The Look In The Eyes

Haven't posted anything in a while, so I'm puttin this one on, with the caveat that maybe this might not be the best venue for this voice. But, here you are.

More rock to come, my international friends.

Hope you enjoy.

The Look in the Eyes

The Man looked at The Lady from a little bit above her. The Lady said “I know what that means. I can see that look in your eyes.”

She wondered what she could see in His Eyes. Alls she could see were just eyes.

“I know what that means. I can see that look in your eyes.”

What look? What was in the eyes? Alls she saw was a look. And eyes. She looked as close as she could to see the look. In the eyes. But alls she saw was just eyes. Pretty eyes? Was that what was ‘the look’?

“Elzie, Honey. We have to go. Shut the T.V. off. Time to get ready.”

Her Mom had the peaceful nature of a lawnmower over the carpet, ironing in her bra and skirt, scuffling to get ready.

“C’mon. Here you go.”

She picked Elzie up like a koala and took her up to her room.

“OK. One armie in…”

Elzie was compliant. One army in. Nother army in. Now both army, both armies are in.

“There we go,” her Mother heaved with a sigh. “You ready?”

She wanted to know what the look meant. She wanted to know what was inside of the eyes, besides just the eyes. She looked at her Mom as hard as she could, in they eyes. Do you look at the black part? Do you look at the eyelashes? What part tells you what That Look Means?
The Mean Teacher Lady was there and seemed to be as hard as the piano seat. Hard and unshufflable. Unpronounceable. Un-doable. The Lady With the Clipboard was a bumblebee saying names.

“Elzie? Elzie Dunn you are up next. Elzie, like ‘Elzie Fitzgerald?”

Elzie Fitzgerald. What a dumb name.

She walked out on the clickity clock stage and took the liquid looking flat black bench and slid around until she could at least reach the keys ok. Mmm k. The middle finger goes on the black key like this. Uh kay.

She started. But the keys were thicker, they were heavier than her normal piano. They were like walking heavy dogs. The heavy dogs kept wanting to lie down but she had to keep playing them. She had to press really hard to get the dogs to play the note. Dumb dogs. Stupid seat you can’t even sit in. Stupid black and white. The sound was thicker than she knew. She didn’t like it. It sounded hollow in the school auditorium. Audio-torium. Come on, dogs. Don’t be so dumb. Note after note thicker and thicker, until the dogs started licking her fingers. What does it mean, inside of the eyes? Do you change your eyes? How do your eyes change?

“I know what that look means. I can see it in your eyes. I love you too.”

How can she see the Love? Is it in the part in the eyes? Which part?? How do you see it? What does Love look like? If you scratch the eyes, can you get the love part out? Can you just hold the eyes in your hand and see the loving part? Where is the loving part? Is it in the eyes? How come she couldn’t see it? She looked and looked, and all she saw were eyes. She saw frantic, darting eyes. She saw eyes that wouldn’t look at her. She saw eyes that were too busy. She saw eyes that saw something else, something around, something behind her, something in the way, not her but something around it, but she never saw into the eyes. She wanted to see into the eyes. Where in the eyes do you look?

She finished the ending chord and stared at the keys. Can’t even reach the pedal. Stupid dogs. Slow dogs. Lazy dogs. Hateful dogs. I wonder what’s in their eyes, she thought.

The Clipboard Woman came over and spoke to her.

“Elzie, take a bow!”

Elzie stood up, still angry at the black and white key dogs and the pedal so far away. And courteseyed. It was hard to courtesey like her Mean Lady Teacher had told her with her shoes from her sister. But the shoes were pink and her dress Both Armies In was blue so the shoes had to come too. She looked over and saw the Mean Lady Teacher and saw something. It wasn’t happy because one time she and Misty both licked an ice cream at the same time and met tongues and giggled so hard they didn’t know when to stop, and that was happy and so that wasn’t it but it wasn’t sad either even though Mean Lady Teacher kind of had red eyes. Is that the look? Is that what love looks like? It was something she didn’t know. How come the eyes can do so much? Alls she did was try to put her fingers on those keys that would not play, thank you very much.

Afterward in the hallway she ate her treat that tasted like milk but frozen and was supposed to be chocolate but Elzie was pretty sure this paper cup didn’t know what chocolate was supposed to taste like. Her Mom got down and looked Elzie In The Eye.

“I am so proud of you, Honey. So. Proud.”

Proud. Hmm. The Prouders That Be. Proud. Elzie wondered if that was like walking heavy dogs? Or was it like when you catch a moth in a jar? Or was it like when you break your pencil taking the test but you chew off the wood to get the lead part back so you can keep taking the test? Or was it like when you get both Armies in? Maybe The Look in the Eyes could tell.

“Elzie!”

Gahhhh, Missess Gallaalaaway. Allaalaaways in my face.

“Elzie. That. Was. A. Mag. Nificient. Beethoven.”

Elzie nodded and wished someone would take the melting milk from her hand and also the paper part which didn’t taste as good as the paper promised it would look.

“Really.”

And Missess Gallaalaaway had a look in her eyes that was wet and red too.

Elzie quietly said thank you and chewed on her wooden spoon tasting of frozen milk that didn’t even taste like chocolate. And smiled. She felt like the situation could use a smile.

Elzie watched her mother’s legs in her skirt and shirt that shirt that took longer than even Elzie to get ready.

Beethoven, Elzie thought looking up to the lights in the ceiling.

I wonder if he knows what Love looks like. In the eyes.

All Hallows Eve

Halloween, or Hallow's Eve, is a Celtic tradition called Samhain.

Samhain is the annual fall tradition, when the weather changes from warm to the bitter cold. It is when you bring in the flocks, the herds, the family. All of them. Spirits have passed. Time has passed. You are still here.

Where are the ghosts?

You bring them in, by lighting candles. You ask for them to join you.

The mask between what is living and what is dead is lifted. For one night.

Samhain.

Come on in. We miss you.

All the ghosts, all the spirits, of what has passed. Of what is Past.

You can wear a costume, if you want.

We recognize your spirit.

We lift the veil.

Come in.

Happy Halloween, to all my ghosts. All my spirits. All my kindred.

All my souls.

10.15 (on a Saturday Night)

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Voices and bodies and wishes and strong arms where I haven't felt them for so long. Benedictions and nods, looks and longing quiet speechless sentiments from those so dear to me. Never near enough, and never very far away, no matter where they are. His way of walking off saying "goodbye, Toots" without looking at me, but when we sit and talk like actors do to one another, it is The Truth, and we deep sea dive with looks and expressions like hand gestures in a near black depth of sea. His eyes say everything. When he says "amazing," He really means it. When he takes the camera, he knows what he's shooting and how. When he takes me out for a walk, it's just to listen: to the earth, the moan and pounding whoosh of the ocean. When he opens the door for you and checks you out, head to toe, even though you're not alone: you think, you gorgeous dark thing you, I fucking love you for doing that on me birfday. When she brings you a homemade candle and mozes around in ballet slippers, you are honored and loved just for the relaxed, knowing company. And when she texts, you go. Because: There Will Be Fun. Shooting photos for the first time in ages, remembering.

I sat in that dark theater, hearing that which has brought me back since I was 16.

I could have watched those laser horses run for hours.



A dream for too many years come true. All doubts eradicated; every single negative thought that's ever crossed my path, entered my mind. Eradicated.

I heard and felt Bonzo like I never have before. And for me to say that? Is fucking saying a LOT.

Top it off with Roscoe's at 2am with your Hunee, and my dears: fuck the rest. You got put thru and still found love and joy.

Oh and one more thing:


She was 36 when this photo was taken. Sometimes, maybe, it's just getting started. Scratch that maybe.

It was a kiss of betrayal, you fucking whore.

