...and the leaving, it's not so good anyway. Ugh. Why leave?I love Raleigh, it has everything, I don't understand why people are evacuating. Double ugh. and a Gah for good measure.

You can go home again...kind of

2009-03-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

so hello there.

It's been a long time. let's not talk about it.

Inspired by a friend I've decided to start blogging about books as I read them constantly and have no real outlet for talking about them, funny since I work for a compnay that owns used book stores.

But to start off, I wanted to post this picture

It came into the store today as I was processing about a gazillion fiction titles and when I opened this one it made me laugh as I have a friend by the same name and I wanted to show it to her. So hey Melissa, I wonder if this is your book?

olympics, family, hands

2008-08-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

There is a great Barack Obama ad about how the hands of America are shaping the future of America, and it makes me ridiculously maudlin and weepy (I am the Target Market) as I am hearing stories of my uncles with 30+ years as metal workers in Indiana getting offered early retirement packages (thank God) as the industry is failing even there . I had a weird moment a year and a half ago as Jeff and I drank pints at out favorite sports-bar dive and watched a special report on a repeat of Oprah where she spotlighted the bizarre problem in Shelbyville, IN (my hometown that I narrowly escaped) where they have invested, literally, millions upon millions of dollars in the local schools to no avail, with an attrition rate in the high 30 % range. When I grew up there, kids discovered alcohol, sex and drugs early as we had NOTHING to do. The lack of youth culture inspired an adoration and emulation of backwards adult behavior. I remember girls losing their virginity in the sixth grade, y'all. I have always said that I am SO GRATEFUL that my parents pulled me out when they did, at the formative age between sixth and seventh grade, as I got to understand myself in a new environment and truly challenge my preconceptions about race, class and tolerance going from a white-bread elementary school of 200 to a multi-ethnic, multi-racial school of 1,400. I told Jenny this week that the best lesson I ever learned was not being the smartest kid in the room (and as any of you who know Jenny, that is impossible as soon as you meet her) as it challenged me to better myself and rethink my status-quo liberal think-speak. I may come off as a know-it-all but I am terrified all the time. Getting married may (huh huh huh AHHHHHHHH!!!) elevate these feelings of inadequacy as I am about to attach myself to a person who thinks I'm smart, but I am really, really, really not smart and I know this. He is smart; one time we were watching Jeopardy! and he answered every question about representatives by state correctly and I took him into the bedroom and ravished him. (TMI? ef u) I have been pretending my. whole. life. as I know a little bit about everything and get by. I mean I know I am smart but he is really really SCARY smart. And meanwhile, I am literally trying to play catch up with him when it comes to current events, politics, music, etc. The only time I feel like I own him is when it comes to literature, but Jesus, how many of US are out there. I am glad I am marrying someone who challenges me and is smarter than I am but damn, sometimes, it sucks being the dumbest person in the room.

On the threshold, leaning

2008-07-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

Almost done with school. For the summer. I am soooooooooooo glad. My weddding, my social life, my LIFE have fallen by the wayside while I struggle through three summer school classes. Soon I will be able to go swimming with Jenny. Soon I will be able to sleep in. Soon. Can I get some advice about getting through the last year?

The Uncanny Valley

2008-07-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

So. Jeff and I had this conversation a looooong time ago about how things like ponies, and clowns and gorillas really unnerve me b/c they remind me of approximations of the real thing. Ponies are small horses (weird, disproportional horses), clowns are the extreme versions of people, and gorillas are like people but hairy and moody and unpredictably violent. Well, apparently my unease is nothing new, it's related, at least in part, to an idea called the Uncanny Valley. The gist of the idea, as I understand it, is that when something approximates real human physical traits, (Ala robots, AI, primates) there is something instinctual within us that reacts with disgust. As in, "I recognize this foreign thing and it is like me, but it's enough not like me that I am repulsed." Do y'all know what I am talkin' 'bout?
Anyway, that conversation started a long time ago, but a few months back, Bagel read an article about the hookers in Grand Theft Auto IV, and how they have reached the Uncanny Valley. What's interesting here is a few things: 1) This started as a conversation about my own idiosyncrasies and in turn became about something Jeff could empathise and relate to and even more importantly made me realize I am not crazy or alone: 2) that there is a convergence between how people feel about every-day, normal things and the speed of technology: 3) that these people who think they have reached the Uncanny Valley in video games/animation/media are dead wrong.

I think that modern video game graphics are awesome. I am spoiled by the splendiferous variations of the Wii, the PS3, the X Box 360 and beyond. But to be honest? I don't care a fig about graphics. Now, let me say this, when I test a PlayStation One at work, it hurts. I am spoiled. I want crisp visuals, and no lag time. That being said, my favorite game system is still the NES. So what I have theorized is that the Uncanny Valley is not just bimodal, but a logarithm that expands across not just positive and negative but backwards and forwards.

Whoa, I think I just Math Geeked out, but hang with me for a second.

If the newest generation of game consoles is along the positive x axis, the old school game consoles would be at this point in time along the negative x axis, whereas they used to be on the negative y axis. Ya dig?

The original Nintendo is fun b/c the graphics are so far removed from real life that it doesn't even approach the Uncanny Valley. (Hence, the undying popularity of the really old-school game systems.) That is, it's not just nostalgia at work but a fundamental idea of entertainment that is as far removed from reality as possible. I can play the NES b/c it's 1) awesome, 2) fun, 3) not like real life at all. I guess what I'm saying is that I can move not just negative along the x-y axis but backwards as well.

I have a theory that once graphics become so advanced it feels

like we are manipulating real life, that gamers, web masters, illustrators, etc., will become disinterested in the current medium because it too easily replicates what already happens in everyday life. After that technology is available I bet we will see a resurgence in the popularity of older game systems, like we ( at my store, with friends, etc.) see now with the NES, the Super Nintendo, and with some people, (older, of course), the Atari.

You know how you hear that the suspension of disbelief is really important in regards to writing, film, what have you?

Well, I think that equally important is the suspension of belief. That is, the reason we seek media is because we are searching for distraction and as soon as it starts to truly replicate real life we will lose all interest. That is, media is interesting b/c it is not real life.

So anyway, anyway. Jeff said that essentially he agreed with this article about how the hos in GTA4 represent the Uncanny Valley but I disagree on a few fundamental levels:

1) Graphics are not so state of the art that this can happen.

I don't know about y'all but I have never truly believed a video game to the point that it made me uneasy. Maybe that's why I can shoot 'em up with the best of them in GTA4 and not give a fuck.

2) I think the queasiness that Bagel feels says more about his character than about the video game industries' proximity to the Uncanny valley. That is, I think the fact that he is not turned on by the hookers in GTA, and in fact finds them repulsive, shallow representations of women, says more about his feelings about women in general and their portrayal of media of all types than it has to do with the Uncanny Valley, though they are not unrelated. I guess that I think that b/c the graphics, as good as they may be, and as spoiled as I about them, are still nowhere near the Uncanny Valley region of discomfort.

So anyway. What do y'all think? And what is your favorite old skool video game? mine is Kid Icarus for NES. I hear they might be releasing an update for the 360...

22 Lbs. and counting

2008-06-22T14:35:00.001-07:00

Two words:

Wedding dress.

(not actual dress)

As much as I want a Caesar salad, hamburger from Char-Grill, sweet potato hash and pork chops, a sausage breakfast bagel from Brueger's or any of a number of my favorite foods, the terror of wedding pictures displaying what I affectionately call my "ham arms" (not actual arms) is enough to motivate me to eat better, healthier and be more active. The whole sleeveless things with corset back helps too.

It reminds me of when I was on Vision Quest and all I wanted were real cigarettes, a Dr. Pepper, and a sausage McMuffin from McDonald's. I managed the soda and the cigarettes within ten minutes of leaving camp and while others were reveling in the beauty of birds doing it while they sunbathed naked on the rocks, I was too busy thanking God for concrete, laundry detergent and nicotine. I remember the looks I got as I lit up that first camel, and though it was not a proud moment for me, it was one where I was unabashedly myself with no apologies. After that, I swore I'd never go camping again and that has been an easy promise to keep. I do not heart nature.

Jeff has lost 25 lbs too and looks great. He is growing a beard that makes him look all George Michael-y right now but the verdict is out on whether he actually gets to keep it. I have very sensitive skin, after all, and as hot as he looks with it, I'm not sure it's worth beard burn.
Wedding plans are coming along, we had a teleconference with our caterer at some ungodly hour of the morning on Friday, and we both feel better now. I am still looking for a photographer, florists and hair-stylist so if y'all know of anyone locally please let me know. The girls have picked out some really cute dresses too so I know we'll all look out best. Hopefully sans ham arms. I may put a picture of a ham on the fridge as an extra motivator. 30 lbs to go to reach my goal. 30 lbs in three months. Yikes. I suppose if I need inspiration I can go to some of the pro-anorexia websites I stumbled upon in research for diet pills. This is easily the most fucked up thing I have ever read/ seen on the web and that's saying something. Just google the term "thinspo" (an oh so clever smash up of the words thin and inspiration) and you will see shit like this picture and much worse. I was telling Jeff today that his parents must have been relieved to have three boys, boys being much easier to raise. Dealing with the potential for abuse, pregnancy and body image is a lot of shit to deal with as a parent. I know I am NOT going to so what my mom did, making me feel badly every time I ate and famously saying things like "Do you really have to eat dinner every night?" and "If you keep eating ______ you're going to weigh 600 pounds!" I know now that she didn't want me to go through what she did, being heavy as a teenager and later having a serious eating disorder. But all the scrutiny only made me have a bad relationship with food. I still hate eating with other people as I feel they are analyzing what I eat the entire time. I remember when I was 9 I made a diet up for myself that included raw carrots for dinner. I was fucking 9, y'all. Anyway, the important thing now is to lose weight without sacrificing my health for it. No ephedra this time. If I don't reach my goal weight then I that's just the haps. I'm not going to kill myself over ham arms. I'm also not giving up Char-grill forever.

Jenny, Dives and grateful bagels

2008-06-09T07:09:00.001-07:00

So I saw Jenny last night, picked her up at her new super cute house in Cary. I got Jos season 3 of MacGuyver and he seemed genuinely pleased which is nice b/c I always feel like an awkward relative with him in that I want him to like me but I don't want to try too hard and stink of desperation.
So Jenny and I looked at pictures of ourselves from high school and I couldn't believe it because, apparently, at one time, we were children.
I know that sounds ridiculous but until last night, I had forgotten how young we were when it all started. I guess I always thought of us in terms of how old we were. It may seem like semantics, but honestly, until I saw my barley adolescent face smoking and writing on the train (to? from? Rochester?) I hadn't realized that we did not emerge after age 12, fully formed from one another's foreheads.
I decided something this past week, I realized I was ready to forgive people from my past that hurt me, let go of grudges I have harbored for too long. It feels good, to suddenly realize that I'm not angry any more, and shouldn't have been for awhile. It was a long time ago. We were children. I've only been hurting myself more by staying angry.
I told Jenny last night that it feels like that moment on the train I had with her, when we left Rochester for the last time, when I convinced myself not to be in love with Bobby. It was that easy, it was just the rational choice. I chose it, and it left me.
That's what it feels like now, but it was less deliberate, it didn't even fully crystallize until a few nights ago. This time, it left me, without me even realizing it was happening. I feel like I just had surgery to remove some enormous and cancerous mass, but I don't remember anything about it, I just feel better now.
Ugh, I'm really tired, I'm in stats and not paying attention.
So after I picked up Jenny we drove around Cary, futilely looking for a divey bar where the beer would be cheap. No Jack Astor's or big box chain restaurants with $4 beers for us. Apparently those bars don't exist in Cary. So we went to Pantanna Bob's on Hilsborough, and drank cheap domestic beers, and talked and talked and talked. Then I looked at my phone and it was 11.
This always happens when I'm with Jenny, I lose time, or it speeds up, goes too quickly.
She said something funny, she said she feels like she is just now catching up to who Owen was when he was 18. It old her that killed me because I feel like I am just now catching up with the person she was when she was 18.
We talked about the moments in our respective lives when we realized we were atheists. If Nabokov wrote a sentence about Jenny's experience it might read something like:
"I lost fate in God (Cheesecake Factory, traffic) because it doesn't make sense how we got from there to here."
If Nabokov wrote a sentence about my expereience it might read as follows:
"I lost fate in God (Bart Simpson, dead pets) because heaven doesn't make any sense to me."
So I had a little too much to drink amidst all this talk and we had to call Jeff and have him drive Jenny back to Cary. He's so nice, he wasn't mad at all, in fact he was happy we finally had a chance to catch up. I'm a grateful bagel indeed.
Congratulations to Sara and D., he's beautiful. Welcome to the rest of your lives.

On Beauty, Wunderkinds, apologies to DG

2008-06-06T23:19:00.000-07:00

So, I read an amazing article by Zadie Smith, author extraordinaire, in of course, The Believer, in which she talks (this is a transcript of a speech given to Columbia's MFAs) about the art of writing, and the fraudulent nature of giving such a speech and then doing it anyway. So, I will admit, I am a sucker for any kind of anything about the art of writing. Maybe it's the editor in me, but I have always loved those prefaces, speeches, impromptu lectures given by those who can really write. I can not really write. I love, as many of you know, fiction, especially short stories, but really all stories, long, longish, longer than should be allowed (Finnegan's Wake anyone?). I love books that force me to stay up all night to read them in one sitting, which I hope all of you know, is the best way to read a book. But still, I can't fucking write something, man, as The Dude would say. Sure, I can write music reviews, which, BTW, is something I fell into more out of desperation to look cool and just write anything more than a real passion of mine. Yes I heart music. Yes I have STRONG opinions about music. OK occasionally I'll write something about music that doesn't make me want to bury my head in the sand, But really? All I've ever wanted to do is write about books and I have never done it. Not. Once. Except on this blog. Which doesn't count. Because 6 people (whom I'm love love love) read it. Because I don't take risks with books like I take with music. Because they matter THAT MUCH. Fuckity fuck fuck. ANYWAY, so that article by ZS (PLEASE scroll back up and click on the link and read the damn thing I've asked you to do this ONCE in the entire life of this blog and I would love for others to read it and feel as daunted as I did) made me feel better and I was wondering why until I realized that I had officially stopped thinking of myself as a writer. Holy shit. NO kidding. I don't write fiction anymore. I just realized that. Despite the fact that I have not written a short story in six years or shown anyone something I've written (fiction) in three, I just realized after reading that article, THAT I DON'T THINK OF MYSELF AS A WRITER, anymore. I am no longer a writer, I am an editor, (at heart), secretly. I don't know that I could ever write, not for real, not like Sara, making sacrifices and spinning sentences as easily as a spider spins webs. Certainly not like ZS, (bitch) who published her first (amazing) novel at 21, nor like any of the hack genre fiction writers whose work comes through the doors of my job everyday. Nora Roberts may indeed be a robotic octopus writer with a human head (affectionately known as Noraroboctopus at work) who turns out more crap novels in a year than I have bowel movements in a month, but at least she puts pen to paper (or tentacle to keyboard as the case may be)and puts her crappy genre fiction bull shit out there. Sigh. ANYWAY, I thought that ZS gave some really good advice, advice I could have used when I was actually writing.

Ahem, so, I do disagree with her on some counts. I have always loved polemics about the art of writing, there is something clandestine and romantic about these staid and tired arguments. Something Dead Poet's Society about reading them and vehemently disagreeing, and then agreeing half way. I mean, measuring a poem by its length? Let's all let out our inner yawps. Let us rip out the pages then subtly pick them up after class like that cute tall guy who isn't credited. I do agree that any opinion about the "art of craft" as she says, is best in a discourse about a particular piece of work as opposed to writing, art, etc. in general. But people who can write can also shed light unto those of us who can't, and wish to. No matter ow staid or pedagogical it sounds, I always listen, waiting, hoping for that secret piece of advice that will unlock the potential I feel is inside of me, that cowers in fear of failing, that is afraid to try, pathetically, at all.

One thing struck me most of all about this piece; that in order to read your work you have to read as a reader not the writer.

Lord, let me tell you the embarrassment of printing something you could retract. Too often I had the unfortunate situation of writing something incredibly intimate and wishing I could take it back. Most often, and especially I refer to those pieces of writing that referred to an old ex of mine, DG. His ill-fated appearance in my life led basically to an expanded music knowledge on my part and then some embarrassingly personal resentment towards him (as explained in at least 3 Hatchet articles with his full and real name (gulp)) when it came to our relationship. I made a mistake, several time over, in writing about him. I could have used 6 months in a drawer with those articles. I could have used six months in relationship boot camp. I'm glad I have y'all to talk to to make mistakes with with NO ONE getting hurt. I am a selfish, thoughtless, slimy, asshole. I wish I could take those articles back. Actually, I wish I could take back the juvenile sentiments that led to those articles. I have a hard time getting over my heart being broken, even when my heart isn't in it.

ANYWAY, anyway, about things on writing, I always feel there is something clandestine and super secret diet pill-y about advice on writing; as in I am always willing to listen b/c I still want to lose weight, you know?

I think writing about writing is fascinating, mostly b/c I can't force myself to do it and I hope someone can give me the magic key to make it come out. I know this isn't realistic, especially after having read ZS's article.