He43 came by after teaching one of his final English courses at the university, to pick up his watch and tell me that he wasn't going to fuck me anymore, so I guess that's it.

Guess that's it.

I had shown him some truth and he43 ran, like they all run. They run like rats from truth, like rats from a sinking ship. He43 came by just to pick up his watch.

When we were half an hour early for the movie we sat in his car and listened. Listened to each other's sighs, new but pleading for familiarity, his music shown to me like a child with a new guest in the house: hey look also I got a lizard. Here look look it's sleeping. Yeah. It's my lizard. He43 turned his head and looked at his back seat which he43 had heretofore not noticed until someone with fresh eyes as they say had pointed it out to him and he43 widened his eyes in boredom, he43 was excited to know someone new, someone he could talk about anything with, a girl. An attractive girl. A girl he could fuck.

He1 used to show me. On the clock. He1 knew I'd pick it up eventually and I did. 10:15. My birthday. I only told one person. Didn't get it. I would be going about my business and cleaning my room, racetrack thoughts jockeying to the forefront of my head, and I would glance at the time and there it would be, not a minute before, not a minute after. Not 10:34. Not 10:11. 10:15 because that's my birthday and he1 knew I would get it eventually.

He37 came into the bar, the first time he looked me in the eyes, that straightaway look. I remembered that look in the eye. I didn't know where from. In between there were jobs at offices, trips to cities, dozens of shows, shows of all kinds, hundreds of acquaintances, jobs in restaurants, jobs in bars, dozens of clients, 'guests,' roommates, roommates mates, girls and their boyfriends, boys and their friends. I didn't remember where from. He37 remembered.

There's one of them. He58 works in a bank and at Starbucks but his real money comes from selling ecstasy. The silent brooding type. Thinks he58 knows who he is but he doesn't. He58 is what he thinks he should be. He58 thought he wanted me. Everything I said seemed to fit into his box labeled "What I Want." He used to say, "Ciao, bella," and he knew it would charm me. Me. Bella. Ha. I had to tell him I wasn't going to fuck him. I told him the first time I could, when it was just us, not accompanied by the party. He took me to lunch and I told him straight out. I was just, last week, understand seeing your friend. Understand? I'm not like that. I'm not that kind of girl. He threw a drink at me, later, when the party was there to witness the outburst, to see how offed he was. Didn't mean to but did it. To spite me. To show me he was hurt. I was the heartbreaker. Running around breaking boy's hearts. He gave me Ondaadje for V. Day. Signed the inside in French, told to him no doubt over the phone by a smoking Michele. I knew what he meant. Not the French. The, you're the one, I picked you out so you're the one. Because I picked you. I picked you after I decided you were perfect and there's no going back now, your saying no doesn't fit. See? It's in this novel, this kind of love. I picked you and you're it. Got the novel to prove it.

And I did get it. I saw the clock, each time after that and giggled. Daddy. You imp. Stay alive, he was saying. You were born on this day: remember? For a reason. It was for a reason.

The movie was called: The Day I Became A Woman.

The next time I saw him43 walking down the avenue towards the bar and I smiled and said hi grabbing a bottle of pear cider, through the window that opened onto the street. I didn't quite remember who or how or why but I knew I should know him so I said hi. And he43 looked good. He43 looked like a tall dark English Professor. My age. A person my age could be a professor. Of English. This means James, this means Nabokov, this means Shakespeare. And he knew me from college. I would take his I.D. at the computer lab counter, reading my poli sci textbook, and he would look me in the eyes and say: thanks. I told my college roommate about him. I had a crush on him. I had a crush on a few guys. He was one of them. I was in college. And this time he was meeting a friend. The rest of the bar was discussing T&A and pool and other drunk nights and they were discussing commerce and the death penalty. He thought I didn't remember him, and I didn't but then I did. I remembered him too well. I was in college then. I didn't fuck anyone. I didn't know I could.

We dated for a while and he attempted to tell me who ee cummings was. The poet I first read when my 2nd grade teacher pulled me aside after I wrote my first poem, to learn Japanese and postmodern poetry privately with the Japanese 3rd grade teacher, whom he7 no doubt was fucking. Dating. As he43 went right in explaining who ee cummings was without first asking if I even knew...I waited to hear how he43 would explain cummings then had to cut him off quietly, femininely, sweetly...with a smile on my face..."I know who ee cummings is." With a smile on my face.

All these ghosts and not a single door blown open. No one standing in the doorway, a face from the past, a familiar body to hold, not a single knowing check in -- how's it goin? Years, months, nights, ERs, fights, drinks, quick saves, all the minutes spent, holding sobbing girls in my long arms, all the secrets I know, the secrets nobody else knows. Secrets that would make men cry. Secrets that would make rats run. All the times I chased the boys and the calls and the creditors away like a tiger with fire in her belly. The driving, the drives, the drugs, the drinks, the diseases, the delirium, the derelict nights. Not a single face in the doorway. Remember me? How you been. And then it stopped. Lost everything. Again. After only gaining the essentials. Bare essentials. Bear essentials. A little food to eat, some new friendly faces, something to improve my standard of living. Small things a bear needs. Lost. All gone. And he43 came by to pick up his watch and tell me that since he wasn't going to fuck me, he wasn't going to come around at all.

And then it stopped. Even if I waited at the clock, from 10:09 on, not blinking, it would go right by like it wasn't even a time to begin with. It would go straight to 10:16. He1 stopped just when I needed it. He wanted me to learn it for future reference but I couldn't. I need it now.

He43 back-handedly "complimented" me by emphasizing how very, very attracted to me he was. He should have just back-handed me.

And he43 stood on the back steps hoping to leave before anything worse happened (what worse?) and I couldn't say anything just wanted to cry. Nobody wants off this sinking ship more than I. What do you do if you are the sinking ship? I nudged him with my foot at his shin like a guy’s guy who just lost a game of horse to the better player and said it was O.K. He43 said no it isn't but he left anyway. All four steps.

He43 only came to get his watch.

I slammed the door before I could see him descend the steps and I ran upstairs before anyone could interrupt the onset and I tried to shut off my ears before I could hear him drive off. The way they all did. The way they all do. They want to be excused from class.

He said, I don't know what to do and I'm afraid of what you might say.

The movie was called: The Day I Became A Woman.


- written 1999

The Hoof & The Heel

A while back I wrote about the absolutely loverly, incredibly talented and ridiculously productive Christine Hale.

She's in a new band with two other boys based in Montreal. They are really very good!

On U.S. tour now, hear them @myspace.

Let Me Clear My Throat.

So I've been chewing on an essay I read recently quite a bit over the last few days. It is titled "Misogyny, up close and personal." I'll just let you sit with that for a minute. Holy Hera, did this girl get it right.

I have sat with boys that I love and heard some truly unspeakably offensive things about women, been in situations where a boyfriend (not just mine) didn't say anything when his guy friends said something offensive about women and ha ha bloody fucking ha, ain't that the truth, take my wife please, been at work in offices, and heard things said about women, in front of women, to women, and all that I couldn't begin to possibly repeat because I reached my saturation point so damn long ago I can't even contain them anymore. Rape is one thing, domestic violence another, knowing what it feels like to enter a public bathroom - say, at your university - and look under the stalls to see if an attacker might possibly be waiting, to walk by yourself in a dark lot to your car trying to not look like a target and just get in the fucking car and then check the back seat to make sure no attacker is there...all of these things are what we as women deal with. Every. Day.

Pile on top of that the thing that gets me the most: the ordinary, quotidian misogyny, the seeming innocuous 'joke' or comment or marketing campaign or come-on when you're just fucking hanging out at a party or going to work or buying milk. It is all the time, every day, day in, and day out, for a woman.