What is not depressing about reading this article is realizing that my strengths probably do rest in editing. I can honestly say I don't know anyone who reads as much contemporary fiction as I do. I think this is an interesting phenomenon as I know a lot of people who are way smarter and engaged than I am. But still, I do it not to gain anything except a good read. Along the way I've discovered what I like (character driven, realistic settings with dialogue that doesn't make me want to bash my head in) and what I most assuredly don't (magical realism, post-modernism for PM's sake, Douglas Coupland dialogue) and I think that, in turn, makes me not a bad editor. I think the worst editors are the ones who can't decide WTF they like. I always said that Kerouac and Fitzgerald were great writers... of sentences. They couldn't write books though, not really, except for endings and then some.

I don't want to be the kind of writer who can only do one thing well. I don't want to be the kind of writer who can fit into the sentence "The kind of writer...". I want to write about corn fields and beauty and potential lost, only b/c these are the things I know, have known, don't need tutorials on.

Fuckity fuck fuck, I don't even remember what I was writing about.

OK love you all, i think I was going to say something about how all of you should read more contemporary fiction b/c these writers are writing about right now, and it matters to read right now more than any other time. All I'm saying is that if all of our parents had actually read one Flew Over the Cooku's Nest maybe state funded psychiatric facilities wouldn't be in the state the are in. (Thanks B & H!)

One last thing, I'm ecstatic about Obama. Get your votin' shoes on, bitches. You too, Marco.

Wedding Disaster number 4778

2008-05-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

So.
Things that should not transpire in a phone call about Rehearsal Dinner:
1) No one parents should be labeled "cheap" for not being able to afford another person's vision.
2) No one should attack the groom to be b/c they are mad at his parents.
3) No one should forget that the groom to be, when taken out for his birthday by his future in-laws, offered to pay and then thanked the future in-laws copiously.
4) Some people should stop bringing up the bride's weight every fucking minute to avoid driving her to self loathing and impossible expectations.
5) No one should have to explain that "can't afford it" means "doesn't make money like you do"
6) No one should then recite a litany of instances when the future in laws paid for the future son-in-law (five over three years) and then be told he isn't grateful and acts like "it's just expected"
7) No one should call their mom a fucking asshole three times and then hang up.
8) No one should feel this miserable about getting married so maybe it's understandable that someone called someone else and told them that they don't want their help if it's going to be like this.
Ready to elope.

Hola Carlos! and bowling

2008-05-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

So. We bought a new car, and if you are like us, living in the smaller worlds of commerce and living responsibly and feeling guilty all the time it's a big deal. This is our First Major Purchase as a couple.

We bought a Honda Fit, which seems right as far as nomenclature goes, and wierdly enough everyone who sees it keeps saying, "That seems sooo you and Jeff!!!". I don't know what that means but I'll take it and we've named him Carlos. So, Hola Carlos! Como esta? Muy bien? Me too!

Yikes! We have a car paymet now! What next babies?

That reminds me, I had a dream a afew nights ago that I was hanging out with Sara's family, and her Dad was talking nonsense about wrenches, but I'm pretty sure that Sara went into labor the night I dreamed this b/c we have that wierd distant frined/psychic thing going on. I miss her and I lvoe her, and I want all the (gory) details.

Hola Carlos!

Oh yeah, we went bowling with Marco and Tanya anf Paul and Jen and even Jenny showed up for a minute. We had the best time and I broke my high score of 47 (!) to reach the apex of 91. Oh, and I danced like a mad-woman to Lupe Fiasco and 50 "fitty"cent and Jen said I had some good moves. I'm just warming up to my 30th B-day party in D.C. Pics to follow.

Wow, this made me sad

2008-04-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

So Jeff and I went out tonight with our friend Bryan, unusual for us, as I normally have to work on Sat. Mornings, but tomorrow I don't, and we went to Humble Pie, a very cool resteraunt/ bar, with excellent outdoor seating, (because, as NC is want to do, in the Spring, it's beautiful in the evenings right now, being Spring) and great service too, so, we went there, and we talked about derogatory phrases like "She's easy" and how good the last Spoon album was ( the boys just went to see Spoon play on Sunday) and the excruciating-ness of applying for new jobs when you already have one that has no idea you are leaving and whatnot, whatever, and amen. So. We went to this bar called Havana's on Glenwood South, (the happening nigh time scene in Raleigh) which Daniel (my boy) and I used to haunt in our alcoholic summer/ year and I had not been back in some time. I thought it was safe, safe from Raleigh ghosts and the whatnot, and the who not, and the godahthaveidonenot, but it wasn't. I ran into Aaron, or BAJA (Big-Ass-Head-Aaron) a guy that I rode to the SAT's with, listening to Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy him saying to me about how they were this great band and I was like yeah yeah yeah, I got this album on vinyl (and for once it was true) and we rocked out on the way to take a test that was deciding our futures. We took the SATs, he went to one high school, I went to another, he got accepted at Evergree, in Olympia, WA, I got my scholarship to Guilford, end of story, right? Except not, as Raleigh is, he flunked out, I left Guilford, we both returned to Raleigh, desperate, unhappy, afraid, and meant different fates. He had a kid, 2 and a half years ago, a boy named Noble, (hoe effin great is that), but he hates the mother they fight, and he met me in a bar tonight, drunk, ridiculous, in cowboy hat and sunglasses ("You know who wears sunglasses indoors? Blind people and assholes.") talking about his baby boy, then talking about how he wants a little girl. Then two breaths later he sayes."I'm gonna go so drugs.", and he leaves. I'm overcome with something right now, something awful and contagious, like the Raleigh flu, or the failure flu, and I want to cry out against it, strike my hands against this awful metallic beast that holds us back and ask why?

Favorite Words

2008-04-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

whimsy
clutter
avocado
miscellany
monoaural
mud pie
brouhaha
bully (as in "Bully for you")
chimera
poppycock
crepuscle
ennui
zaftig

Some things I want

2008-04-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

1) for Jenny to post on her blog.
2) to lose 25 pounds by my wedding
3) for the caterer not to drop out and cause a coronary, again.
4) this giraffe guitar

Remember that journal made up of lists from the last post?

2008-04-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of one of the lists from that journal taken on a camera phone of one of my employees. It's so awaful it's funny. At least this lady had a fnny parrot, as she didn't have much else going for her.

Things People Buy

2008-04-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

So I'm in the unique position as a manager of a used media store to see the stuff folks are buying and selling. Though we are inundated with the absurd and the bizarre on a daily basis, I thought I'd share some of the finer moments in my tenure at the store.

Things People Bought.

1) Full House the Complete First Season.
Now this may not seem funny on the outset to you, but what has always killed me about this is the hubris I employed when I stated upon it's arrival, "Oh My God, no one is EVER going to buy this shit. They replay those fucking shows like ten times a day on TNT not to mention it's like the worst show ever." I put it out on the floor and twenty minutes later some sad sack brought it up to the counter and bought whilst I was having a complete conniption fit.
2) Clay Aiken's "Auto-biography". It was a "straight" guy in a polo.
3) Undercover Babies.
Picture babies in trench coats yielding handguns. Not really but still it's pretty ridiculous. Not found in the humor section, btw, but the romance section. My favorite part? The caption highlighting that these are "Top Secret Babies".
4) Macully Culkin's "novel" Junior. This happened just the other day. I, yet again, challenged the Gods when I said, while pricing it, "Who the fuck wants to read a novel by that Schmohawk?" Apparently women unhappy in there lives.
5) Some movies that we sell consistently that make me ponder the collective intelligence of the public; Zeus and Roxanne, Six Days, Seven Nights, Gigli, Dunston Checks In, Left Behind: The Movie, Left Behind II, Chairman of the Board, From Justin To Kelly, Baby Geniuses, Son of the Mask.

You get the idea.

Things People Sold.
Sometimes when you are processing the merchandise of a particular customer you catch an intimate glimpse into their psyche. Personally, I wish this happened less often. Take the case of the newly divorced forty-ish year old woman. Books brought to be sold included:
Intimacy in Long Marriage: Sustaining the Passion for Years to Come.
365 Things to Do in Bed to Spice Up Your Love Life
Healing the Rift: Overcoming Distance in Your Marriage.
Is He Cheating On You? The Way to Know Without Asking.
Love Hurts: How to Forgive Infidelity.
The North Carolina Guide to Divorce.
Children and Divorce: Beyond the "It's Not Your Fault" Philosophy.
Single After So Many Years: The Woman's Guide to Dating after Divorce.

Yikes!

2) sometimes it's not what you sell but what you bring it in. Like Kitty Litter boxes. Not Completely cleaned out of litter. One day it happened twice in a row. Seriously.

3) Personal journals. I have no idea what compels people to try to sell their journals but it happens all the time. Sometimes it's those layman's psychology inspirational crap that people only partly fill out. Like this one that asks you a series of questions that you answer by maing lists. Questions inlcude;
Q:What is something about you that no one knows?
A: I use the word niger. [sic]

Q: What is something you've always wanted to do?

A: Drink blood

Q: What are your goals for the next year.
A: Live a Gothic lifestyle.

Q: What are some long term goals?

A: Get some education, live a gothic lifestyle, stop sucking dick, improve my handwriting.

Double Yikes! Glad to see that improved handwriting was right up there with "stop sucking dick"

Books I have Not Read, Yet , at Least, as Someday Maybe I Will

2008-04-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

Last night while I lay in bed fretting over Bean's sudden uncontrollable explosive diarrhea I got to thinking about my last post and decided to do a companion piece, but about books. I'm curious, what did y'all never bother to read?
Books I have not read, or only read part of, or simply could not finish.
1. The Old Man and the Sea
2. The Brothers Karamazov
3. Gone with the Wind
4. War and Peace
5. Out of Africa
6. Ulysses
7. Infinite Jest
8. Macbeth
9. The Dark Tower series, book 2
10. Oliver Twist

10.

Movies I have not seen

2008-04-01T18:45:00.000-07:00

Inspired once again by Marco and his prolific blogging at The Midpoint I decided to list some movies I have never bothered to watch for one reason or another.
1. Independence Day
2. Rambo (all)
3. The Godfather II, III
4. The Crying Game
5. Alien
6. The Piano
7. Ben Hur
8. Bambi
9. It's a Wonderful Life
10. A musical, any.

Some movies I have seen, for no good reason.

1. Mr. Bean's Holiday
2. Osmosis Jones
3. Gummo
4. The Wicker Man, both
5. Communion
6. The Holiday
7. Music and Lyrics
8. Wild Aces
9. Spare Change 9/11 film
10. 15 and Pregnant (with Kirsten Dunst.)

I know I'm not the only one.

the rustling of hands under desks

2008-03-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

It is so beautiful right now.
This week it finally started to feel like Spring, what with the temperature in the seventies during the day and in the sixties at night. Sleeping with windows open, putting together furniture and realizing we needed the air on, Bean actually working up a a pant on his thrice daily walks, and diving head first into lilacs, violets, dandelions.
Driving to work I keep catching whiffs of Springs past, the one where Sara and I picked flowers for our Moms on I-40 for Mother's Day, the one before eighth grade graduation, in the first moony days of lust and love with Justin Williams, the one when I called in sick to work at Blue Ridge to drink forties and smoke cigars with Melanie and Sasha, the one when Jenny was pregnant and she came over to watch ER with my mom and I. What I have been deeply reminded of this week, however, is that restlessness that inevitably comes over a grade school classroom this time of year, that itchy all over, yearning for the outdoors, blacktop basketball courts and endless bike rides up the main thoroughfare of Shelbyville, catching the ends of branches just budding over sidewalks already littered with seed pods, the first grass clippings of the year, hop scotch diagrams and the detritus of that adolescent equinox.
As much as I wish I could be outside watching Bean somersault into neighbors' wildflowers I know I don't want to be outside one tenth as much as I did when I was ten and looking at Springtime blossom outside my elementary school windows, oddly conscious of the sound of hands rustling under desks, the way Brady Kugn's legs looked in yellow basketball shorts, the restive sigh of pages as they turned and we waited, oh waited, for that final bell to ring.
I hope when I have kids some of that unabashed longing to run outside at the first opportunity comes back. I'm thinking a lot about kids lately, what with preparing for my wedding and Sara and her gorgeous pictures and talking with Jenny about Jos, and now also I can finally tell everyone that my sister-in-law, Angelita, is preggers. She and Chris are on a "babymoon" right now, sunning in glorious Mexico, actually enjoying the outdoors instead of writing about it.
When I saw my OBGYN she sort of blew off my concerns about fertility despite the fact that she's the one who told me it would be a problem for me years ago. As soon as she heard that we weren't actively trying she made me feel like my concerns weren't valid, that if I hadn't been trying for a year then she wasn't even going to talk about my fertility, or lack there of, or what I should do to get ready to have a baby. Needless to say I am in the market for a new OBGYN.
When we were in DC we stayed at our friend Paul's Mom's place, a gorgeous house in Mt. Vernon, literally blocks from GW's famous house. His mom and her partner Lisa were out of town but for the last few months friends of theirs have been staying with them while their house gets remodeled and I met and hung out with them and got some good advice. They said that first of all doctors, even good ones, often don't understand how emotionally taxing being afraid you can't have kids can be and that at the very least I should find one who understands my situation and won't make me feel badly about having (valid) concerns. Secondly they said that in their experience, you go through life thinking you'll have kids one day and then your twenties go by in a haze, your thirties are dedicated to furthering your career and then one day you wake up, your forty and you want a baby and it might be too late. They are undergoing IVF right now and I wish them the best as they seem like they'll be great parents. They did make me feel better about going that route if I need to as I am younger and will have a better chance of conceiving.
OK, anyway, next time a much lighter post about farting or something.

Our Nation's Capital

2008-03-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

We keep asking Bean, when he licks his crotch or does other unsightly acts, if this is the behavior he will display in Our Nation's Capital this weekend. We are taking Bean and going with friends, Paul and Jen, to D.C. for a nice little mini vacation. Bean got a haircut and we are ready to go. We will definitely post pictures upon our return, probably something like Bean pissing on the bushes in front of the White House. If only that sentence could read "...pissing on the Bushes in front of the White House."

By the way, I am getting kind of wedding burned out. Too many emails regarding vest color or the ongoing debate about ties vs/ kerchiefs or whatever. I hope to return with new found enthusiasm. Mostly it's because the store I manage moved the weekend after we got engaged and things have been really hectic since. Jeff and I have barely been able to see each other, let alone figure out invitations and registries. Also, Becca asked me if I wanted a bridal shower and a Batchelorette party and I said both but then felt weird and greedy.
Ugh.
What else? I'm giving Dennis Lehane another chance after watching the excellent Gone, Baby, Gone with the always tasty Casey Afleck. I am still not convinced he can write worth a damn. But the book is different enough from the movie to keep me interested and he writes half-way decent dialog. I finished Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets which is a book written by David Simon, one of the guys who created and wrote The Wire. It was the best true crime book I've ever read and really, it's more like crime literature than crime fiction. There are lots of stories out of that book that later went on to inform the characters and the dialog of The Wire. One of my favorites is about a guy named Snot Boogie and how one night he got shot and killed for running off with a big pot from the corner craps games. One of the guys who had money in that pot talked to the primary investigative detective and told him that yeah, Snot Boogie always did that, came around, played a few rolls and waited for the pot to get big then ran off with the loot. It was just a matter of time before someone took out Snot Boogie. The detective asked this cat why they let Snot Boogie play, if he always ran off with the pot. The guy looked at the detective incredulously, saying, "We had to let him play, this is America."
Speaking of The Wire I hooked another person on it, and as my newest victim to the addiction that is the greatest television show ever written I welcome Daniel.
I haven't seen Jenny in two weeks or more and that makes me very sad. She should call me.

Fits and Starts

2008-02-29T16:35:00.000-08:00

Hello
I saw Jenny this week and she shamed me saying "It's gotten to the point where I've stopped checking." Pregnant pause and sigh. Alas, here I am guilty and beaten into posting. We should all be so lucky to have someone in our lives to kick our asses without resorting to violence. Just guilt. Ha, that's funny, you can read that sentence in two ways and both are true.
So.
So I'm engaged. That's crazy. (I sound like Brian Fellows.) I'm super excited about the wedding. So far we've booked the reception site, the caterer, the photographer, asked our bridal party and made our (enormous) guest list. I'm looking at dresses and Jenny suggested (after looking through an enormous wedding magazine and complaining about girls who are far too thin and dresses that looked more edible than wearable) that I post my favorites and let y'all vote. OK?

1 2 3

I'm swearing not to become someone like the picture on the right here

Another reason I don't drive drunk.

2007-11-18T09:30:00.000-08:00

Seriously. I WAS HIT BY AN SUV. It turns out the guy has two prior DUIs, so I feel much better about him going to jail and his life being changed forever. I am in some pain and I'm really sore, I'll write about it later when I can actually focus on the computer screen. (Valium + Viocdin = super happy fun time Amanda Show). Love you guys, I'm really glad I didn't die. If it had not of been for Jeff pulling me out of the way, I probably could have. I think I'll keep him around.

2007-11-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm listening to the Flying Burrito Brothers version of "Wild Horses" which is so tremendous I wish all of you could hear it too.

Things have been really busy for the last few months, between school and me stressing out about work (I am thinking of leaving but don't know what I'd do) and trying to have time with Jeff and the cats. I've been really down and frustrated and it sucks. I've also had terrible

writer's block and haven't written a column or a real post in months. When I'm writing I'm thinking about the chapters I need to read for Geology. When I read Geology I want to be writing or playing or sleeping or reading for pleasure.

I am finishing Cormac McCarthy's The Road tonight, and it was incredible, beautifully written, but the darkest book I have ever read with the exception of Requiem for a Dream (remember the movie? remember the vanquished dreams and the amputated arm and the whoring? Multiply that feeling you had after watching (you know the "that was an amazing movie but I NEVER want to see it again" feeling that all normal people should have but which for some reason did not happen to my brother or cousin Steven as it is their favorite movie to watch Drunk. Seriously.) and multiply it by about a hundred and you have the misery that is reading the book. The Road is not far off, and though it is masterful and dazzling in it's precision, it is also harrowing. The hype is real, though. Oprah made it one of her books so I am again left holding my snob ass nose in the air though I keep imagining housewives across America having the kind of dreams I am having reading this thing. Bodies everywhere. Ashes over everything, falling like in Ground Zero on September 11th. Fear. The world gone, and you alone. Gray. I will be happy when my dreams return to the regularly scheduled programming. I plan on reading Stephen Colbert's book next as making fun of Republicans always makes the inevitable collapse of our world seem just a little bit further off. (that's my cousin Steven in a Whale hat b/c our Moms' maiden name was Whaley)

What else?

I think I'm going to go see a fertility specialist as things look complicated for the future little Amanda's and Jeff Jr.s if we don't get a handle on my always not working lady parts. I'm REALLY freaked out though, b/c I'm afraid they are going to tell me I can;t have kids. And I know I can adopt (pending some financial wrangling) and some people think it is sinful to not adopt when there are so many kids out there who need a home and half a chance and I agree but I also really really want to have my own kids. And going to a specialist will give me definite answers about whether this is a pipe dream or a reality and I'm not sure if I'm TRULY ready for the answer.

Also, my ten year high school reunion is in three weeks and I don't want to go b/c I don't have my degree and I hate my job and I need to lose weight. But I do want to go for the train wrecks that are bound to happen. And b/c Daniel will be there to get my back. I'm also weirded out about seeing Sasha there, as we haven't spoken in about a year or more. I'm not sure why, except maybe we're exhausted. I don't know anymore. I know it makes me sad, as I saw her dad yesterday, ("Dr. G") and he and I had a great conversation and I told him to tell Sasha I said hello. He gave me a hug and it made me miss him and Andrea (Sasha's mom) and Sash so bad. They were like my surrogate family in high school. Sigh.

Okay, enough bitching send me ideas for columns. Oh and b/c he won't tell you to, read Mike's review of the new Radiohead album at the Hatchet website, posted as a link above. Jeff also has a great review and Marco too, so check it out.

PAPELBON!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-10-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

Sox do it again.

RED SOX GAME 1; 13-1, MAKE HISTORY

2007-10-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

WHOOOOO!!!!

RED SOX WIN ALCS!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-10-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

YOU JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE

(or pretend you don't care)

GO SOX!

BTW my MVP is YOOOUUUUKKK!

HATCHETFEST 2007= HELL

2007-09-14T08:04:00.000-07:00

So somehow I got put in charge of this whole Hatchetfest thing, and I have no idea what the hell I'm doing and I'm really freaked out and no one is helping me and I think it's going to be a disaster and all I want to do is stay home and watch Ugly Betty.

Ahem, so if you live in NC please come to Hell tonight (a bar in Chapel Hill) to support The Hatchet and watch some really good bands (Monologue Bombs, Jews and Catholics, Cantwell Gomez and Jordan) and simultaneously watch me have a nervous breakdown/ kill someone.

OKAY JENNY QUIT YELLING AT ME

2007-09-13T10:45:00.001-07:00

love you!

My favorite local band

2007-09-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

This is a review I wrote for the new issue. Visit Scott at http://www.myspace.com/themonologuebombs and listen for yourself.

Monologue Bombs
Beverages and Ghosts
Superfan Records
The first sound on Beverages and Ghosts is that of a drum machine being programmed. Soon, synthesizer cymbals, the kind that sound like the those played by a performing monkey in the streets of Calcutta, perambulate before and behind a voice, that of Scott Phillips, a stirring dichotomy of buoyant texture and gravitas. Album opener "December ‘83" is the paramount example of a Monologue Bombs song. Deeply personal, but strangely not confessional or of the naval gazing variety; instead Phillips’ canvas is more akin to Polaroids, the ones we all have in baby books or crumbling photo albums locked in the closets of our parents’ old houses. A funeral where all we can hear is a pop song, the first lessons of empathy, of resilience. Phillips has the uncanny ability to make you feel better by making you feel normal. Like Springsteen, Mangum, or the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, Phillips is not only a great songwriter, he became one by being a great story teller, one whose characters remind us of our uncles or boyfriends or elementary school best friends. We see our lives and ourselves in his songs so connecting to his music comes naturally. The comparisons to the aforementioned artists are not on accident, with special consideration for the influence of Darnielle on Phillips’ delivery. When he performs as Monologue Bombs (as he is in several other notable local projects including the always excellent Goner and sound engineering antics of Heads on Sticks plus probably a dozen more) it is alone on a stage with a body full of instruments; a one-man accordion-keyboard virtuoso. Despite the heavy burden of his instruments his voice is surprisingly lithe, and reminiscent of vocalists whose charm resides in the ability to sound like no one else exactly but reminding us of singers already loved. Fans of Neutral Milk Hotel, The Boss, The Boss’ dark brothers in arms- Richard Buckner and Randy Newman or any modern piano balladeer will find this first album infinitely satisfying. You will take your iPod off shuffle for this album. Often Phillips is able to pull off what would seem clumsy or inchoate in other hands; like writing songs from the perspective of already established and beloved characters, as in "Chino’s Song". In the same song, Chino calls to Maria, "It’s a dirty little island/Liquor signs and neon drones/ find us here, far from home, Corazòn". Most of the time when white boys try to impersonate brown ones they get it unequivocally wrong, but Phillips sings the Spanish words like they belong to him. You can picture her there, or more accurately, not there: the empty fire escape, the river running by, the sound of water falling off of bodies. While Phillips may not be Chino exactly, you believe him when he sings in his voice. Imagine R.E.M.’s "Nightswimming" gone Broadway and you’ll start to hear this song. While Sondheim and Berstein musicals may not be your fortè, remember the story is about star-crossed lovers and the things we do when we are desperate. Again, Phillips is able to make accessible and compelling something previously thought the territory of the other, of drama nerds and mothers.
Three songs in we meet Jason Weaver and hear his story in "Jason’s Song". A 25 year-old pizza delivery "boy" who dropped out of college but still hangs around campus, transporting pies to students both younger and more tenacious than he. He meets a seventeen-year-old "townie-girl" and heartbreaker who dances with him "at the Lazy Star to some watered-down covers band" but ultimately leaves him for school in Texas and a future that doesn’t include him. Jason Weaver isn’t just every man, he’s ever dumped man, but one that ultimately concludes that it is better to have gone through with it than never feel the love that blossoms while you "fall asleep in a tangle on the couch". A vibrant and lively accordion along with the catchiest hook on the record keep the song from being morose, and to the contrary, the sad story of Jason Weaver is another example of how the most acute and significant moments on the record are those that emerge from the contrast between the story and the sound of it being told. You may feel sorry for Jason Weaver, but in the end, you really just want to take him out for tequila shots and a chance to give him another all-nighter to remember.
Phillips is an Anthropologist of relationships, recovering shards of poetry that reveal our intentions like forensic diary entries. He knows that love, like hate, is a thing between two people, and the best way to understand love is to examine what remains after we have left. The next three songs are recovered pieces of relationships. "The Night You Were Conceived" is about the private language that exists between partners and the mundane images that still hold beauty over us. Every day matters (in both senses), the relief and wonder of finding home. Phillips croons over a softly tinkling keyboard here, very nearly a lullaby, and the shadow of Springsteen stands very near the darker edges of this song. "Floaters and Empties" is also about the private language between two people, but unlike the gentle affection in "The Night You Were Conceived" the conversation in this song is the torturous kind; a kind of savage intimacy. Mistakes made under street lamps after the rest of the party went to bed and you are left staring at a sink-full of beer bottles and cigarette butts. The jaunty accordion here seems fueled by the energy of regret and makes the last lines sung sting like smoke in your eye: "Sometimes I wish you’d never met me/ We’re so done for, darling Nikki". "Corner Lights" is about taking chances, ignoring sense, the risk of letting your self be watched, the possibility of love around the corner, the next person through the door. Characters who only know escape from the minutiae and monotony, through the same old drinks, the trysts in dark alleys, ultimately allow themselves to believe that something beautiful can exist after all that, can see "Corner lights, little stars that never fall". Though, it is a precarious kind of tightrope they walk upon, one that can be broken by a few minutes waiting, by self-doubt and anxiety.
"Shadow Tagger" is the most personal of all songs on Beverages and Ghosts, a letter to a friend lost unexpectedly. It is the only song where Phillips does not create a character or someone else’s voice to sing in. Phillips’ voice radiates over muted keyboards, though tender, as he sings a broken-hearted eulogy :"As long as you keep cooling my shoulders/Keep pushing me on/ Keep tagging my shadow/ Sweetheart so-long". Instantly recognizable as something sincere, honest and above all true, this song stands out on an album full of remarkable songs.
Fundamentally an album about relationships, Beverages and Ghosts stands above the deluge of records by other, less talented singer/songwriters simply by being better at what makes the genre great; the melodies are strong and the stories ring true and compel us to listen and remember. The songs are never weighted down by the seriousness with which Phillips takes the characters in his songs. Instead the music remains revealing without being maudlin, and snippets of dialogue sung naturally as part of the story being told propel the narratives and the subjects from mere pop songs to pieces of invented history.
-Becom

The iPod Shuffle game RETURNS! BRUHAHAHAHA

2007-09-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

Another "Ear Out of the Vaccuum" that I forgot to post.

Every so often, a complete waste of time comes along and captures your attention, sweeps you off your feet and promises to spend countless hours with you: at work, in the car, while your supposed to be finishing columns for a deadline…you know what I’m saying. My first love was Solitaire, with many afternoons spent in my grandparent’s TV room, with rows of alternating black and red cards neatly aligned on a TV tray in front of me, my grandfather raptly watching Vannah White’s ass in her cocktail dress of the evening. I then got my first Game Boy, a two pound monster compared to today’s sleek and lightweight models, but one that brought Tetris and all it’s geometric glory to my life. As I started to use computers more I discovered automated Solitaire and thought I would never tire of it. Alas, I soon graduated to the more sophisticated and satisfying Free Cell where I have been stuck for the last 12 years. Until now, that is. Behold, for I now bring you The iPod shuffle game, the greatest tool of the procrastinator and the most endlessly distracting waste of time thus encountered. And it’s music related so really I get to waste time and write this column at the same time, thus not really wasting time. The idea is that you set you iPod on shuffle mode and ask a set of questions, with the song titles and artists and albums making up a kind of answer The best thing about this game is that it can be infinitely modified, personalized and adapted. Credit goes to the one and only Marco Soto, progenitor of many wastes of time and master of all of them. I first read about the shuffle game on his old blog (How Not To Blog) though I am not sure if he invented it. He writes a great new blog called the Midpoint (http://www.themidpt.com/) where you can learn stuff and laugh and connect with other similarly minded folks and not feel guilty for wasting time because your IQ actually increases by ten points whenever you read one of his posts.
1. How am I feeling today?
"Cowgirl in the Sand"/Neil Young/ Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
Holy shit. There is a line in this song that goes "You know it’s the woman in you/ that makes you play this game". That seems apropos. Also, I have felt stuck in quick sand all day and I’m frustrated with where I’m at in my pursuit of my degree so I definitely feel like this is nowhere.
2. Will I get far in Life?
"Exit Only"/ Fugazi/ Steady Diet of Nothing
I am officially depressed. The lyric "Will we leave the last place burning? /Or do we just get leaving?" is particularly awful as well as the album title. Is it possible to plateau at age ten? Stupid shuffle game.
3. What is my best friend’s theme song?
I have a couple so bear with me
a. "Sorry Entertainer"/ Daniel Johnston/ Welcome to My World
Robyn is one of The Hatchet’s writers. Her pieces are my favorite b/c they always make me laugh. She’s the one who begged the Fiery Furnaces not to get arrested before their show in a show preview a few months back. This is funny on so many levels.
b. "Fool for You"/ Ray Charles/ The Birth of Soul
Paul is one of my oldest friends. He’s also the whitest guy I know. But he’s very cool and sweet anyway.
c. "Sentimental Journey"/ Ray Charles/ Genius Hits the Road
Sasha and I have been friends since we met at a birthday party for our mutual best friend Heather when we were in seventh grade. We ditched the other stupid girls who were cruising for Cary middle school guys and got Blue Razz Icees. We haven’t seen each other much lately, though I don’t know why. When I think of her I think of the past, as we had some very fun times. Weird the iPod chose two Ray Charles songs in a row. Freaky-deaky, even.
d. "Jumping Fences"/Olivia Tremor Control/Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle
Mike. Wow. All I can do is quote the first two lines. "Lazy man who can't find his words/All caught up inside his head" Mike and I have done more talking about music than all my other friends combined. We also get in fights constantly. I love him, and we broke into a golf course one summer many years ago, though I don’t remember jumping fences. He was also a film student and worked in L.A. for a bit so this seems right.
4. What was high school like?
."The Youth are Getting Restless"/ Bad Brains/The Youth are Getting Restless
Mother Scratcher! Awesome shuffle game!
5. What is the best thing about me?
"Beautiful Morning"/ Little Brother/ The Minstrel Show
I am an awful person in the morning. But this lyric is totally my MO: "Speechless is all you'd be if we ever met up/ I survived far too much now to ever let up, motherfucker"

6. How is today going to be?
"1001 Pleasant Dreams"/ Mission of Burma/ The Obliterati
Today was a shit-tastic day. Maybe when I go to sleep my day will finally get better. The iPod says so, so it must be true.
7. What is in store for this weekend?
"Jakov’s Suite"/ Tapes ‘n Tapes/The Loon
Better than a Magic Eight Ball. The iPod sees this for my future; "come to me, for silence songs/ it's love the cold sugar-coated shit songs" AKA I will be working on Hatchet stuff all weekend. Just kidding. Whatever.
8. What song describes my parents?
"Ice Age"/ Junk Science/ Feeding Einstein
My mom prefers rubies. But my dad does drive a Jag so maybe there is some obsession with status symbols... It’s especially ironic that it’s hip-hop, as they absolutely abhor rap of any kind.