I get cat called every time I leave the house. Every time. Every day, every time. Honked at, cat called, whistled at, and I have been followed, yes, followed, by a male, more often than I can count - I would say it happens on average about once a week. I get hit on at the store, at the dmv, in the elevator going to work, walking to lunch...you get the picture. None of the invitations were invited or welcome or flattering (one guy friend once told me, "it's your fault for being so pretty." huh? um, no? no.). I'm a private, quiet person by nature although I'm overly effusive and garrulous with my friends, and I learned somewhere in shooting up to about 5'9" at first and then up & up to about six feet not to ever, ever make eye contact with anyone when I walk into a room. It's a trick I learned somehow out of a survival instinct - not to ever invite any vampires in. My life, my body, my pussy, my rules. Right? (Just say 'right.')

Along the lines somewhere in there, I got mad as hell and wasn't going to take it any more. If my guy friends wouldn't let someone call them a faggot (how awful to be that right? sigh.) or punk em out, and they would throw blows to make that point - then I certainly had a fight too. It was never a decision. It was that I wouldn't take it anymore. I have only ever punched men. And every last one of them had it coming. I go easy too. Most of them are - well I'd say pussies but we all know pussy is the strongest sweetest thing there is, now don't we? I've had my crotch grabbed (my guy friends intervened when they thought I would actually kill the guy when I had my hand around his neck, up against a wall), my skirt lifted up, my breasts fondled, been cornered and followed and otherwise physically threatened and objectified by men, and not just a handful of times. A lot. Often. Daily.

And I'm one of the lucky ones. That, my friends, is a teeny, tiny fly in your chardonnay compared to the other horrific, appalling, unspeakable things that are perpetrated on women, all the time, every day, all over the world.

So, yeah. I'm a Feminist. I certainly hope that won't be a fucking problem for you.

And then, the guys that think they want to help, that want to try, will tell you this. "Well violence happens to men too. Men are objectified by women too." Like, well, you're not alone.

No.

NO dude. It pales, it does not even begin to prepare you for what it might possibly be like to be a woman, and just for one day. You do NOT know what it is like, you simply do not have the first fucking inkling of what it is like to be followed, objectified, in constant threat, treated like a second class citizen even when you're one of the smartest in the room. At. All. You, my friend, have a different pair, and so you could not possibly, possibly begin to know what one second, one minute, one full, long day in the life of a girl or woman feels like. You will never, ever begin to possibly know or understand. Until you start to listen to us. And really hear.

I bet on your Momma's best dress that if you were to get dressed as a woman A. You wouldn't look so good, B. You would immediately realize how inadequate you looked as a woman (welcome, little dears, to our world, and don't cry Sweetie), and C. Shit is rough for us.

All day.

Every day.

And I'm not saying we don't all have our challenges but this is my time to say my thing, I got the mic, and I'm going to say what needs to be said, listened to, and understood, somehow.

You got all that, you have all of that, and then you pile on the seemingly innocuous comments, the random laughing at an inappropriate, offensive, lots of times downright violent joke about women (the two black eyes, told her twice already? love that one), in a room full of men that want to alpha dog each other into oblivion (and of course it's the theta dogs doing this trying to jockey to the forefront), and sitting there, as a woman, and sighing. Thinking - are they really not human to you? Women? Really?

Let me clear my throat.

The difference between the Civil Rights movement and Feminism is that sexual politics is just that - sexual politics. The Civil Rights movement never entered the bedroom. Thus the implicit threat that if you're a feminist, you hate men, and therefore He will never get laid again. And He sure as hell isn't going to let that happen. But wanting equality regardless of gender, not wanting to be objectified, not wanting to hear jokes that aren't funny, about women, when we all know you have mothers and sisters and grandmas and maybe girlfriends, simply is not mutually exclusive to liking men and most of the time enjoying their company. It's that we want equality. We want to be seen and heard. We should be treated as human. At least. It isn't a threat to say "stop raping us" or, "you know what, this is my ass, not yours to grab" or "I work here too, as an equal, just like you." It is at a very minimum, our right. At a fucking minimum. Gore Vidal once wrote that men are afraid of giving women any power, because then women might treat men as horrifically as men have treated them. He is right. He pretty much always is.

So gentlemen, I say to you thus: you are either with us, or against us. You have every chance to fight the good fight along with us. Because it happens to us. Every. Day.

I once sat, late one night in SF, at a diner, with 3 of my best boys, one of them my dear boyfriend at the time. And the girl that took us out, well her male roommate came to the table to join us after the parties and the bars. He seemed like an intellectual, he seemed cool and inadequate and nerdy, and maybe too self-aware. So late toward the end of enjoying our french fries and gravy at 4am, he said "I hate Feminists." I think to this day that maybe what he meant was "I hate bitches" (fair enough), or "I hate it when people act irrationally and yell at me" (also fair) but it seemed to be targeted directly at women, and particularly those that are aware of a need for equality? I guess? So I kind of understood his point and I pick my battles, so I just sort of shook my head rather than choosing once again to be That Girl that makes waves and points out What You Just Said and How is That OK?

My guy friends laughed, including my boyfriend who probably thought I was going to crucify the poor guy, said, without even looking at me, "you picked the wrong table to say that at, man." I didn't even have to say a word.

That was a good night.

So now, I give you this. Woman, I love ya, high five, I'm here fighting the good fight too. One of the best things I've read in a very long time.

Misogyny, up close and personal, by Melissa McEwan. Bless you, Girl.

Jail Weddings

I fucking love these guys. It's seeming on here that I love every band. This is not true! You would be wrong to think that! I'm a critical bastard. Maybe I just want to keep it positive? On here? For now. Till I feel the pull of Misanthrope tugging at my skirt and soul. Because my blog can ruin you! (My blog cannot ruin you. My blog has five viewers. Hi guys!) But I keep it up, because: love. Is rly truez. Which is exactly and precisely what they bring to every show. Their EP is finally, finally due out soon(it's hard getting 147 band members together. JK. It's more like...I dunno, count the heads in the pic), so I thought I'd lay some internet flowers out for them here. Not that they need my help. Or my Michael Jackson style internet flowers.

So I love these guys, and want not only the best but basically just food and rent for every one of them.

This guy knows what I'm talking about, and he absolutely knows what he's talking about. I know, because I know. He even gives it up for Brainiac. Let's all give it up for Brainiac.

Original review for LA Record. Original preview, which we used to do more but now not so much. It's a bit redundant, I know I know I know (get it? redundant?) but eh. Whatever! Have fun! Enjoy!

Jail Weddings music and website.

UPDATE: Record release 8.21.09 @ Legion Hall in Highland Park. Dance yr Ass off!

Entrance

I first saw Entrance on the night that I wrote about them for LA Record, having come to see my lovely boys/soul brothers/friends in Grand Elegance. They blew. Me. Away. My fucking jaw was on the floor. I couldn't take my eyes off of them and there wasn't a single insincere moment or musical mis-step the whole set. This band is tighter than a James Brown backing band, no shit. They blew me away. And still do, and every time I get to see them. They seem to get better and crazier and, just, better. I really do love and dig and admire most every band I've ever written about for the Record (not all, for sure, and I pull no punches when I don't) , because those are the shows I see and want to be at, but there is something truly deeply unhinged and powerful and possessed about the particular kind of Rock n Roll that The Entrance Band play so damn well. If you haven't had the chance to see them or don't live in LA, now's your chance.

They will be releasing their self-titled album on September 1st (Pitchfork news and album stream here) and will begin their tour today starting off with a stop in the impossibly gorgeous Santa Cruz and then on to Big Sur to play the (in)famous Henry Miller (get it? cus he shagged a boatload of laydees, or at least he claims to have) Library. That show should be pure off the hook psychic energy, for realz.

Entrance Band myspace with artwork, pix, and tour dates here.