9. How is my life going?
"Blind"/ Talking Heads/ Naked
The iPod is not very cheery about who I am or where I’m going. Officially mad at the iPOd. Especially considering this lyric "Now tell me what the Hell have we become? /Some dirty little bastards/ What the Hell is going on?" Fuck that, man, though it’s true that occasionally I am a girl in a window and I do not want to die. Like John Irving said, "Keep passing the open windows".
10. What song will they play at my funeral?
"Don’t Have to Be So Sad"/ Yo La Tengo/ Summer Sun
A couple of years ago I got my boyfriend hooked on Six Feet Under and we had a lot of conversations about what we wanted to happen to our bodies after we died. Eventually he made me stop because he was so uncomfortable discussing this inevitable future. When my aunt died a few weeks ago he found out about the history of cancer and heart diseases in my family was really sad and scared for me. It made me love him that much more. This song is such a beautiful song about the relief that love brings, the companionship and the small moments. It’s definitely going on my next mix CD for him. This is a perfect choice for a funeral because it’s about being happy that you know someone and that’s the best we can hope for. I love this part of the song "Because I love you so, and I pray you know/ But I'm not much for praying/ I knew I couldn't say that without making a joke". Love you Bagel, I’m definitely not sad with you around.
11. How does the world see me?
"Long Time Jerk"/ The Clash/ Super Black Market Clash
Ha! Oh my God, this is getting so good.
12. What do my friends really think of me?
"Life Will Pass You By"/ Kaleidoscope/ Egyptian Candy
OK, this is starting to creep me out.
13. Do people secretly lust after me?
"Where is My Mind"/ Pixies/ Surfer Rosa
I have no illusions. I may have designs, but not illusions. Besides, who needs ‘em? Though this is my favorite driving song of all time. How can you not feel like a badass when you are listening to this song at top volume, speeding down the road? Then, they lust for me, I know they do. OK, maybe I harbor a few illusions.
14. How can I make myself happy?
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"/ The Beatles/ White Album
Give me a fucking break, iPod. I know that I have intimacy issues and that I Hate sweeping floors but I pride myself on being a good repressed puritan, so I was most certainly not "perverted". Maybe I need to be perverted and inverted and alerted to be happy. Maybe I need to sweep the kitty litter off the floor. Or maybe I just need to stop being such a pussy and let myself trust someone. Whatever iPod, I know your game now.
15. What should I do with my life?
"In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"/ Neutral Milk Hotel/ In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
This is one of those desert island albums, those perfect, impeccable pieces of music that changes your life. Maybe I’m supposed to be writing about music like this more often. I love this part of the song: "And one day we will die/ And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea/ But for now we are young/ Let us lay in the sun/ And count every beautiful thing we can see". Maybe I’m supposed to find Jeff Mangum and finagle him out of hiding. And then I’ll have his babies.
16. Will I ever have children?
"Double Rocker"/ Stereolab/ Sound-Dust
Twins! That love rock music! Possibly francophiles!
17.What is some good advice?
"Everything is Fair"/ A Tribe Called Quest/ The Low End Theory
Here is some better advice. Listen to this album as it is still the coolest and just as stellar as it was in ’91. Except for the Arsenio and pager references.
18. What do I think my current theme song is?
"Who Loves the Sun"/ The Velvet Underground/ Loaded
I just got sunburned really badly at the beach last weekend. And I am so over this fucking heat wave.
19. What does everyone else think about my current life?
"Hotel California"/ Gypsy Kings/ The Big Lebowski Soundtrack
Holy shit. I hate the fucking Eagles, man. But this cover is super awesome. So I’m awesome. Clearly the iPod loves me. Plus, "It don’t matter to Jesus".
20. What type of men do I like?
"Rise Up in Dirt"/ Voxtrot/ Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives
Obviously, I need a man who is multifaceted. A good man, a hard-worker, one that sees me for who I am and still loves me. "Cause I can be a father/ I can be a brother/ I can be a flower/ rise up in the dirt" The album title is funny for this question, though.
21. Will I get married?
"Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing"/ Marvin Gaye/ The Very Best of Marvin Gaye
I’m taking this as a yes.
22. What should I do with my love life?
"We Dance"/ Pavement/ Wowee Zowee
This seems pretty straight-forward. I love the first line of this song. "There is no castration fear/ in a chair you’ll be with me"
23. Where will I live?
"Sick Friend"/ Aesop Rock/ Appleseed
This does NOT bode well. I feel like I just played M.A.S.H (boys, ask the girls) and got the shack.
24. What will my dying words be?
"Jack the Ripper"/ The One Way Streets/ Back from the Grave
I’m not sure what Jack the Ripper has to do with it but clearly I’m not gonna be gone for long! You can’t get rid of me that easily! Motherfuckers! Bruhahahahaha
25. When I’m having sex I say:
"Busted Afternoon"/ Old 97’s/ Fight Songs
My boyfriend is not happy about this.
26. When I meet a boy for the first time I say:
"Heretics"/ Andrew Bird/ Armchair Apocrypha
Word.
27. When my parents are angry I say:
"A Good Man is Hard to Kill"/ Beulah/ The Coast is Never Clear
Seriously, the man is not gonna bring me down.
28. Will I ever get the career I want?
"Be My Queen"/ The Chentelles/ Back from the Grave
That is totally my dream job. Yeah! Good iPOd!
29. What do my colleagues think of me?
"Long Story"/ Rudy Mills/ Let’s Do Rocksteady
Ha! Appropriate. But at least it’s reggae so maybe I’m laid back…though I doubt it.
30. Do I believe in God?
"I Burn"/ Toadies/ Rubberneck
Hmmmm, maybe I should rethink the whole Atheist position. I’m not completely set on that, right?

Why Seeing Slint Doesn't Matter

2007-09-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

This is one of my articles for The Hatchet that I forgot to post.

A lot of people love Slint, and Spiderland, the breakout album from 1991 that spurned the hollow hair metal that dominated MTV and most teenagers’ bedroom posters. I was in sixth grade in 1991, had just fallen in love with Jane’s Addiction and was a few years away from spurning metal of any kind and discovering Spiderland or the term post-rock for myself. Flash forward to 1997, my freshman year in college and a doomed relationship with a fellow rock nerd who preferred to listen to records rather than get it on. On many of those sexually frustrated nights we listened to Spiderland, strange bedfellows to be sure. The strangely off kilter drumming, the guitars all stretched out weirdness that hinted at darkness repressed, the vocals, barely intelligible, at times whispered and others straining over the night storms of sound. It was too pretty to be punk, to angled and strange to be straight up rock, it was a different animal, quietly stalking the fringes of indie and college radio friendly pop. Spiderland is the album for music dorks of all stripes, the one that Rush fans and Superchunk die-hards both have on their list of most influential albums, an album that shows those two music fans aren’t necessarily at loggerheads. This is an important album, one that reaches back to hardcore punk and out to avant-garde music fans, one that confounded many listeners who wanted to know what the hell the big deal is, anyway. One that became accredited to shaping the landscape of current indie rock and post rock and math rock today. Some of this credit is, at the least, overly simplified and at the worst, kind of insulting. But ask anyone who loves nineties indie rock why they can’t get past this particular era in music and they will tell you to look to Kentucky, in the late eighties and early nineties and find five guys who put out a great record that accidentally changed rock music.
When the people who throw the All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals announced the line up for the cheekily named Don’t Look Back concert series, I and many of my rock nerd brethren and sistren creamed our pants. Nevermind the $20 ticket price, we didn’t get to see Slint play live b/c many of us were in grade school. Holy shit! It was our chance!
Three members of the original Slint: Brian McMahan, David Pajo and Britt Walford, were rounded out by two other players to perform Spiderland as a five piece at the Cradle on July 19th. The tension was palpable. There were a lot of serious Slint fans there, along with many younger kids who may have been turned on to Slint by older siblings or cool uncles or the wacky indie rock neighbor with so many eighties TV show lunchboxes. As long time Slint fan and man about town Jay Winfrey said "I don’t want to be that guy, but there are a lot of kids here who were probably born the year Slint broke up. Shit. I am that guy." Honestly, it was hard not to notice the demographics. It was also hard not to notice the gargantuan, shiny, silver tour bus out front. Also, hard not to notice the $18 price tags on tee shirts.
Raleigh’s very own and very awesome Strange were excellent as always though maybe a weird (notice I did not say strange) choice to open for Slint. Strange is really dynamic and the sound is huge and guitar-y in a good way layered with off beat instrumentation like trumpet. I’m glad they’re back, and looking forward to weirder and wilder outings from them. The pairing with Slint’s quiet quiet quiet LOUD quiet quiet syncopation was like watching Flava Flav get it on with that old blonde lady. Something. Seemed. Off.
What’s stranger than Strange? Watching hundreds of rock nerds queue up to watch a band perform an album that they listened to obsessively fifteen years ago and be disappointed by it. I’ll admit that I was underwhelmed. I’ve written before about music that is intensely private, the kind that you listen to alone, feel deeply connected to because it feels it is being performed for just you. Spiderland is one of those records. It’s hard to listen to with other people, as they inevitably talk over your favorite guitar tremors or whispered lyrics. In my case it was an album I have always connected with deep and needless loneliness, not for any small reason because I too often listened with someone I desperately wanted to pay attention to me. At the show my case was not helped by a girl who was literally resting her can of PBR on my neck as she gyrated to "Breadcrumb trail". Don’t ask me how you dance to that song. I don’t know. I also don’t know how the most obnoxious/ drunkest/ loudest/ dumbest person at a show zeros I on where I will be standing and decides to be right next to me or behind me or in front of me. Said girl finally asked me if she could just stand in front of me as "I was supposed to be on the guest list. I know Dave. Dave Pajo. I was supposed to be on the guest list." She then proceeded to yell out his name and dance through the remainder of the show when she wasn’t going to the bar to refill two cans at a time. Seriously? Stay home. No one cares that you had sex with Dave Pajo or whatever.
After moving out of the vicinity of the ass and hips of the Dave Pajo groupie I was able to notice how much empty space there was. This was not a sold out show, and I was surprised. For an album that matters so much to so many people I was really shocked by how few came. The real surprise hit me as I tried to assimilate what I was hearing with what I had hoped to experience. I wanted to hear Slint play Spiderland, right? Didn’t I? It turn out the answer was, not really. They played beautifully, flawlessly even, That’s when it started to bug me. I was talking to Dave Cantwell of the venerable Cantwell, Gomez and Jordan and he told me he was amazed by their precision, by the fact that "…all those things on the record, the smallest things you thought were mistakes, were recreated there." Exactly. As Art Sieg;eman said, "And that’s when my troubles began." Why do you go to see live music? When I go to see bands I already like I want to see them fuck around, surprise me. I want it to feel spontaneous and special. I was starting to realize that this was going to be the same show that they played in Brussles, in Chicago at Pitchfork, in Las Vegas. This was the album note for note. (They also played two songs from the untitled EP and a ten minute monster called "King’s Approach" which was my favorite moment in the show and the only time they got loud enough.) The show was disappointing because Spiderland hasn’t changed at all, while the rest of us have. I want to make perfectly clear that these guys are excellent and the album is still important. But like a person who is forced into assuming a title he never asked for, I think these guys became something in the minds of fans they never asked to become. They wanted to play the album because they got to go back and learn old material, see how it felt, not deliver the missed opportunity of a lifetime to hundreds of die-hard fans. They never wanted to be the emperor and they sure as hell were not prepared to bring clothes. That being said, the emperor was not only naked he was splayed spread eagle on a stage before a quiet and confused crowd. As my friend Taylor said, "I forgot my policy of not seeing reunion shows, not ever, because they never fail to disappoint." It was good, it was not great. I let my expectations get the better of me, and that always brings out the worst in me. I think the Don’t Look Back series is not a bad idea, per se, I just don’t think it’s what we expected it to be. I’m glad I saw them, but seeing them didn’t matter. None of this matters, not really, not like when it did when you fell in love with the album the first time. And like all love affairs that are maligned by comparisons to that first, sweet and perfect love, this relationship started to feel hollow, empty, a mockery. I couldn’t help but notice that there was some Very Serious Nodding going on. Especially on break out track "Good Morning, Captain", the track that is the quintessential Slint song, the deadpan "Dude, I am loving this band so much, I’m gonna nod my head real slow and hard" track. It made me laugh. That’s when I started to enjoy myself. I had nothing to prove and most of all I realized that seeing Slint didn’t matter, I already had the best experience I was ever going to have falling in love with Spiderland while my then boyfriend resisted falling in love with me. Now what would have been awesome is if they could have performed just for me, at my house, while I sat on my couch with no drunken bitches and no other people around. Because, when it come down to it, you don’t want to share, not really, not with those people.

Love Songs for When You Are 80

2007-09-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

Hello loves

I have been absent these many weeks, ah....well...months, mostly b/c I was suffering a severe and awful case of writers block. Then school started and I lost my mind. (note to self: NEVER take two lab sciences ONLINE at the same time) I apologize and I hope to post more often.

Ahem, anyway, I had a dream last night that the man who was my Grandma Becom's closest neighbor, and one of my choldhood hereoes, Mr Scott, was alive and in Raleigh and somehow famous. (When I was little he told me he wrote a novel when he was younger and still had it and had never tried to get it published. This made me unbeleivably sad.) Andrew Wilson, brother to Luke and Owen, had visited him the night before and given him a '45 (a record single for those who don't know, the kind they used to have in jukeboxes) , by Marvin Gaye called "Love Songs for When You are Eighty" (no such song really exists as far as I know). He then gave it to me. I was thrilled. It was Christmas Eve. I took it to work, where I was having trouble getting the lights to come on, and as I stuggled with the strings of Christmas lights, another of the managers took the record from me and peeled it apart and revealed it was never a record at all but plastic utensils, like for picnics. I was vey dissappointed.

We saw Andrew Bird last night at the Carolina Theater in Durham and it was amazing. Getting there was a bit of a problem as the street signs in Durham are of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" variety. (There was even one that had nothing but a question mark and an arrow which made us laugh really hard.) There was an opening band called Auggie March that sounded like Ryan Adams witout any of the stuff that makes Ryan Adams good. They were an unusual choice for an opening band.

Regrettably, Jeff forgot to bring the camera so there are no pics but the stage setting was really unsusual, with victrolas with two horn thingys that spinned and a stuffed monkey, of the sock family, that Andrew Bird brought on the stage himself. He played in his socks, and for how cerebral his lyrics are it makes you realize how playful his music is. Very whimsical. Like an erudite Dr. Seuss with electric violin. He played alomst exclusively old material and admitted that previously he never played material from Eggs because it was really hard to play by humself so for this tour he solicited the help of this Norweigan dude from Minneapolis to play guitar. Outside of this he had no other accompanyment and it was amazing to watch him create the various layers of his songs right in front of you. He used effects pedals and looping and sampling pedals in order to create backgrounds and it was truly thrilling as his violin plucking/ bowing is so unusual and dynamic it makes you feel like he is playing another instrument.

Wow, that song from the Charlie Brown Christmas special, "Christmas Time is Here" just popped up on the iPod and it's kind of creepy considering my dream earlier. Oh well, I love this song. You know the part in the Christmas special where Linus reads the story of Mary and Joesph at the inn and Christ's birth? I was thinking not too long ago that his reading is the only reading that ever really made me believe in God, fall in love with the story. Leave it to Charlie Brown to make a believer out of me.

Adendums, Apologies, Afears, More

2007-07-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

Still listening to "Elephant Gun", if you haven't clicked yet, please do so NOW...
Am listening like crazy to Songs:Ohia, my favorite voice of Midwestern arrested development and tortured beauty. I wrote Mike today about when I saw him (Jason Molina of Songs: Ohia, not Mike) several years ago at a now defunct club in Carborro, (near Chapel Hill), called GO!, and he was sick, drowsy on NyQuil; the tortured voice of all my teenage fantasies, the manifestation of all my Midwestern longings. He is the songwriter for any girl who knew the beauty of the Ohio, who had dreams of losing your children in the raging river under the rusty bridges, of loving boys you were too smart for but not too good for, the tragedy of the towns near it, over it, beside it, the miracle of coming out clean on the other side. It means a lot to me, it probably means nothing to the rest of you. You just have to grow up there, you just have to understand the finality of growing up somewhere where you can never be surprised because you can see the horizon for two hundred miles. There is a stoicism and a grandeur and a dignity that the rest of the world lacks, in the Midwest. There is the unavoidable realization of death and I think it drives us to be ,pre free and stranger and scarier than the rest of the world. Plus, the corn is so pretty in the summer. We were just there,in Shelbyville, the town I grew up in, and it made me want to weep, in fact I did, often, unsparingly, remembering something so quintessentially Midwestern, to run through corn fields, and trip on soy beans, accrue cuts on my arms and suffer allergic reactions. It made me want to feel something. I don''t know, I really don't but in the words of Lloyd Dobler "At least I know I don't know". We visited my elementary school, now closed and empty. (let's talk about metaphors) all this beautiful marble and granite rests, quiet, stoic, in the dirty and quiet halls of a condemned elementary school. The place where I wrote my first story and recited it to my brother's fifth grade class, the place I made out with Allen Adkins in the closed stairwell to the side of the building , the place where my first best friend left me, because I wanted her to leave her other best friend, the place where I learned my father was missing, the place I learned, on Valentine's Day, he was found. We visited my old house, forever in my mind as 607 Shelby St., but since we moved sixteen years ago, known as 613 Shelby Street. We couldn't, my brother and I, find our initials in the driveway, they had been worn down. or paved over. Talk about a metaphor. We went to the house my mom owned and ran as a Bed and Breakfast, the Store my dad used to own, my Grandparents' house, and then finally, the place they were buried. The headstone is pink and beautiful, and it states the facts: when they were born and when they died, and there are birds, doves most likely, with olive branches in their mouths. Jeff, being a good but uncertain Bagel, asked me if I wanted a picture. I declined, it seemed too ghoulish, strange. I was already crying, unbelieving, it's been seven years since my grandmother died and its unequivocally the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Mostly because my father watched her die, lost his job and because when I saw her last I knew it was the last time. How do you say goodbye to the person who made you who you are? I guess, when it comes down to it, that's the question I've been asking since I've been losing people. I'm crying right now, writing this, it's unstoppable, this faucet, this long montage of Indiana and death and corn and Grandma and regret, of the river Ohio, of brothers lost to wives and friends who have departed and the ones I've done the same to. Chris reached for my hand while tears dripped down his long chin and in the end I turned away, as I always do, and he took a picture on a cell phone, b/c he knew my dad would appreciate it. So did these people, this picture being funny in a Six Feet Under kind of way. He just seems so happy, so positive and hopeful to be in a cemetery.

Also, I finally got to take Jeff to the Cow Palace, the single greatest restaurant of my childhood where they have pork tenderloin sandwiches that are seriously the greatest thing ever. I have been talking about this GD sandwich for almost three years. They don't have them ANYWHERE except Indiana. Very annoying. Sometimes, he'll ask me, "What do you want to eat?" and I'll say "A tenderloin sandwich from the Cow Palace." Of course, that's usually impossible. When we went, we both got one and I nearly had an orgasm at the table. My brother ordered the hamburger, which has its own mythology for him. I also got one to go and ate it in our hotel room late that night watching the Charm School Divas or something on VH1 and it was equally delicious.

Otherwise, I'd like to say, about the last post:

The person who hurt me the deepest is someone I haven't talked to in a long time. Someone who definitely doesn't read this blog or the magazine. I might be wrong in assuming that what I have to say about her in that post is mostly (completely by my account, but whatever) true. When I wrote this, it was from a place of listening and missing and remembering what it was like to listen to those albums with you, and without you. those who are you, all of you. I was hurt, I was angry and lonely, that was why I was listening to those albums. I was far from perfect, I was an asshole and a braggart and a liar. But I loved you, above everything, and in the end, it wasn't enough. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I wish I could get past this moment in my life. I wish we had just drifted, like normal friends do. Instead, it was something so hurtful and ugly, and ultimately untrue that happened, that I can't get past it. If you were tired of me, angry with me, I understand. But the truth was bad enough: I was an asshole. But I did not do the things that I was accused of by this unnamed person, and it hurts me and colors my life in a way I can't get past. I still have to remind myself to trust the people I trust, now, because I thought I could then. It's been ten years, I want to let go. But like High School albums, the people you listened to, hurt you back then, it changes you, for better or worse, and in too many ways for me it's been worse. Fuck it, I'm tired and sad, I miss my grandma. Forgive me for being too blind to see what I know I must see, what I must own up to.

I just wish I could go back, change it all. Be someone different, happier. I wish I could know then what I know now. Stop this terrible sadness, stop listening to the river, floating, singing like a lost voice, older than any of us, older than time.

But isn't the sky beautiful? And aren't all the little cuts on your arms worth it, to lay. undetected, in a field so green it makes your feet itch, your teeth hurt at the though of all that corn?

My Top Ten High School Albums (pt 2)

2007-07-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

Again, some of this might seem weirdly obtuse or unnecessary but that's partly b/c this is my column in the July Hatchet. Otherwise it's just because, I am by nature, obtuse and unnecessary. A

For those who don’t know, two months back I used this space as an opportunity to talk about a rash of blogs I had been reading about albums listened to and loved in high school. I also began a list of my own top ten, which, when all is said and done, is more like fourteen but ten sounds better and fuck you anyway it’s my column. You might ask yourself why you should care about albums that I listened to ten years ago. You probably don’t care, but you might find yourself agreeing or vehemently disputing what I have to say, and that in turn might make you think of the albums you listened to and loved, and why you have or haven’t listened to them recently. In my experience when you spend hours listening to Sebadoh in your bedroom while smoking surreptitious cigarettes and pining for boys in Ohio, those songs leave an impression, like a body missing from the sheets. Or they make you whole, or make you miss what made you whole. So, in short,
If you like this list, try these others: (http://cangrejeros.blogs.friendster.com/how_not_to_blog, (high school years 1991-1995)http://jennystarr.blogs.friendster.com/ (high school years 1991-1995), http://millionsuns.blogspot.com/ (high school years 1988-1992), http://beneaththeunder-dog.blogspot.com/ (high school years 1998-2002)
Or write your own, go remembering, surprise yourself, don’t be embarrassed. AB

Sebadoh
III
Homestead
Released in 1991, and just as important as any Pavement record in the indie cannon, and even more important in my own personal experience. I first found III in 1993, in a used bin in an underground (literally) record store in Bloomington, IN. I was there for Christmas, visiting family and the already estranged friends of my childhood. I remembered this guy Lou Barlow from the then disintegrated Dinosaur albums, and something about the picture, a blurry black and white with a dog and two kids, one on the ground and one in what looks like an ad-hoc Mexican wrestler’s mask. Weirdly homesick for Raleigh, yet in my home state, it reminded me of my brother and I, somehow. Of the memory of us as kids; jumping in leaves and rolling down the hill in front of our house, lounging in piles of raked and gathered foliage at the curb on our street until quiet voices whispering "slugs" prompted sudden and hysterical leaping onto each other and the newly cleaned grass of our lawn. I listened for the first time that night on Discman headphones, swag I got from Christmas, and heard the inimitable balance between Barlow's pot addled lullabies and Eric Gaffney’s electric gallops. This album introduced me to the Minutemen, via "Sickles and Hammers" and it made me miss my boyfriend when I heard "Truly Great Thing" and "Kath". It was low-fi and pretty and yet still kick ass and filled with energy. I bought Superchunk’s Tossing Seeds that day too, and I kept thinking I hit the indie rock jackpot with these two albums. When I read all the other blog posts about high school albums the same phrases kept coming up, "I know all the words to this album" or "I still know every word." It’s true that I still know every word on this album, and the dumb jokes like "Smoking a Bowl" still make me laugh and the bitter confessions like "Rock Star" and "Spoiled" make me long for a time when I was hearing this sound, these songs, feeling these things for the first time.
Bikini Kill
The CD Version of the First Two Records
Kill Rock Stars
Riot Grrrls have suffered from a retrospective lack of respect, a kind of, "I went through that Riot Grrrl phase, you know" kind of chagrin. . If you think feminist is a dirty word or liberal, you should see the reaction when you ask any woman, of a certain age if she was ever a "Riot Grrrl". Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with being a Riot Grrrl? Listening to The CD Version of the First Two Records for the first time in years makes me wonder why anyone would deny the ferocity, the strength with which we held on to that moniker, the pride in belonging to our all girl army. "Double Dare Ya" starts with a howl "We’re Bikini Kill and we want Revolution. Girl! Style! Now!" Kathleen Hannah screams like an injured animal and the adventure begins. I had the pleasure of seeing Bikini Kill at Duke Coffeehouse in 1993. We drove up in Suzie’s sea foam Honda Prelude, listening to Bikini Kill on the way to the show, no doubt. We stood in line behind a girl who looked like the skinny version of Margaret Cho talk about her obsession with Evan Dando. Who the fuck gives a shit about boys?, I wondered, I mean, we were waiting in line to see the greatest female band of our generation! (Ahem…eh, much given to hyperbole, I was) The place was jammed with punk guys, and some girls too, an aggressive punk band was opening for BK. We went in to the bathroom to get some relief from the sweltering crowd. Sara had a nosebleed. We tumbled into the bathroom and inside on the floor were Bikini Kill, we stalled and tried to get the nerve up to talk to them. They gave us a free T-shirt which Sara bled all over. When the show started Kathleen Hannah called for the boys to move to the back and make room for the girls. We cheered and ran to the front to take our places. The music starts and Hannah controlled the stage better than any front "man" since HR of Bad Brains. Prowling like a stealthy cat in ripped black tights and short lime green dress. She was angry. So were the rest of us. She condemned the men that had touched us when we were little girls, the back room deals that kept this shit quiet. The CD Version of the First Two Records gave us anthems like "Liar" and "Jigsaw Youth" and "White Boy". Songs that riled us into a frenzy, that made us mad, that made us not afraid. When Hannah sings, both on the record and live, her voice breaks. She’s not a professional singer, not a professional musician, but she didn’t give a damn. It wasn’t all lectures and politics either, by the way. There is the fun and the "seedy underbelly" of "Carnival", where Hannah introduces the song by way of "This is about 15 years old girls giving carnies head for free rides and hits of pot. I wanna go, I wanna Go!" It was about really being fifteen and saying "I’ll win that Motley Crue mirror if it fucking kills me!" It was about being sexy and not afraid of being sexy, of being girly but not submissive. Like a funnel cake dropped in the dirt, or run and ruined pantie hose. Sweet and vulgar and too damn bad. These women had balls, they sang "Suck my Left One" and lambasted the male audience for making it hard on the girls. They were playing with punk guys in front of mostly male, punk crowds, rife with skinheads and Doc Martens, they demanded the girls get to come up front, dance. She pulled two girls on stage, girls who knew every word to every song. Girls who, undoubtedly, remember that concert as well as I do, know that it changed them, with or without a nosebleed-stained tee shirt. When I hear "Rebel Girl" it still makes me miss that time in my life, when "Riot Grrrl" was the only kind of girl I wanted to be.
Radiohead
The Bends
Capitol
Enough has been written about this album that it will suffice to say that this was the soundtrack to the summer of 1995. I remember watching the video for "Fake Plastic Trees" in Laura’s living room in Rochester with Mike and Sara and we all sat with our jaws on the floor. Radiohead, having become what they have become, don’t need me to extol their virtues or explain why you need to hear this album. You already have heard this album. But think back to a time when Radiohead were a fucking joke, man, when the release of this album caught everyone by surprise. This is two and a half years before O.K. Computer, before anyone took them seriously, let alone, waited with bated breath for the next album. It was beautiful, it didn’t sound like anything else, and it made me break out my Pink Floyd records and listen unabashedly, crappy fan base or not.
The Cure
Wish
Elektra
Outside of "Friday I’m in Love" which makes me want to tear my eyes out, this is a nearly perfect Cure record, surpassed only in my book by Disintegration. Like most records I listened to in high school, this one was often heard blaring out of the windows of my friends’ cars or from under the door of my bedroom while I privately mourned my first lost love, my C in Chemistry, jealousies and hurts and the make-up of teenage life. "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea" and "A Letter to Elise" are still two of my favorite Cure songs. It’s just now I don’t cry for boys in New York or Ohio, or, oh, lord it’s true, drip wax onto the pages of my journal while writing (believe it or not) extremely long and wordy poetry about being miserable. In the same vein, Robert Smith seems to have become more of joke than the cultural zeitgeist we considered him then. They parodied him of South Park, fer Chrissakes. Has it become harder to take misery for misery’s sake seriously? I think so. Then again, perspective is often a good thing as we can’t go around dripping wax into our journals forever. But wouldn’t it be nice to go back to a time when you thought you might be the only one doing so? The only one who really got what Robert Smith was saying? The only one who listened to tracks 3,4,5,7. and 11 on repeat as programmed on your boom-box? Maybe not.
Pavement
Brighten the Corners
Matador
and
Weezer
Pinkerton
Geffen
Okay, so I’m cheating again and in more ways than one. Technically, I bought both these records before I graduated from high school, making them viable under the terms agreed upon at the Top High School Albums Convention so I’ll include them, briefly, here. As I am an honest person, I’ll also admit that the bulk of my listening was done the summer after I graduated, driving in my first car, a gorgeous little Acura I named Bean. (That smelled like mildewing pineapple due to a problem with a leaky sunroof and some unfortunate air fresheners.) I lost all my friends that summer, not having misplaced them but having them "dump me" because of some dumb shit that I did (like lie about bands I listened to or had seen play) and apparently some horrible shit that I was falsely accused of doing. (By one person who shall remain nameless but who by the way lost that Bikini Kill shirt and the cigarette that Courtney Love gave us after her show at the Ritz) I was lonely. I ate sushi form the newly constructed sushi bar at the TajMaTeeter every night for dinner. I went out with a boy who was clinically depressed and only listened to Brit Pop and made me mix tapes that I still have. I also made a lot of mix tapes myself that summer, and as I did not have a CD player in my car, I often dubbed albums onto tapes, making careful consideration of what albums would compliment one another. As you can probably guess these two albums were one of those tapes and literally, for weeks at a time I listened to nothing but these two albums and Billie Holiday. I listened to these albums so much that I actually had not listened to either of them since that year until this year, when I made my boyfriend listen to Brighten the Corners. Neither band ever achieved a better moment than on these respective records. The misery and longing and pedophiliac lust of Rivers Cuomo finally come to the surface on Pinkerton, an indie rock opera of long distance torment and lesbian crushes and the fact that sex really does get old. Brighten the Corners is the most accessible Pavement record but anathema to indie rock 101 it’s also the best. The wonderful mess of Wowee Zoweee, the low-fi magic of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain are pieces that led to the last Pavement record anyone cared about. (The real last Pavement record, Terror Twilight, is so awful that I can barely acknowledge its existence. Malkmus’ "solo" records are better by far but still not as good as anything else Pavement put out. At least that’s how I feel today.) The paranoia and charm of both these records made me long for people to be close to. Not boys who broke down in my parent’s driveway, not the girls who I thought would be my friends forever and who left me more heartbroken than I have ever been, even to this day. I hoped that college would be better, that new friends would save me and music would save me and getting the fuck outta Raleigh would save me. It didn’t But it’s not all bad.
I have stopped listening to albums the way I did in high school. That’s probably a good thing, as back then I mostly wanted music to make me feel a certain way, sad or strong or not afraid or superior. I stopped letting Pop music choose me, as much as I can, as anyone can, I suppose. I don’t listen endlessly on repeat and I don’t let it get the best of me unless I want it to. But man, there’s something about that time that I do miss, an ability to love unabashedly, with vigor and defiance and chutzpah. I read something Douglas Coupland wrote once, where he said, and I paraphrase, that the thing he was most afraid of was of having no more new feelings, of running out of new ways to feel. When you listen to music you know that the ability to be amazed never ends, that every day there are new ways to feel. I paraphrase another writer though, when I say, man, I never had albums like I had when I was 16. Jesus, does anyone?

Beirut - Elephant Gun

2007-06-27T22:16:00.001-07:00

If I was young, I'd flee this town
I'd bury my dreams underground
As did I, we drink to die, we drink tonight

Far from home, elephant gun
Let's take them down one by one
We'll lay it down, it's not been found, it's not around

Let the seasons begin - it rolls right on
Let the seasons begin - take the big king down

Let the seasons begin - it rolls right on
Let the seasons begin - take the big king down

And it rips through the silence of our camp at night
And it rips through the night

And it rips through the silence of our camp at night
And it rips through the silence, all that is left is all that i hide

The Touch Me Feeling

2007-06-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading a new (to me) really good blog right now called The Touc h Me Feeling. It's written by Khaela Maricich who is also a performance artist and musician (The Blow) who does amazing stuff. She hasn't written in it since January (ha! I'm not so bad, Jenny) but the archives are funny and nice to read. There is also a really good article in The Believer this month with her by Miranda July (whose You and Me and Everyone We Know is a truly funny and not depressing indie film about unlikely love that I heart).

Inspired by the last blog about Poetry, and Because we are going to Ohio this weekend for my Cousin Nan's wedding, I made a mix CD today called "For the Sleepwalkers"
here is the track list;
"Tonight Will be Fine"- Teddy Thompson (covering Leonard Cohen)
"Disaster"- Besnard Lakes
"Emily"- Joanna Newsom (live)
"Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)"- Beirut
"Fiery Crash"- Andrew Bird
"In Our Talons"- Bowerbirds
"I Feel it All"- Feist
"Cross Bones Style"- Cat Power
"Hearts of Iron"- Handsome Furs
"Brother"- Annuals
"The Flowers She Sent and the Flowers She Said She Sent"- Magnetic Fields
"If it Be Your Will"- Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) (covering Leonard Cohen)
A broken Hallelujah, indeed, upon looking at this sketch of Leonard. Oh, there is this site pretty cool called Cover Vs. Original where people vote on which is better. Mr Buckley toppled Mr. Cohen in that one.
The Besnard Lakes and Handsome Furs records are in constant play right now as is everything by Beirut. There is a terrific video on YouTube of the son g "Elephant Gun" from the original EP. Feist is getting some heavy rotation but not as heavy as last month. The Andrew Bird record gets better everytime I listen to it. The L.C. covers come from I'm Your Man a really terrible "documentary" "about" L.C. but these are the best performances out of that whole train wreck. The Antony one, in particular is devastating.

Scroll down there is another new post

2007-06-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

I screwed up and saved a post as a draft about a month ago so it's publishing it after my previous posts, after The TV post. Sheesh. Stupid.

Joyce Carol Oates' Bookshelves

2007-06-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

When I was 14 or 15 I was in Florida with my folks for one of the last family vacations I would take with them. There is a bookstore there we always went to, and where I bought many books that subsequently changed my life including Isaac Asimov's Understanding Physics, The Catcher in the Rye, and Joyce Carol Oates' Where I've Been to and Where I'm Going. Not only did I discover my completely unabashed love for non fiction from this collection of essays, reviews and prose, I also fell in love with the idea of being an adult. In a nutshell, I wanted to grow up so I could have JCO's bookshelves. The way I remember the picture and the way it actually is strike me as vastly different; in my memory the shelves reach from floor to ceiling, and the perspective is of a much smaller JCO and a much bigger room. I guess I speculated the shelves as going all the way around the room, but truth be told, this might not even be her library, it could just be her den. As for reaching adulthood, if the same equation holds true I guess I'm getting there. Right now I have five bookcases of books and an equal amount if not more in stacks on the floor of my own library. We have fiction separated from non fiction and everything is alphabetized. (except for the towering mess on the floor). I still don't feel like a grown up. I guess if I was a real grown up I'd be able to afford a bigger house to put all theses books in. Maybe later.

Say hello to the new best shows you Haven't seen and a thing about Oprah boooks.

2007-06-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

I'm an ass, I know. For all seven of you who read my blog I duly apologize for my extreme laziness/ business/ lack of talent and willingness to post. There, I said it. But the next issue of the magazine is going to be great, and I had to do a shit ton of work on it this weekend. I came home early from work to write to you, people. I heart you. Don't leave me.

Things might seem bleak for TV viewers everywhere, with the cancellation of the beloved Veronica Mar s (be sure to read Marco's article in The Hatchet in July, it's amazing.)
So anyway, while I am with the majority of people who feel cheated by the whole Sopranos ending, I am glad to say that I have found a new TV show to obsess about and fill the huge void left by the nearly hyperventilating Tony Soprano. (How can a person breathe that loud? How?)

The show is called Brotherhood, it's on Showtime and it's fantastic.But first I have to tell you about another show. You may have heard me go on and on about The Wire (also an HBO show but one that doesn't get nearly as many viewers as The Sopranos did). think The Wire is as good as The Sopranos, no kidding, and Jeff and I are absolutely wracked waiting for the fourth season to come out on box set. I think it's currently in the fifth season on HBO, but do yourself a favor, go to Netflix and put this shit in the top of your queue. It's about drug dealers and cops in Baltimore, and you might think that sounds pedestrian, but just watch and you'll see some amazing portrayals of real world problems. Including but not limited to: an accurate portrayal of racial tension, general bigotry, class issues, the futility of drug laws, poverty and the irreversible effects of the ghettoizing of the poor, etc., etc.. In the history of my favorite shows, it may only be second to the undeniable and inimitable Six Feet Under. Considering I was depressed for a week and sobbed uncontrollably after the finale of SFU (now that's a show that knows how to end) this is a pretty meaningful statement. As meaningful as a statement can be about TV, I guess.