OH, and here is an interview with the unbelievably good bassist Paz for Long Beach's The District by fellow LA Record cohort Alex Roman. She describes guitarist Guy Blakeslee's playing as 'like a punk rock flamenco guitarist.' Perfect.

Blonde Redhead

Blonde Redhead are currently writing and recording their latest music / inspiration, and all Good Love willing, we'll hear it soon as it's ready. In the means times, it just feels appropriate to post something for them. I wrote the below in March 2006 and the above was of course rewritten on a bit of a less personal note for the Weekly. I thought I'd republish the personal one here, now. Here it is.

Blonde Redhead have been there for me literally through every love, every breakup, every crush, and every crushing time I thought I wouldn't make it through and did somehow. The album Mi Via Vida Violenta sang me thru a love I could never have, In An Expression of the Inexpressable was my first, and I'd never heard anything like it. It blew me away. That one got me through, I think, myriad others, Fake Can be Just as Good is just plain great and always will be, and I can't even listen to Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons because it was an album that sang to me through the darkness of hell, watching someone I loved get sucked away from me and become unrecognizable in their drug use. When Misery is a Butterfly came out I was in Portland and was already living with enough ghosts. Blonde Redhead came through town and I went, by myself as usual, down to the Crystal Ballroom on 13th & Burnside. I saw Kazu through the second story window and she saw me, and we looked at each other in mutual solitude and thoughtfulness for a long few moments before someone called her inside the room and I had the light to cross the street.

Portlanders were their usual passive aggressive not hip enough to actually just be cool, trying so hard not to care while furtive eyes dart around at one another without words, and I got a Jameson and looked at the albums while kazu, simone, and amodeo tuned and warmed up onstage, checked their connections and setup one last time, and went and changed. I hadn't listened to the album because some part of me felt that there was a lot that needed to be left behind, and Blonde Redhead are about memories, to me. But the music started and I heard these songs that have sang me through so much, when they played 'Misery is a Butterfly' I realized at that moment that these ghosts are MY ghosts, and that if I had made it this far, I had nothing to fear looking back on. And as the three of them looked at each other and connected with each other, making some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard, I hung my head a little and started to tear up because I knew that even though I was a stranger in a room full of people I didn't like, because of these three and what they have given me, because of all the amazing art that has been given to me, I was not alone, and never would be again.

A love song, for Frankie

I called him my bit of messican golden sunshine. And he was. I think we both infused each other with so much joy, so much happiness, it became a white star. Some thrive on the dragging down, the mutual destruction and misery, and we laughed and loved with every fiber of our being. Everything was funny to us. Everything, we shared. I ruined every surprise he tried to arrange for me, and he would shake his head as if he could barely tolerate me and we would laugh like hell because we adored each other. It had never occurred to me that someone might go out of their way to plan something for me, nobody ever had, and there he would sit in his Armani suit and shake his head. And instead of driving one another crazy with 'why can't you just ----' we laughed and understood and brought each other gifts and had amazing times and loved each other with the tending burning ferocity of two people who genuinely care about one another.

He had been going out of town for business, Japan a lot, calling me at the office in four in the afternoon quietly going 'woooo!' drunk as hell at what must have been 3am, in his hotel room as I tried to keep my composure at my desk and giggling my ass off. He bought me a body cuddler and then laughed with his amazing joy when I wouldn't let it go. I kept it forever. He ran like a baseball player, on his tippy toes, and cycled like a maniac. You couldn't rip him away from the seat on Saturdays. He thought I was the most beautiful, amazing thing, and while he felt that and thought that, when I felt like it was time to leave, because I was 22, and needed to go out into this great world, on my own, he let me go with such tenderness and tears, that I still can feel the love to this day.

When my Dad died, he was there. I can't tell you what you go through. He pulled me in and I tried to process it, because you get confused. You're so angry and confused. And he walked me through it, and gently put me through the airport and called and said if you need me to come out, I will. I didn't know that this was a thing you could do for another person. I didn't even know that you could say 'yes. i need you. please come out.' And then he did. He showed up with no hesitation, just to sit with me. He cried at the funeral. I was out of my mind and he sat, and just gave me support. When we were arranging for my father's funeral, my brother and sisters, and I, were at the mortuary. I went to go to the bathroom and got blocked, in the doorway by the undertaker. He said "you have your father's height." His body was below. This is what I was dealing with.

We will always have that house made from a tree struck by lightning, we will always have bagles and lox. We will always have those times, those incredible times. New York with Perrier and Baileys and cafe con leche. Central Park. We will always have that time we rented a pedaler bike in Santa Barbara and you fucking wanted to take it, and of course we did, offroading back to the hotel for you to pick up something. You were my golden sunshine, and I was your good time girl. And we loved each other something crazy.

I'm forgetting what it feels like to be that loved. That adored. That understood and forgiven.

So Frankie, my darling darling wonderful you, wherever you are, I hope that you have happiness. Because you have given me more than I ever thought I could possibly deserve.

A Writer Writes.

So I like, love, to visit one of these sites listed on the right, here. I won't name which one. And I comment, because the writing is provocative, hilarious, incredibly well done, and uh, yeah it's like one of my favorites. And so I read this one comment and I'm already all "brevity. soul of wit, dude. loooook at how loooooong this post is! we don't care. we don't have time to read your 1,000 word [essay] comment. Keep it simple stupid, KISS." But it was this successful lawyer, and he sometimes thinks, on his way home or maybe his lunch hour or whenever, that he would like to be a writer, because reading the primary blogger is a fucking LAFF factory, so he wonders should he be thinking about becoming a writer?

NO.

YOU SHOULD NOT BE THINKING OF BECOMING A WRITER.

And here it begins.

You don't 'think' about becoming an artist. One writes because one has a voice, hopefully, and something they want to say with that voice. The painter paints because s/he sees something that needs to be put out there, the musician hears a song. The artist expresses their Self, because they have to. If they do not have these outputs, these expressions, they go crazy and a lot of the time very well do anyway.

You 'want' to write?

Then. Write.

I'm serious. I'm not trying to shoot this dude's dreams down, and I won't even discuss the sheer lunacy of thinking about quitting a job that took years of school and thousands of dollars and that made you successful and that you, actually, quite like. And in this economy. But here's the thing. You don't 'think' about 'wanting' to 'write.'

A writer writes. Period.

Go! Do it! Live the dream. Write away! Learn the guitar, then. Do it, and I mean that. Because then you will see how fucking diffcult it is. Because the reason this guy thinks this blogger has such a great life is because this blogger is a sheer fucking genius with words, but if you were to even attempt to put out the amount of content with that level of quality, thoughtfulness, and hilarity, every day, you will see how fucking difficult it becomes. Rock stars. They really have the life, huh. Sex, drugs, rock n roll. Don't have to do a thing. Well you too, my friend, can learn an instrument and get a band together and starve on the road for years to get on stage and just fucking hope that one person likes you, and likes your music, and maybe, maybe if you get lucky, that band will stay together and you might cut a few albums. And if you're really, truly meant to do it, and you're really fucking lucky? Maybe you're John Bonham. But there is maybe one of those every couple of decades and even then, pretty much nobody can take on Bonzo.

Because, here's the thing. For as long as I can remember, my life has been devoted to art in one form or another. I have always loved the written word. I have always been silenced by the power of, and sheer infinity of possibilities in, photography. I can't even begin to express what music means to me, to all of us, and I try every time I write about it. Everybody that does not write or paint or sculpt or act or play music thinks doesn't it look fun and wouldn't that be nice, and what a cute little fucking thing you do, and sit on the fucking sidelines and say you like it or don't, or, even better, it's good. Or it's not. And what does [insert movie star here] do? They get to be rich and gorgeous and famous and all the award shows...you know what? You, too, can learn the craft of acting for a giant price both financially and emotionally and you too can go on audition after audition for years and years and years, and maybe if you're lucky? You are another DeNiro. But you have to work reeeeeeally fucking hard to be that.

But you don't write. You haven't. You might have tried. Maybe that post was your one attempt. And again, I'm not shooting it down. I'm saying: it is fucking hard. And the people that choose to express themselves creatively, the good ones, the ones worth their salt, learn their skill and they work their asses off and they barely make any money and they do it anyway because a writer. Writes. Period.

The fear from someone who hasn't tried anything creative is that they don't have any talent. My sense is that if you're even asking the question, the answer is no, you don't. But hey. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. A lot of very untalented people make their money in creative pursuits. Lots. But even the truly exceptionally gifted ones? They don't know if they're any good either. Because why? Because. It's. Fucking. Hard.

So you wanna write? Then go do it.

I'm a writer, it's what I do. And as the wondrously talented writer and director Billy Wilder wrote, "I'm a writer. But then again, nobody's perfect."

The Economistress

I just explained, successfully, what Purchasing Power Parity means in Economics.

I am almost like a Dr. of Economics today!

Wikipedia.

Sunset Rubdown, Echoplex

Ahhhhh I can die a happy woman if I never live another day. But I will, I will be living another day (many many many more, unfortunately for me. I kid. Sort of). Every once in a while, you can catch a glimpse of sunlight peeking through the grey clouds of your inner life, you hear the music and feel connected again, alive. This is what music does best, when it's done well: it reconnects you to life, to feeling alive, to feeling human, all that that entails, and maybe, just for the night, or the drive down the freeway, or the ride on the train, you're going to be okay. Sunset Rubdown at Echoplex was simply perfect, the sound was amazing (special shout-out to my tight bro from way back Scott Cornish who works sound there), the band was tight, and Spencer seemed to have come out of his shell a bit to enjoy being a frontman, interacting with the audience and joking. They've added a live projection of themselves behind them on a screen, and I think the visuals really added to the experience. I love this band so much, I love Spencer's genius, and for that night, they made me feel okay, and alive. For a little bit. So, you know, Namaste.

I danced my ass off in my own world of ecstasy (I was not on ecstasy) and had a blast.

My writeup for LA Record here.

Iran

If you don't follow politics, what the fuck is wrong with you? Read, for Christ's sake. Nah, I kid. A little. I know y'all watch Daily Show, and truthfully, that'll keep you informed for the most part.


If you haven't heard anything about the recent election in Iran, it was fucking rigged, mates. In Tehran and elsewhere, journalists, students, workers, noticed that their internet mysteriously got bogged throughout most of the day, preventing emails or photos from getting out. Before the polls had closed and definitely before all the votes had been counted - especially from the remote, rural areas, Ahmadinejad had declared a 62.5% victory. Riiiiiiight. Convenient.


Sound familiar?

But the people of Iran have been protesting for days against the rigged election, with hundreds of thousands of people coming out, risking police beatings, some sustaining gunshot wounds, others have died in the melee. Foreign media is banned (all of it. BBC, NPR, WSJ, everyone), but the Iranians have been taking their own videos to put online, taking photos, and Twittering the event to spread the word to the world. And just when I thought Twitter was completely and totally useless and ridiculous. Guess not. If you want to read an excellent analysis from one of the best experts we have right now on Muslim and Iranian-U.S. Relations, go read Reza Aslan here.

I love this man. Reza, I want to kiss you all ovvahh! Look, see. I have indicated my lurve for him below. That is why I have put the airbrush hot pink heart around him, that is what that is indicating. That I heart him. Reza, please wake the fuck up and come find me so that we can have funny jokez times and discuss ancient Persia and laff at idiots. Kthxbai! (PS Reza, I am also available to wait for you in the greenroom as you do all these interviews with CNN and Chris Matthews because waiting can be boring so I will totally keep you entertained while you are waiting to school the fuck outta the uninformed).

Update: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for playing up Iran's divisions, and declared the election an "absolute victory, [a] difinitive victory." Ohhhh yet another round of Blame the Jews. Not that the Israeli government isn't crazy, but c'mon dude. Zionist media? You've blocked all foreign media, so how does that work?

That guy is a LAFF riot! He is a very good Muslim though, very studious. He seems to have kept copious notes from our 2000 'election' ripoff.

love, Mochi

I love Mochi. Do y'all know Mochi? If you don't, you should. She's stunning.

Christine Hale aka Mochi is an artist first and foremost. She works for LA Record and makes band posters and her shit is banzanaz cute and awesome. You can see for yourself here. http://www.lovechristine.com. She makes art, she does band posters, she puts out her own mini comic, she is a legit designer, she is a writer and photographer, and created a brilliantly conceived music project using the poems of one of my all time favorites, ee cummings. Yeah. Girl is leGIT.

But it's her music I'm here talkin about, cus it's terrif. Obviously, I'm a fan and love the girl to death, as do many. She recently sent me an mp3 which was a short sweet mere :41 but a total joy to listen to, saying in the email that she wrote it after receiving an email from Jens Lenkman. I'm like 'how the fuck do you know Jens Lenkman?' but then you just sort of come to expect those things to come from her. Completely objectively though, as someone who sees a lot (repeat: lot.) of shows and acts, listens to quite a bit of (diverse, I'd say) music, and writes about music, she really is the shit. I've been listening to a lot of She & Him, Bat for Lashes (so good! I know you all know this but I'm just now discovering how awesome she is after seeing the video for Daniel), Feist, Kate Nash, The Finches, Emily Jane White, Lykke Li stuff lately. The girls. The adorable, usually booted and skirted and banged and highly (well) accessorized girls with the lovely voices, and she is definitely among those shimmering stars in the night sky.

You can listen here.

What you won't see from listening to her music or watching her videos is how insanely hilarious she is. Girl makes me fuckin giggle. Moch, we'll always have that road trip to Lompoc. Shout out to ELO. Sorry your psilocybic teeth fell out in that motel.

Here is a video from one of her sinfully short lived projects, Mini Love, at the soon to be tragically torn down Acres of Books in Long Beach. You can hear a girl giggling in back. That would be moi. I'm gay.

Someone, seriously, give her a record deal. I'd give her a record deal. But I no haz any rekkird dealz to gib! (that was for you, Moch.)

Cubbies

This story is so old...I'm trying to place just when I might have written it and seriously can't. I was trying to place old boyfriends, former long term jobs...nothing. It seems to have sort of been before any of that, but you remember so well your first ____ that you ___ and this one just was. About 3 months? I think I might have been around 21? Maybe? Which makes me think this little ditty should be better, but it isn't. It is what it is. And I still like it, really. I think I've come to love it the way I've learned to laugh internally at my day job. It's funny when you watch it on The Office being played out by one of the funniest and most talented guys in the world - not so very when it's real and he IS your boss and he's the furthest thing from funny. I had an assignment working in finance at some huge corporation, and the CFO, I just remember he looked like a rat. Full anthropomorphic shit, or whatever it is in the opposite, a human looking like a giant rat. The man was about a full foot shorter than I am. I towered over him. They hate that. He would pull me into his office and hope to capture my...god only knows. Attention? Adoration? Respect? He couldn't possibly have hoped for my respect. Or maybe more just to stare at me and see himself reflected in someone young, female, beautiful. For. Hours. I had the instinct very early on that if this guy caught so much as a whiff that I was about ten times smarter than he was, he would make my life miserable. So I took it on as another kind of assignment. I was going to play dumb. Really dumb. Playfully, endearingly dumb. I adopted a higher voice and a giggle, I played it off for him, for all my co-workers, the whole act. I would widen my eyes and go "noooooo!" as if everything entertained me the way a mobile entertains a baby. Years later I ran into one of the co-workers at another job at a restaurant and had to slip back into the voice hoping none of my current co-workers would overhear and ask what the fuck was wrong with my voice. But I played it off, to the hilt, took home a paycheck and avoided the onslaught of misogyny that surely would have been headed my way if I was just me, and laughed all the way home. And in the in-between moments, I wrote this.