So right, Brotherhood is about an old-school Irish family in Providence, RI. There are two brothers, Tommy and Michael, whose lives have diverged in the most extreme of ways; Tommy is a State Representative and Michael is a mobster. Michael returns to Providence after seven years, having gone on the lam to avoid being whacked by another mobster. That mobster is out of the picture and thus insanity and pathos ensue in the lives of the Kaffey family. This too, might sound a bit run of the mill, but the difference is made up in the performances, the story lines and the strength of the characters. The saintly politician is not really as good as he seems and the violent mobster brother is smart but not cunning, and though a liar and a manipulative SOB you root for him anyway. Like that dude in The Muppets Take Manhattan said, "Peoples is Peoples." So the first season just came out on box set, so again, go to Netflix and put this at the top. The second season starts in September on Showtime, with some exciting additions likeJanel Moloney (Donna on The West Wing). Okay. So the whole point of this post was to explain why I haven't been writing. Now you know.Now go curl up on the couch and watch eight episodes in a row, you know you want to.

Oh, but first, I saw that Middlesex is now an Oprah book and I'm having conflicting feelings. Am I being an asshole here? I honestly like Oprah, I think she's an amazing philanthropist and she even did a special episode about the failing education system that featured my hometown Shelbyville, IN. (woohoo, Hoosier Pride!) Outside of being slightly mortifying, I'm glad she did it, as 95% of the kids I went to elementary school with have ended up either a) completely fucked up b) stuck in Shelbyville C) pregnant really young and divorced not too long after. But anyway, this whole Middlesex as an Oprah book bothers me and I don't know why, really. Except, what does it say about me that my favorite book is an Oprah Book, that The Obscure Object of Desire is ready to be consumed by the masses? Jeffrey Eugenides is an amazing writer, one that deserves a wider audience. But when so many people love the thing you love...don't you feel cheated somehow? I'm an asshole. But I bet you'll be less likely to read it, anyhow.

Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light

2007-05-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

I started writing this over a month ago and then saved it as a draft and forgot about it.

Reading poetry lately, due to a horrible book with great influences, Janet Fitch's second novel, Paint it Black. I read her first book, White Oleander, in one night, several years ago, after breaking it off with my then fiance. White Oleander is an amazing book, beautifully written, the kind of thing that makes you want to cut off your hands for trying to write, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Forget that it's an Oprah book and forget that movie they made based on it. Paint it Black smacks so completely of "sophomore effort" it's not even funny. The prose, while technically beautiful, often falls flat and feels hollow. Even worse, though, is the fact that you hate the main character, hate the boyfriend whose suicide is the emotional black hole of the novel, hate the fact that this former white trash, trailer park beauty is reduced to such a simpering mess who happens to remember the names of every poet artist and musician ever to have lived. The central theme to the book is how do you live in a world that you created with another person, after that person has left you? The denouement is the worst, completely predictable, leaving you completely bewildered and irritated that you kept reading it, expecting it to turn a corner, manifest into something besides a hurried wreck of a second novel. I get that she is strong and yet weak, beautiful but tarnished blah blah blah, but she's so fucking annoying. The best thing to have come of reading the book is that it got me back into reading poetry, which I love, but I forget I love. I don't love how self aware the characters are about poetry in this book; these are characters that make you remember why people hate poetry/poets/France. But at least it got me to revisit Dylan Thomas and W. H Auden and my personal favorite, Wallace Stevens. It does make you realize that the best writing is that which seems effortless while still mind blowing and resonant and lovely/ horrid/filled with humor. The contrast to the pained writing of the book did it no favors especially upon reading great lines like:

"Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light,

Of light and love, the tempers of the heart,

Whack their boys' limbs

And, winding-footed in their shawl and sheet,

Groom the dark brides, the window of the night,

Fold in their arms...." D. Thomas, 18 Songs

Lovely.

I love this picture of DT, he's so young and foxy and complicated looking. They don't make poets like they used to, not that I help, as, if any guy tells me he's a poet I quietly deride him on the inside and may be given to laughing at him in public. It takes balls to be a poet, b/c generally, everyone is going to see you as a sensitive pony tail mother fucker, yaknowhatI'msayin?

There is this contemporary poet I like named Edward Hirsch, he used to baby sit Sasha when she lived in Detroit. (known as "Uncle Eddie" to her, no less) who wrote a book about appreciating poetry titled, aptly, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. He wrote one of my favorite poems, in his first collection by the same name, For the Sleepwalkers.
"Tonight I want to say something wonderful

for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith

in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path

that leads to the stairs instead of the window,

the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way the sleepwalkers are willing

to step out of their bodies into the night,

to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.

Always they return home safely, like blind men

who know it is morning by feeling the shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.

That's why I want to say something astonishing

like: Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs

flying through the trees at night, soaking up

the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.

And now our hearts are thick black fists

flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.

WE have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-

walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.

We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness

and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised."

This post reminds me of a concept I came across in The Believer a couple of years ago, in an article about Russel Edison by Sarah Manguso. Edison, a "prose poet" most famous for a short prose poem titled "Counting Sheep" (“A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture for them. // They are like grains of rice.” ) Basically it talks about the disconnect between the reader and the text when reading prose poetry as it looks like prose but it smells like fish. In other words:

"In prose poetry the prose form does not necessarily give rise to a linear accumulation of meaning. While co opting prose’s verbal structures, prose poems imitate prose incompletely or incorrectly. They promise prose but botch the delivery."

What's fascinating is that, outside academia, and in my opinion often inside it, this is the same disconnect people have when reading all poetry. It seems too cerebral or elusive or difficult. It's too bad, really, as there are really amazing poets who write perfectly beautiful and accomplished poetry that doesn't make you want to bang your head on the wall. I know if I ever had to analyze "The Red Wheelbarrow" in a classroom setting again I would shoot myself. Do you guys read poetry? Do you even like it? Who are your favorite poets? It's interesting that after the folk movement in the first part of the twentieth century that songwriters became our poets. Is it fair that the guys with the guitars are the last bastion of poetry left?

Virgin Mary Pinball Machine

2007-05-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

Jeff wasn't the only one having bad/ weird dreams last night. I also had some strange and unrelated imagery floating around in mine, like a Virgin Mary Pinball Machine (awesome) and the Space Shuttle flying out of Boston Harbor.

But what I really wanted to write about is how ill I am with local news. We watched portions of all three local news broadcasts last night and I'm here to tell you it has not gotten much better since the days that NBC-17 actually stood up at bistro tables to deliver the news. Seriously. (My mom and I would watch and the whole time scream "Sit down! Just sit down! You're making me nervous!") Worse than standing up to deliver the news is sitting on one side to report it. ABC 11 had several stories that were CLEARLY conservatively biased including a report that Hybrid cars are more expensive to fix than regular cars and a really unnecessary and absurd declaration that John Edwards' speech fees are grossly inappropriate when he is the candidate that runs on an anti-poverty platform. That story was propagated by Fox News and so I guess ABC 11 felt like they had to "report" it too, huh? But you know the fact that deforestation is condoned under the Bush administration by way of an initiative called The Healthy Forests Restoration Act is NBD, right? I swear, there is a special place in hell for local news.

A grab bag of weekend thoughts, plus I like my life right now.

2007-05-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

So, this weekend, Jeff and my parents and my broham Chris and his wife, Angelita, went to Virginia to go to a wedding of her brother Juan and our friend Melissa. We got up really early Saturday to drive there, and myself, not having slept b/c of the whole Hatchet deadline and whatnot, I was very sleepy all day yesterday. Thus, everything was experienced from this sort-of dreamy, Sophia Coppola lensed state of exhaustion. The wedding was very sweet and short and we all stayed at this gorgeous bed and breakfast and it was fun and silly, (Jeff and I watched Saturday Night Live and laughed at the Andy whatshi sname (Samberg?) sketches including one about french kissing a dog that was entirely too funny and super gross) and relaxing in a way that we don't often get to experieince. We woke up this morning and it was GORGEOUS in Virginia, sunny and not too hot and woods and foliage and deer all around us. We had breakfast with some folks there on their anniversay and we talked about Nascar and Ferraris and domesticity while we ate sausage strata and french toast with real maple syrup. I saw a store called "The Wormy Chestnut" and in the window of a toy store there was this great wax dummy of a Pirate that was TERRIFYING. While we drove back I fell asleep, my parents were listening to To Kill a Mockinbird on audiobook as read by Sissy Spacek, and it was lovely and wierd and dream inducing. We got home and ran some errands and wathched The U.S. Vs. John Lennon, which is excellent, btw, great in that it's not about the Beatles at all, but about how at this one point in time there was this cultural zeitgeist, that has never been duplicated, and never will be, and how he made a difference. I was in the kitchen getting a beer and I saw all the photographs on my refridgerator and I realized, Jesus, I love my life right now, with my amazing boyfriend and my incredible family and awesome cats and my job that (usually) does not make me want to kill anyone. We're really lucky, all of us, even when we're not, because, you know, It could always be worse. Also, Chirs and Ang gave Jeff a gift certificate to Schoolkids for his B-day and we got the new Feist and that album from the dude in Wolf Parade and the first Olivia Tremor Control album and this UNBELIEVABLE collection of soul 45's out of Chicago in the seventies on this series called "Eccentric Soul". Also, when we got back from shopping and whatnot, I called my cousin Anna, whom many of you know as my sister from another (vagina) twister, concerning plans for her (30th!) B-day party next month, the day after our cousin Nanny's wedding, which we are all lookng forward to. (For real, btw, as all of my ENORMOUS, extended family will be there and it's going to be exciting and huge, (held in some great hall of the University of Dayton where they all went to school), in that both Nan and her fiance, Sam, are both big uppity-ups in the Indiana and the national DNC and there will be much heated debate and friendly comraderie concerning '08, not to mention, lots of beer and dancing to James) Anyway, Anna and I had a terrific chat about that Jonathan Lethem artcile I keep pushing as well as that whole unpleasant Annuals interview I had and she brought up an incredibly valid and striking point: In the Scientific community it's all about building on the foundation of what came before and in that vein, people who publish and do research are not necessarily out there to do something revolutionary and groundbreaking in the sense that they are trying to create something new. Instead, they recognize the work that came before them and wholeheartedly admit that the work they are doing stems from the work that came before without fear of condemnation as long as they cite their influences/ sources. It's so bizarre how in the art world, it's all about creating something brand new and how defensive that makes everyone. Especially given the precedent in scientific communities that recognize how important work is that branches from the root of work before them. You know what I mean? Scientists know they are being revolutionary wihout resorting to "dibs", if you will. Not to say that doesn't happen in the science world (just read/ watch And the Band Played On for a perfect/horrible exmaple) but how amazing art of all kinds could be if we could get over hang-ups about being derivative/ wearing our influences on our sleeves. This ties into one of the other "questions" I had for Annuals which was essentialy about how, depsite the fact that as an artistic/snobbish/elitist community we celebrate artists/ writers/ musicians who are spartan in techinique or minimlist in style, at the end of the day we still choose Fitzgerlad and The Great Gatsby as the greatest American novel of the 20th century. That we love The White Album over Meet the Beatles, or that it's Picasso who sells mouse pads not Schiele or Rothko. My whole point is that we often say one thing as artists/art enthusiasts but it's the opposite that we really come out gunning for. We say that what we create is unique, when we know, in our heart of hearts that 1) it's not unique, it's a hodge-podge of our cultural/life/artistic experiences and 2) that we are terrified to be "found out" and called derivative. So fuck it, I'm here to say that I, Amanda Becom, aka That Obscure Object of Desire, will readily admit to ripping off every book, play, movie, album, show, speech or life experience I've had/see/heard/ hated/ loved to become the "artist" that I am. Oh yes, BTW, there is this excellent Magazine called Seed that I have been trying to get people to read for at least three or four years, that briges the gap between Science (capital S) and Art (capital A). It may sound pretentious but in fact, it's the opposite. It's incredibly accesible and in every issue there is; beautiful photography, moving articles between thinkers and artists (like, for instance, between a ballet choreograper and and an astro-physicist) engorossing articles about how understanding science helps make us better people, etc, etc. I seriously considered going back for a degree in Biology a few years back b/c I became obsessed with evolution and the different social sciences that evolution effects but instead I chose to do this. Which, as I mentioned, is not so bad, when you think about it. So anyway, a good weekend, though tiring, and a great conversation with Anna, whom I miss like my left arm. I'll post some picture soon so you guys can see some of the peeps I'm talking about. Also, not too long until I'm 29 and I'm proud of myself for keeping it this together.

Count how many times I drop the F Bomb, I dare you

2007-05-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

So this is my column for the Hatchet for the upcoming June issue. I thought you guys might like a peek. I wrote it this morning between 1 am and 5 am. That being so, I drop the f bomb quite a bit, as I rely on my superior cursing abilities to replace erudite vocabulary when I get tired.

Ear Out of the Vacuum
Stuff I’m loving and hating and having complicated emotions about this month: Annuals, Corporate Sponsors and College Radio, 305 South and the always lovely Bowerbirds.

I promise to finish my top ten* high school albums next month but some of this stuff was too timely to delay and I am too long winded to try to fit everything in one column.

So. I went to go see the Annuals play at Urban Outfitters to benefit WKNC, a good cause if at a weird venue and a stranger time (7:00? Really? I felt like I was at an all-ages show like the Cradle used to have, you know, the ones that were popular, oh, fifteen years ago. Jesus, fifteen years? Really? At seven o’ clock I should have been getting in bed, apparently. Because I’m old. Get it?) It was in relation to Free Yr Radio (http://www.freeyrradio.com/) a series of concerts across the country sponsored by Toyota and Urban Outfitters that hook up with college radio stations to provide exposure and give support. Let me get one thing clear, I’m all for supporting WKNC and everyone from the station was super nice and they did a good job, considering that the fucking rock show was at seven scratchin’ o’ clock and there was no fucking stage. Yes, you heard me. No stage. Now, I will admit that I was cranky about the interview I had with Annuals. It went not so well. Think rain, loading dock behind Urban Outfitters, twelve minutes to do a half hour interview and little response to some questions that were probably too complicated to try to ask under these circumstances (i.e. the benefits to freedom from ownership of intellectual property as promoted by Jonathan Lethem in Harpers. ("The Ecstasy of Influence, February) Okay even I hate myself for that one). The thing about this interview that upsets me is not that the band was unresponsive and slagging me off but that clearly these guys are kids. That’s not their fault, I know, actually, thank God they aren’t in their thirties otherwise I would be having a melt down over the seemingly irreconcilable differences between who these guys are and the music they make. It showed me that when you make art and put it out in the world it really doesn’t belong to you anymore; that people are going to make of it what they will and make of you what they will (which of course ties in nicely with the whole Lethem article but I digress). Listening to Annuals’ perfect song "Brother" or several of the other tracks from Be He Me, despite the fact I’m not really a fan of the album, I thought I could hear real intellectualism behind the composition of these songs. Don’t get me wrong, these guys aren’t dumb, and they certainly didn’t strike me as morons but there was a chasm behind who the artists were in my head (and the songs as well) and the band I was talking to. I’m sure I’m just going to piss of some die-hard, Raleigh-based Annuals fans, (serves me right, I suppose) but what this whole thing is about is that I failed the band by letting what I expected shadow my reaction to what I got. It was a rookie rock journalist mistake but I took comfort from a friend, a fellow rock critic, who turned me on to Chuck Klosterman’s essay about interviewing The Streets and undeniably fucking it up with expectations. I should also mention that I probably pissed some of the band member off by confronting them with my theory that they struggle to build a real and dedicated local audience b/c they blew up on the internet before they really got a chance to do so. I was quickly told that I was wrong, that "We paid our dues for eight years, it’s just that when we first started out, we were like, a high school band." I don’t think I’m the only one who believes that this does not count because, you see, they were a fucking high school band, but again, I digress. Right, no stage. On the "Free Yr Radio website I found this little blurb: "and Annuals put a new spin on the phrase, "Of the people," by asking to not have a stage or riser so they could play in the crowd. If this were an expletive-laden site, you'd see the following: _____-ing cool." Well, this is an expletive-laden magazine so I’m just going to say it: Not FUCK-ing cool, at all, in fact. You know what happens when a band plays on the floor in front of you? If you are more than two people back you can’t see them. I will say that Annuals are a fun and challenging live act, but when you can’t see them change instruments a million times or even see past the shoulder of the Amazonian lady in front of you, it’s not that fun. I was also just kind of bugged by the whole corporate sponsorship of independent radio thing, though my boyfriend says I’m being an asshole about this. I guess I’m being an asshole because I’m being oblivious to the inevitable and already residing relationships between corporations and independent radio, but it feels like just another thing they can turn into a commodity. Which may be the best reason for freedom from intellectual property I can make so, Jesus, read that article will you? One of the band members told me that the worst thing about music today is the term "indie". He said, in fact, "I mean you can’t be indie and be on Capital records." I don’t know how much I agree with that statement because indie is more than being independent music, it’s become a culture and it’s always been about an attitude. What I do know is that saying this whilst standing on the loading dock of the Urban Outfitters you are about to play in at a concert sponsored by Toyota seems kind of obtuse to me. One could argue that he hates the term indie because he’s tired of it being applied to the band and that is a fair argument. Annuals make music that is layered and indulgent and at times unbearably tension filled but apparently that does not necessarily translate into indie. It clearly doesn’t translate into a lot of things. I think these guys have talent, I also think they blew up on the internet before they even got their collective feet wet and that may mean they are on the defensive. I hope it doesn’t mean more events like this one. I mean Urban Outfitters might be good enough to buy cheap jewelry from but it’s not where I want to see my rock bands perform. Especially at seven o’clock, for fuck’s sake. Am I being ridiculous in thinking that the closing of King’s may beget even more of these awful things? If we had more viable rock venues in Raleigh then maybe Annuals could not only get their feet wet but dive all the way in. Make me look like an asshole. I hope they do.
Speaking of viable music spaces, there was a great show at 305 South in Durham, inside the Anti-Mall. If you haven’t been there yet get off your asses and do it. Burly Time Records had a showcase of bands including my local favorites, the Bowerbirds, in support of the new album, Hymns for a Dark Horse as well as local music maverick and Renaissance man Jenks Miller in his solo debut as Horseback and his new album Impale Golden Horn. Horse references aside, (I have been constantly confusing the titles and the name of Jenk’s band for the last two months) the new Burly Time records is putting out music that is thoughtful and important in that it touches the people who listen to it. This is music that rings true. The Bowerbirds are even better live than they are recorded, and the new album is a must for anyone who loved Danger at Sea, as well as anyone who believes that things like a softly pounded drum and the voice of an instrument can help make this world a better place. Horseback is that rarest of species, complex music that seems simplistic (as drone music often can) yet still resonant and deeply emotional. Not surprising, given that this projects, one of the seven that Jenks currently play a role in, is the one that funnels the rage and fear and sorrow that often accompany suffering OCD, as Jenks does. Someone I love has OCD, the kind that you need medication (some will tell you) for, the kind that makes him get up at four thirty in the morning just so he has enough time for his routine before he can go to work. It’s a hard thing to live with, because it’s like all your fears, the ones that keep you up at night but which, thankfully, only reside in your head, are suddenly manifested into real, tangible monsters. Toothpaste can become a monster, or blood.
So you guys have homework. Read that fucking Jonathan Lethem article. Go see Annuals and become a ridiculously addicted local fan; just don’t call them indie. Go to 305 South and get jealous of Durham, as it has the most vibrant and viable local venues for local bands. Then start a smartly run and magical rock club here in Raleigh. While doing all this visit http://www.burlytime.com/ and buy the new Bowerbirds and Horseback albums. Recycle you beer bottles. Dream of something dark and write it down. Okay, you can skip the last one, but that’s it. See you next month for the second half of my top ten* high school albums. But only if you’ve done your homework.
See the Bowerbirds at the local 506 on June 22nd for Charles Latham’s "going away forever" party or the next day, June 23rd at 3 at the "Rock and Shop" Market in Moore Square. If you are going to Bonaroo, check out Annuals, as they will be playing. On a stage, no doubt.