Cubbies

Cubicles. Standard issue gray burlap-covered cubby dividers. In Kindergarten, in Pre-School, even, we had cubbies remember. Now she was sitting in one, calling it her desk. You can come by my desk later. I should go back to my desk soon. Yes, I have that waiting for your signature on my desk. Fuck off and leave me alone at my desk.

She arrives at 8:37. Enough minutes to make them think but not enough minutes to make them think twice. Enough time to assure she wouldn’t be taken for granted. Enough time, just enough, to drink a second cup of coffee on her way in. She sits down, she logs on, she gets up and she gets Cup #3. She tips the Non-Dairy imitation-style cream-flavored substance in a canister upside down for a five-count and adds seven packets of Sweet-N-Low because she is trying to cut back on calories. She adjusts her pantyhose at the waist where they are rolling and attempting to separate her legs from the rest of her body (and who isn’t these days) once again and heads back to her desk/cubbie to hide until somebody makes her turn around and pay attention to them.

The intercom goes off. She picks it up but there is a grotesque echo because her boss, who is invariably trying to intercom her before she’s even had Sip #1 from Cup #3, her boss is right over the little cubby wall from her, sitting behind his ersatz replica imitation style desk, and his voice ain’t no Mickey fuckin Mouse. It’s the real deal with hems and guffaws and throat clearing and long drawn-out guttural ahs. She is trying to decide which voice to listen to, the one that sounds like it’s coming from inside an old coffee can or the one coming over around and through her alleged wall. She chooses neither, gets up, leaving the intercom on, and goes click click clicking her heels into his office. Janice is sitting there on the other side of his desk, waiting with that vapid subservient look in her blue-eyelined, tarantula-lashed eyes. Dark blue eyeliner. Circa 1984 when she was probably a rollin mama in her Jordache jeans and frosty feathered hair driving to drill-team practice.

With that look in her eyes that flashes like a neon light going on! Going off! Going on! Prozac! Prozac! Prozac!
“Yes.”
“Oh. Grace. I tried to intercom you.”

Grace does not respond because she is trying to avoid saying the obvious I know you idiot why do you think I got up and came in here.
“What we’re trying to do here. You see this document. We’re trying. How are you this morning.”
“Whatcha need.” If she kept her eyes bright and attentive he could sometimes actually finish a thought before the hour was up. But don’t stare too long, she knows, because his eyes will only wander to that third button all the ladies know what she means. That button they’re always looking to undo or question or ponder or challenge or beg, “Why? Why you gotta stand in my way?”

And Janice wants to bond. “Morning, Grace!”
“You have lipstick on your teeth.”
“Oh!”
“See, this document here...”
“You need a copy.”
“Well -”

Because if he concedes that even she can give herself orders better than he can, then, well, he shouldn’t be the Vice President and she shouldn’t be the secretary, right? “Well what we need is for Janice - I’m just trying to clarify here - Janice needs to see these, O.K.? What I’m trying to say is. Do you think - “

And she snatches the paper out of his hand anyway, knowing that she’ll have to pay for it later. Just like playground.

She has a coaster that says: Dow Jones Delivers. She has a travel-sized tube of hand lotion on her desk. She has voice mail, e-mail, a fax number and a printer and still nobody ever calls her on Friday nights. She works for two men and one woman. And what a woman. If wrestling wouldn’t be seen as totally out of line and completely professionally arresting she would love to take her on, red leather 4.5” pumps and all. Full body slams. How you like that, Mary Anne. Maybe not so very funny how a woman will abuse another woman shamelessly in the face of so much ordinary quotidian misogyny. It’s an eat or get eaten world, right. Kill or be killed. Fuck the cause. I didn’t burn any bra, I don’t owe you courtesy, even. You’re my hired servant and don’t I love it. I’ll abuse you just so I feel as big, bigger even, than the Big Boys. Just like playground. She belongs to an e-mail group that sends out low-fat, high-protein recipes to her e-mail address. She goes to lunch and wanders the mall and comes back and does the whole routine over, except it’s closer to the 5 o’clock hour, which means everything. She contributes two dollars a week to the ladies’ lottery pool. She wants to win that money and wave buh-bye to all these nasty slavedrivers. Just working for a living, what else can she do.

When she returns from lunch she has a pile on her chair about a mile high, she will say to herself, about a mile high that she scoops up and puts into her FIFO in-box. First In, First Out. If I feel like it, she should add. It should be her FIFO, IFIFEELIKEIT box. Show ‘em who’s boss, which of course she is. She checks her six voice-mail messages and 4.5 e-mails. Some have attachments. And Mary Anne comes around the corner, all 105 tightly-wound up Southern pounds of her. She can feel Mary Anne over her shoulder, just over her shoulder, as Mary Anne is just pushing five two even in those pumps she tinkers around in, feel her menacing darkness like a pure force of evil in her presence.
“You’re back.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I came by your desk earlier. You weren’t here.”
“Whatcha need.”
“This form here.”

Mary Anne, she thinks, just leave the god damn form. I’ve seen the god damn form forty thousand times and just because you have no idea what it is or what to do with it doesn’t mean I don’t I know what this god damn form does from beginning to end Mary Anne, just leave the form and I’ll deal with it as usual.

They go around and around. Phrases like: just to clarify and, so, to reiterate, are flying over the cubicle walls. Lil’ ol’ Gracie is losin it. She is analyzing every atom of Mary Anne under her searing gaze. And then it happens. She says it and it’s too late to take it back.
“Oh for Christ’s sake, Mary Anne, just leave the god damn form.”

The look is utterly how should she say. Mary Anne looks just exactly like a chubby toddler whose fifth Twinkie for the day has just been snatched away by their military-disciplinarian father. Shocked, horrified, indignant, humiliated. Now she’s ready.

Gracie attempts a syllable. It is all she is willing to offer.
“Don’t.”
“It’s been a really hectic -”
“Even.”
“I’ve been working on -”
“START. With me.” A look of threat. Pure blood threat.
“Sorry.”
“I’ll bet you are.”

But she isn’t. Grace is sorry about one thing, and that is that she didn’t have a camera handy for the occasion, to snatch a shot of lil old Mary Anne in a fit. She’s screwed for good now; the least she could do was capture the occasion for posterity’s sake. Something to show her children being raised on the welfare of the state.

Spencer Krug

your beauty pulls and thrills the way catching someone unaware of their own reverie always does. the glimmer and burn of sunshine on dancing water. gorgeous lights that burn, stay, dance. such a tiny thing. that traveled across mountains to show (some)one that light is still there.

Gore Vidal, my darling Gore, wrote that trying to describe another person's (Italo Calvino, with Invisible Cities) gorgeous work is the "most difficult, and perfectly irrelevant."

because the words are already there.

New Swan Lake here.

Sunset Rubdown official site here. LA Record show review by yours truly here.

and, of course, Wolf Parade here.

Dragonslayer from Sunset Rubdown out 6.23.09. Update! The great kids over @ Stereogum have given Dragonslayer a preview listen and guess what, it slays. Duh. You can pre-order and then immediately (immediately!) download the LP from Jagjaguwar (actual British pronunciation of the animal) here. Instant gratifuckation.

Read Stereogum insights and worth-their-salt commentashunz here.

Dear Portland,

I still hate your guts.

Love,

Chesney

OK so this girl I know is I guess going to visit up there, and as you know I studied Econ there (you do not know that, probably) so I was like oh, I should tell her to go here & here, and then I'm all wait wtf is that *one*, ONE fucking place I liked called? So I go to yelp portland, which is in and of itself the stupidest fucking place in the world (pdxers talking about, or, sorry, yelping pdx) with the fucking worst 'english' and spelling (?) but anyway after ten (10), TEN pages I still can't find this MAJOR BAR in downtown portland even after filtering "downtown" and "portland" and "full bar" and "happy hour", because after all those filters we're still only talking about five fucking bars, max, still can't fucking find it. so now just remembering the name is driving me crazy & then i'm like oh wait, it's supposed to be connected to the tunnels, SHANGHAI TUNNEL*! ah ha so I yahoo it and then i click on the webpage and the webpage, of fucking course, because this is a major thing that all people do all of the time, load webpages for FUCKING BARS that's totally what I do, for bars, instead of just fucking going there and fucking walking in and ordering a drink, I GO TO THEIR WEBPAGE FIRST, the fucking webpage takes TWENTY FUCKING GOD DAMNED MINUTES to load to what? to do what. to show the darkest, most underexposed fucking photos of a bar that is smaller than my last apartment and the page says this:

oh wait I can't just ctrl fucking c, ctrl fucking v the copy on the page, because OF COURSE YOU CAN'T it's a webpage for a bar in PORTLAND but it says this:

and I quote:

"This place is to bars what Bruce Campbell is to horror films. Simply put, we will kick the hell out of your old watering hole. If you're trying to find that warm and fuzzy feeling from this place...move on.

Located on a dark street corner in Old Town, Shanghai Tunnel grips your sole the second you walk in."

YOU MEAN SOUL. YOU MEAN GRIPS YOUR SOUL.

It is NOT located on 'a dark corner' of 'old town'. It is located in the busiest, fanciest, most expensive part of DOWNTOWN on a perfectly well lit and high-end corner of a very busy intersection where you will go downstairs and everyone will be drinking their fucking pint of their faaaaaahvorite hoppy micro-brew ale (not lager) or PBR to fucking slum it with their god damned beards and fucking "ironic" fucking tee shirt and the girls trying really waaaay too fucking hard - either with the heels and the silky, slutty cut top OR the tattoo sleeves and black hair and red lipstick - will invariably be drinking fucking appletinis like every other fucking downtown bar in the fucking world, that is what you mean. AYFKMWT? You are not. You are not fucking kidding me.

AND THEN I think omg this song on Pandora is driving me literally fucking crazy why won't it stop and I go to Pandora but it's paused (pause.) and I LOL because it's not what Pandora is playing but the FUCKING GOD DAMNED WEBSITE. FOR A BAR.

FYI, take notes here, the Bruce Lee of martial arts bars, or whatever tough stupid fucking metaphor you want to use is fucking Fern's in Long Beach. Probably circa early to mid-90s but still not exactly your friendliest bar. But they don't need a fucking website to advertise that because IT'S FUCKING FERN'S and part of being tough is actually just, you know, knowing that, and not having to wave a fucking knife around screaming "I'm so fucking dangerous, Mommy! Look at me!"

Die. Already. Hate. Portland.

*they do have delicious drunk tofu & noodles and it is as far as PDX goes, probably one of the better bars. Of which there are like, 3.

[Urgent fucking update! There is an actual fucking review of Fern's, and it is hilaaaaarious.]

Talib Kweli

Did you guys hear about this shit? Firstly, Kent state U of Minn is not. University students and flower children protesting for peace this was not. Billy Bob Thornton and the go fuck yourselves band canceling their entire tour of Canada because Billy Bob is a fucking asshole and can't handle an interview, not. Just our lovely Talib Kweli unable to make it due to flight troubles and even being down enough to Twat (tm Steven Colbert) it to his friends and fans on the ground, it was. To quote, "Sorry minneapolis! Still stuck at ohare tried my best...catch you on the rebound." Pretty decent, yes.

But then this went on. WTF? This isn't an NWA show in '88 in Compton, man. It's not the Watts riots in '65 and it sure as shit isn't the March on Washington. It's Talib Kweli. In white ass Minnesotta.

In his honor, I'm posting this. Cus he should know someone's got his back, right? Right. Stupid College kids. Don't even know what they're fighting for anymore. They do know Obama is president now, right? (Right?)



Originally published April 2007, and found here.

Tinariwen / Coachella

In the spirit of Coachella (which Tinariwen played at this year) which I did not go to this year, and am very glad not to have, because oy, with the heat and the gazillion people and way way way too many acts and bands to see. Read: the shit is hectic. But a blast. I've had an amazing time each time I went. If you've never been, you should definitely go at least once in your life.

Update: found some mp3s & a myspace page for Tinariwen, even though the mp3s are truncated, it's still worth listening to because they're just that good. Check out the guitar on "Assouf." Hendrix, non?

Always a good time, but never will be as good as this one, in '06.

Floating in the ice tent...

Biiiiiitch, pleeeeze.

I swear to God. If I read or hear one more self-professed 'feminist' telling other women how to behave, I am absolutely going to lose my fucking shit.

It was really just a matter of time before I got to this here, because as anyone who knows me knows, I have a lot to say on the subject. It, really, unfortunately, was bound to happen, because I think I was of the thinking that I could keep this site to a certain rigor and not have it be dedicated to 'so I was having coffee and thinking...' or, well, ranting, cus that's not really what I'm here for.

But this storm's been a bruja-ing.

It started with this. Salon's Broadsheet and Mary Elizabeth Williams' entry about Scoring With the Drunk Chick.

For starters, this essay is entirely lacking a cogent argument. I really don't know what the point is here - that women shouldn't drink? Or shouldn't drink, and then have sex? That women are somehow more intolerably loose and out of control than guys are, when drunk? That the Drunk Chick is now a Hollywood stereotype? That women should really behave themselves? You are fucking kidding me with this, are you not? Because you must have been trying to be kidding me here. Um hey, Madame? It's the Victorian era sending you a telegraph - they want their social mores and thinking back.

All of those points are wrong. I...are you seriously relying on Hollywood to not use stereotypes? Really? Are you...you're kidding, right? Were you literally born yesterday? In I Love You, Man and 40 Year Old Virgin just to name a recent very few, the protagonists, dudes, are shown not really holding their liquor very well, eg projectile vomiting and trying or succeeding in sexual encounters that are less than advisable. So, but women are not to do it because...why? Because you told them not to?

People. People. My children, my confidantes, my compatriots.

Feminism is this: it is the belief that people are equal, regardless of gender.

That's it. That's all of it. That's all it is. Equality. I, personally, don't need anyone to tell me how much to drink and when and how or who to hook up with because I can think for myself, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Even though I am just a silly fucking girl, and I'll thank you not to insult my fucking intelligence in telling me a. how to act, b. whether or not to drink, c. when or not to have sex and how, or d. that Hollywood and comedy are all about the stereotypes. Biiiiitch, pleeeeeeeease.

And I get to do that now, think and speak for myself, and act or do however I see fit, and decide to be a doctor or be a full time Mom or jump out of airplanes because the feminists worked and died and got bullied for that right for me, thank you, and I think that I will keep that right, thanks. Sars knows.

And as Tracie Egan of Jezebel fame wrote: I Drink Cus It's Fun, Not Because It's Feminist.

What she said.

And then there was this poster.


Ignoring for a moment that that simply is not Jennifer Aniston's real face, and I don't know but they have pretty much photoshopped her into oblivion, but WHAT? This is like a cute funny thing, grabbing the ass of a woman? Who clearly looks like she's headed to work? So like, that's ok again? This dude (and I love Steve Zahn) in his acid washed 505s gets to grab her ass and she's all (!) like the Coppertone Baby? WHAT? Read previous paragraphs re: feminists fighting for the right to not have your ass grabbed. Oh I know, don't even start. I'm sure it's funny and he's her loser boyfriend and it's totally consensual but coming from someone who has literally fought guys to the ground or up against the wall on more than one occasion for doing this exact same thing: THANKS. Thanks for just completely unraveling all of that progress. This is one image that I actually had to walk away from because I was so offended by it. It seems innocuous. And that's the danger. What's a little ass-grabbing right? But the image, making it kind of quirky and funny and OH! (titter, giggle, feminine helplessness! oopsie doopsie, it's my poopsie!) makes. Me. Fucking. Furious.