The new "Cowbell"

2007-05-09T23:50:00.000-07:00

So Jeff and I were watching TV last night and we saw a commercial for the new exhibit at the Natural Science Museum of Raleigh "Hunters of the Sky" that was pathetic and low budget and typical of Raleigh resources for things like that and at the end there was this bad still montage of a Bald Eagle that progressed frame by frame along with the sound that eagles make, you know, that cry sound that is not exactly a caw and really hard to reproduce unless you are 1) an eagle 2) wierdly gifted. I laughed at it and he looked at me strangely, and asked me why I was laughing. I admitted to him that secretly, whenever I hear that noise it makes me think of when someone tells a bad joke or there is an akward silence, that should be the sound that fills the void. You know, like,your at a party and some obnoxious guy is trying WAY too hard to be that guy, the funny guy at the party, and he says something stupid and common like, "Come through the back door? That's what she said!" Cawwhhahh. For whatever reason it made us laugh really hard the rest of the night. He told a guy at work today and it's already started catching on. It's the new cowbell, except that instead of being a demand for "rocking out" it's a plaint for "JESUS, THAT WAS SO LAME THE ONLY SOUND WE CAN HEAR IS AN EAGLE, CRYING FOR MERCY. AND QUIET".

Welcome to my world.

those conversations you have, you know, those

2007-04-30T23:11:00.000-07:00

So I went to the Jacpot! tonight to meet with two of my standard writers and divulge to them my hopes of their output for the next few months. I think they are a little cowed b/c I asked them to start thinking about 3,000-5,000 word pieces for the music issue in the fall. Oh well, that's why I asked them to start thinking now, as opposed to then. So anyway, I got to have an excellent, dorked-out, music nerd conversation with Shaun Taylor, one of the new writers, about albums in the last year or two that moved us, and shook us and why everyone else is wrong. I couldn't help going on and on about Joanna Newsom's Ys (pronounced yeesh like the sound I make when my parents start hounding me about finishing school when they haven't given me money for school since 1998). I know I haven't written about it here, but I did write about it in my best of 2006 for the Hatchet.

If you haven't heard this album all I can say to you is: Go. Buy. This. Album. Right. Now. Seriously guys, It's my O.K. Computer for this decade. (when I was a freshman at Guilford I made the mistake of dating a guy who graduated the year before and lived off campus who was also a huge music nerd. Maybe even worse than Jeff, my current paramour. Anyway, he hated Radiohead, and despite my (many) declarations that O.K. Computer would change music and was even more important, in a way, than Nevermind, he scoffed and blew me off.) How are you Doug Grigsby? Okay, last I heard he was accepted at Breadloaf, a very prestigious writer's workshop but whatever, he was still wrong) A long story about Ys, Jeff and I were driving to his parent's house in Egypt (read North North Raleigh) the day after we heard Joanna perform in Greensboro, where I bought the album (I wanted to buy a copy there so she would get the majority of the profit seeing as how I didn't get an advanced copy from her label, Drag City). So we put it on for the 30 minute drive to Egypt and I heard the album rendition of "Sawdust and Diamonds", the most amazingly naked and vulnerable song about the love and poetry and history and imagery about dedication and memory and desire I have, in my entire life, ever heard. It made me weep. Seriously. Not because I was sad or PMSing or upset, but because, the way weddings and graduations and births and deaths make you cry, it struck a chord so deep I didn't know what else to do. In moments of unbearable beauty, and in moments of unbearable pain we all do the same thing in different ways: we grieve. Hearing this song, I longed for closeness with my mother, and I missed my best and dearest friends, I ached for sex and drunkenness and the voices of lovers past (though, not, I can say, Doug Grigsby), I wanted to see the faces of my children, I wanted to run toward a future I could not see and believe that it would be awake and ready and willing to receive me. This song alone made me want to believe in God in a way I haven't been willing to reexamine since I read Killing the Buddha. (future post, I swear.) So, needless to say, I felt powerfully about this album. What was great, and what I haven't experienced in a long time, was that he took me seriously, Shaun did. Jeff and I have fabulous conversations about music nearly on a nearly daily basis, but whenever we get worked up about music it always devolves (or evolves, I'm sure he would say) into sex. No surprise, really, as sex and music have always been tangled inextricably from one another for me. It was amazing to have a conversation about music where someone really listened and didn't threaten to maul me. Not that I'm complaining, exactly, it's just I miss friends, you know, the people you don't have sex with after conversations like this, and I miss having these conversations you have, you know, those, that make you want to drink all night and light fireworks and dream of something bigger than yourselves.

So, I talked about Ys and I told him one of the things that made me crazy about the concert was to be forced to listen to music that was all about this one woman's passion, about being raw and open and kind of nuts and outside the box, and still sit in these wooden seats meant for assemblies in high school and not be allowed to run to the front of the stage and cry and tear my hair out and sweat next to strangers' bodies. Because I am a big believer that when you listen to live music, half the experience is standing next to fans who are just as crazy/ dedicated/ obsessed as you are and getting the desperation and essence of that crowd all over you as you stand and watch and gape at the performers who change your life. I mean, how lucky are we?

So, anyway, he promised to go home and listen to Ys which he downloaded months ago but hasn't listened to, tonight and remember that it came with my highest and most deranged recommendation. I think I've written about this before, about how when you love something and you want the people you love to love it also and in the end they don't like it or don't even bother to try it hurts you so deeply, b/c it seems like a rejection of a part of you. When I hear that people don't like Ys b/c they think it's "too cerebral" or "indulgent" I want to break something that means something to them. There is a guy who I have become friends with in the last few months, he is the Music Editor for The Independent here in Raleigh, and he speaks about Joanna Newsom in the most concise and clear terms. He told me that the reason he loves her, and the reason he loves Ys and why he chose it for his top album of 2006 (as I did) is b/c he can believe everything she says. B/c when she sings it is true. Not only do I agree with him, but I think he has hit upon what is "wrong" with music today: there is nothing wrong with it, per say, I just don't believe it.

So, tonight, what I got to do was talk to someone who buys into the power of music to change you and talk about albums that we believe.

This conversation really was two sided, I swear. We talked about the new Menomena album Friend or Foe and how neither of us have been able to remove it from our CD players/ cars/ iPods for the last two months. We talked about Radiohead and Arcade Fire too. In relation to that whole frustration at my inability to emote at the Joanna Newsom show I also told him about the Rachels' Sea and the Bells (and not to make all things come full circle but I first heard this album at Doug Grigsby's apartment the night he told me he could never love me because he was 1) slightly schizophrenic, 2) much older than me and thus wiser in the ways of relationships and love 3) incapable. Super fun!) and how at the Rachels' show a year or more after the whole Doug Grigsby affair, I cried and cried in the front row and the violinist of the collective came up to me after the show, as I was trying to get my shit together to drive home to Raleigh alone from the show in Chapel Hill, that he had never had a fan react the way I did, and I told him that this album ( The Sea and the Bells), only slightly embarrassed, was the soundtrack to all that was wrong in my life and the soundtrack to all that was righteous and beautiful in the world. I wish I had been able to embarrass myself at Joanna Newsom's show, but instead I was forced to sit in a chair, like a captured animal/ high schooler, vibrating with emotion, desperate to run to the front of the auditorium and feel the humidity of another person's breath on my neck, smell their heavy breath and feel hands reaching out, as mine would. And that's the thing, about music that moves you, I mean, is that inevitably you either feel clued in or incredibly left out, as I did that night seeing the Rachels. That was the album I made love to a man that would never love me. That was the album that taught me about loss and what it would mean to gain all in the same swoop.

I don't often write about music here, as it sort of subsumes my waking life. But I wanted to share with you all the good and bad that this conversation dredged up for me. Probably b/c I have been thinking about all of you often recently, and b/c I wish you all were here to talk about this stuff with. I wish it had been you, tonight. I wish.

So here are the lyrics to "Sawdust and Diamonds" by Joanna Newsom.

From the top of the flight

Of the wide, white stairs

Through the rest of my life

Do you wait for me there?

There's a bell in my ears

There's a wide white roar

Drop a bell down the stairs

Hear it fall forevermore

Drop a bell off of the dock Blot it out in the sea

Drowning mute as a rock; Sounding mutiny

There's a light in the wings

Hits this system of strings

From the side while they swing; See the wires, the wires, the wires

And the articulation In our elbows and knees

Makes us buckle as we couple in endless increase

As the audience admires

And the little white dove

Made with love, made with love: Made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers

Swings a low sickle arc From its perch in the dark

Settle down Settle down my desire

And the moment I slept I was swept up in a terrible tremor

Though no longer bereft, how I shook and I couldn't remember

Then the furthermost shake drove a murdering stake in And cleft me right down through my center

And I shouldn't say so, but I know that it was then, or never

Push me back into a tree Bind my buttons with salt

Fill my long ears with bees

Praying: please, please, please, Love, you ought not! No you ought not!

Then the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings (cut from cardboard and old magazines) Makes me warble and rise like a sparrow

And in the place where I stood, there is a circle of wood

A cord or two, which you chop and you stack in your barrow

It is terribly good to carry water and chop wood

Streaked with soot, heavy booted and wild-eyed;

As I crash through the rafters And the ropes and pulleys trail after

And the holiest belfry burns sky-high

Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision

While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue you make your first incision

And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision

Doubled over with the hunger of lions

'Hold me close', cooed the dove Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds

I wanted to say: why the long face?

Sparrow, perch and play songs of long face

Burro, buck and bray songs of long face!

Sing: I will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay

Just to lift your long face

And though it may be madness, I will take to the grave Your precious longface

And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate - why the long face?

And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil - why the long face?

In the trough of the waves Which are pawing like dogs

Pitch we, pale-faced and grave, As I write in my log

Then I hear a noise from the hull

Seven days out to sea

And it is the damnable bell!

And it tolls - well, I believe, that it tolls - for me!

It tolls for me!

Though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break

Still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very edge of the water

And they will recognise all the lines of your face

In the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter

Darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine

Appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes

But if it's all just the same, then will you say my name: Say my name in the morning, so I know when the wave breaks?

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight

No, I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright

So: enough of this terror We deserve to know light

And grow evermore lighter and lighter

You would have seen me through But I could not undo that desire

From the top of the flight

Of the wide, white stairs

Through the rest of my life

Do you wait for me there?

The Oxford English Dictionary is my Friend pt 2

2007-04-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

SO maybe you'd like the definitions too? Okay. All definitions from http://www.dictionary.com/ unless otherwise noted.

Accidie
\Ac"ci*die\, n. [OF. accide, accidie, LL. accidia, acedia, fr. Gr. ?; 'a priv. + ? care.] Sloth; torpor. [Obs.] ``The sin of accidie.'' --Chaucer. (Websters' Revised Unabridged Dictionary)

Apostasy
a·pos·ta·sy /əˈpɒstəsi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-pos-tuh-see] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -sies.
a total desertion of or departure from one's religion, principles, party, cause, etc.

suzerainty

su·ze·rain·ty /ˈsuzərɪnti, -ˌreɪn-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[soo-zuh-rin-tee, -reyn-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -ties.
1.
the position or authority of a suzerain.
2.
the domain or area subject to a suzerain.

suzerain
su·ze·rain /ˈsuzərɪn, -ˌreɪn/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[soo-zuh-rin, -reyn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1.
a sovereign or a state exercising political control over a dependent state.
2.
History/Historical. a feudal overlord. –adjective
3.
characteristic of or being a suzerain

concatenation

con·cat·e·na·tion /kɒnˌkætnˈeɪʃən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kon-kat-n-ey-shuhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1.the act of concatenating.
2.the state of being concatenated; connection, as in a chain.
3.a series of interconnected or interdependent things or events.

pilaster

–noun Architecture.
a shallow rectangular feature projecting from a wall, having a capital and base and usually imitating the form of a column.

parapet

par·a·pet /ˈpærəpɪt, -ˌpɛt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[par-uh-pit, -pet] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1.
Fortification.
a.
a defensive wall or elevation, as of earth or stone, in a fortification.
b.
an elevation raised above the main wall or rampart of a permanent fortification.
2.
any low protective wall or barrier at the edge of a balcony, roof, bridge, or the like.

campanile\

cam·pa·ni·le /ˌkæmpəˈnili, -ˈnil; It. ˌkɑmpɑˈnilɛ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kam-puh-nee-lee, -neel; It. kahm-pah-nee-le] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -ni·les, -ni·li /-ˈnili/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[-nee-lee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation.
a bell tower, esp. one freestanding from the body of a church.

Okay, so half of these were architecture terms so I am not feeling that bad. Onward to Double Jeopardy! !

My Top Ten High School Albums (pt 1)

2007-04-30T16:00:00.001-07:00

This is actually my column for the May Hatchet so it might seem redundant and weird to those who currently read my blog (all seven of you)I have expanded some things and let others be. Also, I would like to say that one person in particular helped me understand the lasting beauty and depth of most of these albums/ artists: Jenny. Without you I never would have heard the rubber bands behind the voice of Leonard Cohen, or understood that "Hallelujah" is not a song about the greatness of love, but of the gravity and pain of love. "A castle for a kiss upon your shoulder" is the line that always reminds me of you,though, really, all of his songs do. GLB really was our house band but your dedication far outweighed mine in the last ten years. So I owe you thanks, all of you I mention here and the many I don't. A

In the last few months I have been addicted to reading my friend’s blogs: I surreptitiously check them at work, I make us late for movies, I obsessively try to talk everyone into visiting them (usually all for naught.) But lately I have had more luck because of a simple idea that has many reminiscing, blatantly laughing at and more often than not, slowly nodding our collective (yet separate) heads in agreement with the bloggers. It all started with Marco, whose blog, How Not To Blog, (http://cangrejeros.blogs.friendster.com/how_not_to_blog er.com/how_not_to_bl og) listed his top ten high school albums. (Marco is also the progenitor of the iPod shuffle game (which everyone should do) and also spurned many blog entries from people barely connected anymore.) Is it better because I knew him then? Maybe. Is it better because we haven’t had a real or pleasant conversation since those times? Definitely not. I can say that he is the reason that I fell in love with mid-career Dinosaur Jr., on Where You Been. Especially "Goin Home", which Sara and I played over and over trying to figure out what the fuck J. Mascis was saying, the song we both considered to be our song about Marco, but for drastically different reasons. To find out that this album is on his top ten made me miss him for the first time in a long time. Even though it’s small town Raleigh, and we see each other across the smoky Jackpot!, or at the Raleigh Times (often with his girlfriend who is the sister of my brother's former best friend whom Sasha and I both "dated" (i.e. made out with a lot) the summer we were fifteen. The brother, that is, not Marco's girlfriend. Shaking fist:Small town Raleigh! Again!). To read his blog and find out that he grew up into this smart, funny, slightly less self-righteous but overall lovely and graceful person is the best thing about reading blogs of people you know/ used to know. You don’t even have to be close to them anymore to feel like you are. High school albums are the ones that changed your life, the ones that decided who you are. I buy into What You Like Matters, I bet a lot of you do too. These are albums that determined what you like, at the very least they decided where you would go, who you would grow up to be. These are the albums that you lived and died by, the albums you listened to when you got your heart broken the first, the fourteenth, the one hundredth time, the albums that you spent summers driving to, longing for home away from your home, the albums that made you choose your friends and your enemies, the albums that told you you were capable of great and disastrous things. These are the songs that built a civilization and destroyed one at the same time. So here are the first five of ten, in no particular order, to be continued later.

Jeff Buckley
Grace
Columbia
I was fifteen. It was the day after the 1994 Lollapalooza where I met (and kissed! On the cheek! And talked about aliens and the bigger meaning of Lollapalooza and music and sex and summertime! Oh yeah, baby!) with PERRY! FARRELL! Okay, let’s stop here for a moment. The only reason I did not include Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual De Lo Habitual on my list is because I started listening to it in 1990 due to my older broham’s excellent and influential taste in music. It changed my world. It was the first album I couldn't stop listening to. From the Spanish introduction and merciless drumbeat of "Stop!" to the gorgeous wandering wildebeest of a song "Three Days", to the great symposium on love poetry that is "Classic Girl" it was my First Album That Mattered. Fast forward through four years of watching The Gift, (over and over and over) of watching every interview on MTV News, (whassup pre-Internet and YouTube!), of reading every article in Rolling Stone and Spin (ugh). Four years, y’all. For real. And then I meet him. Perry. Perry! Fucking! Farrell! It was almost too much to take. You see Sasha and I were out of town when tickets went on sale and it sold out before we could get them. So, dressed in Catholic school girl skirts and converses and, I shit you not, a little boy’s Jurassic Park shirt from K-Mart we went to the parking lot of then Walnut Creek and planned to scam our way in. It did not work. We tried the period excuse. We tried sneaking in through a faulty place in the fence. We tried being cute. It did not work. We sat on a curb, dejected, hearing the bass and picturing the spectacle of George Clinton. It sucked, okay? I was in a little boy’s size Jurassic Park T-Shirt and a plaid wool skirt in fucking August, okay? So I thought I was hallucinating when I saw this man, this beautiful, beautiful man, walking towards us. I hit Sasha over and over again on the shoulder trying to get the words out. Sweat ran down my back but I felt suddenly chilly, faint-headed. I rasped out, "It’s Perry. It’s Him" (I was on a first name basis with my obsession to my friends, so she knew what I was saying.) He came over to us like an angel, asking "Hey girls, what’s the story?" We quickly informed him of our hi jinks, the scamming of the security dudes, the fact that we were out of town when tickets went on sale. He talked to us for twenty minutes, at least, about bat-shit crazy stuff, as mentioned above. Eventually he told us that we should just walk in with him. We did so obligingly, and with two forties and a bottle of Mad Dog in our rainbow embroidered, hippie backpacks. The ones they sold ad nauseam at places, well, like Lollapalooza. We entered the gates. And he kissed us both on the cheek and said, (seriously) "Run free girls!" We did. We screamed as we ran up that big hill just as the Beastie Boys came on stage playing "Sabotage" and it is one of those indelible moments. The ones you die with. The ones that remind you that you lived. So the next day. Sasha had alcohol poisoning (we ran into some older boys we knew and spent the majority of the night after the concert at the Art Museum, lying on wet green grass, exhilarated with our caveat, craving some kind of closure to an unbelievable day. The kind that can only come from making out with future movie stars and Army vets on the pastoral green of the Art Museum hill.) We were both exhausted. I really wanted to go to Cup a Joe’s (Hillsborough) to see this guy that some music writer at the Independent would not stop going on and on about. I went with my older brother, the same one that gave me RDLH, and poor, sick Sasha. I will say that I never saw a band play at Cup a Joe’s before or since this show, but it happened. Before the show we saw this gorgeous man wandering around in a white T-shirt and well-worn jeans, bare foot (!) tapping on the various mics. My friend and I told my brother stories from our unbelievable night before, alternately laughing and groaning. We were in near hysterics when his band began to quietly play. And then he began to sing. He was five feet away from me, maybe less. And that’s when I heard Jeff Buckley sing the opening, haunting notes to "Mojo Pin". The world fell away from me. I could have touched him, I wanted to touch him, he was so close. Instead, I sat, mouth gaping, watching him, feral and musical in his body in a way that I had never seen, I could smell him. He smelled like sex and coffee and misery and Old Spice. He smelled like the future. "Born again from the rhythm/Screaming down from heaven." Talk about a church revival, I was a fucking believer. I bought my copy of Grace from him, personally, after the show. I have since owned at least three copies. When I think about this album I think of so many things, (obviously). But most of all, I remember hearing him sing the whole thing to me. Barefoot, beautiful, damaged and dangerous, the greatest boyfriend I never had and yet, that everyone had. An album you can make babies to, or live and die a thousand times a day as any teenager can, to. The Next Album That Mattered, and too much for me to ever contain here.

Tori Amos

Under the Pink
Atlantic
Shut up. I know it’s not cool but I don’t care. When I thought of high school albums this was one of the first to come to mind. I listened to this album every night for two years, listening and listening until Boys for Pele came out. I did American History homework to this album and wrote WAY too many journal entries to this album. I listened as I pined for Andy, a boy who lived in Ohio that I spent one crazy magical night at the beach with. Sara and I listened the night we found the Sheraton, having just deposited Laura off at the airport, unwilling to let summer end, green bean bag frogs on our heads as we accidentally on purpose got lost on the roads behind RDU. We hummed "Yes, Anastasia" as we grabbed salt and pepper shakers from room service trays left outside hotel room doors and took pictures of one another wandering down deep, hushed, carpeted hallways. We listened in the Ford Tempo, paying $.25 a mile for very mile that could not be attributed to school or work, the night we picked flowers form a median on forty for our mothers the night before Mother's Day. I listened the night my parents wanted to put me in a mental hospital but couldn’t agree which one. From the isolation and postcard imagery of "Pretty Good Year" to the razor-sharp, icily tongued "Waitress" to the overt and welcome celebration of female masturbation and religious ecstasy of "Icicle" ("getting off, getting off/ while they’re all downstairs/ singing prayers sing away/ he’s in my pumpkin p.j.’s/lay your book on my chest/ feel the word/ feel the word") this was an album meant for serious and angry women. The shoe was fitting. There I was. One more thing, there is a live recording of Tori in Raleigh, on the tour to support this album. She starts to play her cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Cobain having died just a few months before. I scream, recognizing that melody anywhere, even on piano, even as she plays it. There is a recording of that concert that got released as a bootleg, and it’s funny and weird to hear myself screaming for that song, in the hands of her, at that moment. I’m glad it was captured, I’m glad I can’t ever deny my love for this album, or that time in my life.

Grant Lee Buffalo
Fuzzy/Mighty Joe Moon
Slash, Slash/ Reprise
I know I’m cheating, but fuck you. I first saw GLB on a cable access channel here in Raleigh, on a show that played Music Videos that weren’t ever going to see MTV. "Mockingbirds" was the song, the video all black and white Wim Wenders imagery and the first lesson in the dark arts that we came to know as that most Southern of magics, nostalgia. I was at Sara’s house, and her little brother, affectionately referred to as Dog, was the one to hear/see the video first and point out how awesome it was. We immediately took on GLB as our "House Band", if you will, in that, in our friend group, all us loved them unequivocally and no one "owned" them more than anyone else (except Dog, of course, whom we never gave credit to until now, I suppose). GLB was the sound of our crumbling innocence, the sound of the South under Reconstruction, filled with dread and hope and adolescent confusion and lust. Procuring pictures of hopeless convicts, log cabins filled with desire so great the building threatened to collapse, tattoos and handy-cams and birds on a wire, it shook all of us. The sound of buying books from Reader’s Corner at midnight off the donation shelves, of ordering delivery waffle fries and roast beef subs from Sub Conscious so I could flirt with the cute (thirty-something) delivery guy. It was the essence of adolescence, with a better vocabulary. I still get drunk and listen to these albums, and often cry for all that went wrong, for all that songs like "Stars and Stripes" made us want, for the beauty and despair in "Mockingbirds", the strange folksy beauty of "The Last days of Tecumseh". It’s like licking a sore place on the inside of your lip, painful and private and glorious in that in the end its yours alone.

Wu-Tang Clan

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Loud
Melanie’s white Tempo (I rode in a lot of these in the early to mid nineties). Wu-Tang on the stereo, skipping school to get Mountain Dew freezes at the Wolf Mart. Rescuing turtles at the man-made lake by Enloe, scamming the security guards (another theme?) with Krispy Kreme doughnuts or stories about going to Planned Parenthood (seriously going to Hell). Being in awe of her and Sasha going to the (very rough) show at the Ritz, being as they were ninety pound white girls in a crowd of serious hip hop guys and holding their own. "M-E-T-H-O-D Man" ("Hey! You! Get off my cloud/you don’t know me and you don’t know my style") "C.R.E.A.M.", "Protect Ya Neck", "Tearz", "Can It Be All So Simple", "Bring Da Ruckus", smoking cigarettes, saving our souls, having serious fun and exploring the best that hip-hop had to offer. This is the cruising album, the drunken cigars at Luke’s house, the angry and tearful from break-ups but mostly the celebratory I’m feeling like a bad-ass album from high school, and it still holds up.

Leonard Cohen/ Nick Drake/ Morphine

The Best Of/ Five Leaves Left/ Good
When I was 17 I traveled by train with Sara up to Rochester, New York, so that she could see her New York friends and also so she could fall in love with a boy, Michael, who now is soon to be her brother-in-law. (She married Dave and then she introduced Michael to Dave’s sister and now Michael and Jess are engaged and the world grows smaller and I start to lose my mind). This makes small town Raleigh look like The Big City.
Anyway, Michael is like another big brother to me, one that turned me on to Television, the Magnetic Fields, Mathew Sweet, Luna, Richard Hell, XTC, and countless others. But then there are the albums of that summer, the magical summer in Rochester when Mike’s parents were gone, it seems, the entire time, though I definitely ate Chicken Vermouth with them at least once. The summer Mike turned 22, with a beer ball (basically a pony keg in a weird plastic ball-like sleeve) and us girls from N.C. there to visit him and fall in love (Sara) and fall in like eternally (me). More than anything I remember listening to records with Mike, on his bed with the blue bedspread while dusk fell on Northern New York in late summer and the fireflies collected at the end of the street. It was all so beautiful we thought it would last forever and also knew it could vanish immediately. Ashing cigarettes into a Pepsi can, while night took over day, waiting for cover so we could lay on the 18th hole at the country club down the street and drink warm Budweiser in a can on the wet green grass and dream of the next day, of something better than that moment, knowing it didn’t exist. I’ll admit that for the first six days I was there I was in love with him. How could I not be? He was and still is one of the most beautiful men I know, dark and angular and all hip bones and long leg strides. Not to mention, he had the most amazing taste in music of any person I had ever met. I was used to being the go-to, queen bee of music in my friend circle, then I met Mike, and I have been trying to catch up ever since. I mean, look at this entry alone, and I found all this in one summer, sitting on a single bed in a barely man’s bedroom in Rochester, New York, believing that the fairy tale couldn’t get any better. I’m glad I fell out of love with him and fell into terminal like, as it has been one of the greatest and most challenging relationships of my life. I inevitably fuck it up, but he forgives me, and I love him for it. The smoke filled rooms of Leonard Cohen’s lyrics invaded my brain like heroin, leaving me helpless and sad upon many beds and couches in my lifetime. If you know him you already know the power of hearing your first Leonard Cohen song. Not to mention, Neil Diamond covered "Suzanne", so that makes it a classic no matter what. (more on that soon). When I hear this album I am lost amid the green wax candles dripping and the fact that you can hear rubber bands boinging in the background to "Master Song" (I know it’s not on this album but come one), the realization that Jenny got Leonard Cohen better than all of us, and I hope she finds him soon. Nick Drake, however, remains mine and Michael’s, the one artist and sound that remains completely personal no matter that he’s been featured on a VW commerical. When I hear "River Man " it still makes me shake in my boots, if you will, still makes me remember discovering Rhino, discovering music from before me that was amazing and personal and relevant and not sold to the McCulture. I remember putting in Five Leaves Left in the CD player in the car on the way down to Florida on my last family vacation, at least ten years ago, my brother upset that I was taking out his Phish CD (how the mighty brohams do fall!) or some such horseshit, and then he and my mom completely wowed by the shear vulnearbility and beauty in Drake’s voice. And then I told them the story of how I came to love him and they fell quiet and we grew closer as the sun set in Georgia and I thought of Michael and Sara and our summer and how it couldn’t get any better. Do you choose Pop music? Or does it choose you? When I am sad and listening to Nick Drake and Cohen over and over I wonder but don’t care.
Morphine is the last band whose albums changed my life that summer. I still hear them everywhere, in the new Menomena album, on the angry sax of Sweep the Leg Johnny, literally on the soundtrack to Spank the Monkey. The heavy bass/sax combo combined with the detached, ironic story telling ability of Mark Sandman (how can you not love them?) all contributed to my never dying love for this band. Pre-White Stripes or Comets on Fire or any other band I dare you to think of, these guys were doing it stripped down and heavy and strikingly beautiful. I remember coming back from that summer and winning the respect of one of the many indie-rock kings of Enloe by my professed love of Morphine and he burned me all of the rest of their albums. Vincent Chung thank you, wherever you are, hopefully I’ll see you at the reunion this summer. To say the least they complete the triumvirate of bands that decided who I would be because they were truly good music, some of the first that would continue to color the palate of my life, for the rest of my life. That summer would not be complete without the picture, the sound of "Good" on Michael’s stereo as we debated about love, the nature of it, the inevitability of it while we were all, unaware of it, in the middle of it: living, dying, breathing, eating, sleeping music for the first time in our lives. Do you choose pop music? Or does it choose you? As Lloyd Dobler would say, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, I’m just glad you’re here.

The Oxford English Dictionary is my Friend

2007-04-09T13:17:00.001-07:00

So
I've been reading P.D. James' Children of Men, partly b/c I loved the movie, all dark and nightmarish and stunningly filmed, but I hated the ending, what with it's forced optimism and whatnot. I'm hoping the book will prove my theory that Hollywood execs mandated that the ending be changed to give the audience some semblance of redemption from two plus hours of prophetic visions and pedagogical life lessons. But the book is giving me a complex, as I am forced to look up a word, oh, every four pages or so. This hasn't happened to me since high school ( thank you Umberto Eco) and now I'm wondering if I've just been cruising for the last ten years and now I have a sudden obligatory stance when it comes to reading words I don't know or is this book actually that cerebral. It's P.D. James for god's sake, not Pynchon or McCarthy or a dozen other writers I can think of who are known language snobs. It's frustrating in that it is interrupting my natural flow as a reader but I also feel Really. Fucking. Dumb. So I thought I would share with you a list of words I've encountered in the first thirty pages and see whether I am alone in this or not.

accidie
apostasy
suzerainty
concatenation
pilasters
parapet
campanile

Seriously?

Obituaries, and the people who love them

2007-04-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite scenes ever written is in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when Tom and Huck go to their own funeral. We've all done it, imagined ourselves dead, imagined our funerals. There is something comforting and creepy about doing this. I'm reading a great book right now called The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson. I've always loved obituaries, celebrity tributes, etc. The montage of "those passed in the last year" at the Oscars is usually my favorite part. This book makes me glad that the good obit pages are available online b/c the local paper in Raleigh, The News and Observer, has a super crappy obit page. I think people like obituaries because the better ones read like this great mash up between prose and poetry. In the book there is this quote from Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate and great divider of the poetry crowd, that kicks my feet out from under me when I read it:
" In times of crisis it's interesting that people don't turn to the novel or say 'We should all go out to a movie', or, 'Ballet would help us'. It's always poetry. What we want to hear is a human voice speaking directly in our ear."
What a terrific first line of a poem, or opening line for an obit;
"Ballet cannot help you"
More than anything, I'm surprised that more people don't secretly want to write their own obit.
Check out the major London papers if you want to read snarky, funny obits. They are the most entertaining.

the obscure object

2007-03-14T00:09:00.000-07:00

First of all,
Read the God Damn book. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides Then watch the movie, That Obscure Object of Desire by Bunuel. Regardless, you will fall in love with something. So, I write for The Raleigh Hatchet. I manage a used bookstore in Raleigh. I love and live with the most amazing and funny boy ever, the kind that makes me mix CDs and loves me even when I'm angry and defensive and kind of backwards. But mostly I'm here to write about music and politics and history and nostalgia. This is a blog all about remembering, or renembering as Sasha and Melissa would have it. It's one of those things. It had to happen. Here it is.