But then, as is often the case, I somehow stumble, while looking for eau de oppopanax, this genius. Boomtown Boudoir.

And everything's ok again. Because at least we have a voice.

Fame, faaaaaaaaame

So yeah, I went, as I sometimes do, to the LA Record issue release party with my compatriot in all things fun and LOLworthy and founding editor Chris Ziegler. So this redheaded girl named Pandora (took everything in me not to ask her how her box was. Everything.) was snapping photos and me being an idiot didn't hide my face or even bother to ask where the photo might be published and yeah here it is. The cover Cover, which is now a centerfold, was of course a tip of the hat to Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, starring Damian from Crystal Antlers. Of course it was Damian (Sexual Chocolate in the hizzouse.)

Fishbowl LA covers LA Record issue release party.

But the important thing here is WHAT? Michel Gondry was at that party and we didn't even notice him? WTF is up with that, God? WTF is up with that. Let's let this be a lesson to never, ever leave a party early because sure enough, at 4am or whatever, in walks Bill Murray or Michel Gondry and you'll just be passed out with Sharpie drawings of dicks all over your face, right? Never get outta the boat, man. Absolutely goddamned right.

This is fiction. "Hazelnut."

2:32 ante meridian, even odd even, he saw her through the cafe window and he thought that’s her and she’s mine and pretty cute if I do hand it to myself. And she felt him before he came in, the same way she had felt him so many times before, even if she hadn’t, even though it was only once, in that just before moment, and still when he entered it was more than she expected, or better, or more severe than she had thought before it happened.

The cafe was loaded of course with the eyes through the glasses staring not at her eyes god forbid they see a soul instead of a body and saying, what’s your name but really asking the question can I know you. Can I possess you. Not will you let me but how should I do this. And he sat down and disappeared before she could wave or say hi, but she had smiled already at him because that was how it flowed from her, she couldn’t stop it. Tried being a stoic once in college, so she wouldn’t have to take so much, but the only thing that came from it was the question what’s wrong with your face, and anyway she couldn’t hold it back, these things rushed out of her like a broken dam. Damn. He knows I’m gone for him and now he’ll use that as power which, of course, she thought, he has. She would almost give him anything, she was just about at that point, of getting so worked up, to not ask anything but take everything you want from me, I don’t want it anyway now that I’m so in love with you. It’s maybe a pity or a blessing when you can’t remember what you were before something happened, something so gorgeous and tragic as this.

He was of course insulated and untouchable. There was the singer in a burgundy suit thin black tie on black shirt messed up hair and tempting gap between his two front teeth, who got down on his knees moaning on stage, not just singing but pleading and when he looked out at his begging audience of girls with the hair and the bracelets and the shoes and the boyfriends, just one glance sent them into silent desperation, the girls and the boys, because they felt it too, the loss the desire the sex. Even better and extra-sexy because there he was right in front of you on stage and wet with sweat, glistening and slippery and hard, just the way we like it, just the way it should be. There was the fun everywhere in an alley in the restaurant onstage 5am at the motel guitarist, far too cute to be in a band, model cute, movie star cute and the funniest of the group, charming women with his searing perceptiveness and killer humor, winking and cavorting onstage, making the girls laugh and sigh. The bass player, we’re not even sure he can speak, touched by the e-mails & messages left at clubs sent to him on the road from his girl. Quiet, touched, smiling sometimes after the show, and yet when he had to sing backup on the chorus it made you think something has made this boy terribly angry, and don’t we love it. The rhythm guitar player, covered in tattoos, seems like the bad boy, or maybe he wants us to think that? but secretly the kind of guy to drive you home after a fight with your boyfriend and not try anything. Emotional, dependable, sweet, but ladies don’t let him know we know that, shhhh don’t let him know the tatoos and black hair don’t fool us for a second. There was the guy who booked the show and his girlfriend, the show couple, the showy couple, invariably fighting or making out like in high school, she with the blunt black hair, red lips, bad attitude, smoking Camels wearing big heels and carrying, of course, a little black bag. The kind of girl you want behind you if you ever wanted to sock it to somebody, so their teeth went caving in from your fist. There were the friends, some guys from the other band, and him. Wingtips and spiky hair, a nose sent from thousands of miles and years ago, so expressive it held multitudes and cultures and stories and histories from a land where everything began thousands and thousands of years ago, eyes that held the seeds of civilization and the knowledge of history, and she’s just a boring Irish-Scot looking at his gorgeous long muscled arms through his sweater, what’s a girl to do.

She maneuvered a casual hi guys. She didn’t know if she should take out her pen or come back later, hand them the menus or just leave them because she was pretty sure she was shaking, send out the other waitress, crawl under the table or maybe even hide in the kitchen with the Mexicans who she made giggle with her baby level Spanish and the wiggly dances she did for them. There was a general noise for a response and an ensuing story about the jackass bouncer who threw out the roadie while they were playing because they mouthed off to him. She glanced at him and there he was, quiet and staring at her and god knows what going through his head.

They made it through, the boys happy and exhausted, content to be sitting and entertained by something else, plenty of coffee, and it made her feel like at least she could take care of them, she could mother them for a while before they left her stratosphere and she would be alone again in the cafe, listening to men’s boring stories and trying to pretend she was interested, or not pretending anything because it usually doesn’t make a difference. And soon enough she was. She got a hug, the kind like hey we knew each other once, wasn’t that nice. Everyone hugged her, waved, we like you, you’re cool, too bad you don’t live in our city. If only they’d asked. It would have taken her 14 minutes, exactly approximately or precisely, whichever, to grab the only other things that may have meant anything to her beyond him. She would have flown she would have driven she would have walked to New York, Ohio, wherever doesn’t matter, just keep on going I want nothing to do with this kind of loving aching needing not speaking. Just ask. Don’t speak to me again I can’t handle it. Fine. She wouldn’t see him again anyway. I love you come marry me. Fine. I’m already gone, everything is gone, lost it in the war. Like a war, this kind of love. No prisoners, no rules, maybe somebody fighting with you, covering your back, maybe not. Hope we can be friends. I hope so too because I can’t remember my life without you she would say. But he didn’t, she didn’t. Speak you may lose him and that you learn fast. Wrong guy if you lose him, and this she was not willing to find out. And leave he did, before she realized that he had been sitting there with his smell and those eyes and his shirt and those legs. Listening to men’s boring stories and trying to pretend she was interested, or not pretending anything because it usually doesn’t make a difference and she would look out the window every ten minutes, which was pacing herself.

At 2:32 in the morning, each time she looked out the window she saw only this, in this order: glass reflection, glass, twelve hundred local band stickers on the glass, none of them his yet, because the bastard had to be born halfway across the country, didn’t he, darkness, the reflection of the hazelnut light on the rainy streets. Some houses beyond that. Each time the bells on the door chingled she thought this, in this order: it isn’t him, it can’t be him, it could be him, it won’t be him, it might be him, I need him, he isn’t even done playing yet, I need him, I hate him, why are these other people interrupting my perfectly good fantasy of actually seeing him don’t they know I’m in love. What if the actual sound of the bells on the door were of the same reality as his body in the room, near and present and needing, full of heat and sweat and dates in history memorized in his head. Not to mention the damn drums. Those damn drums. She would smile. You could taste the distance. She was as good as another country, she was as great as another dimension, she was completely unreachable and funnier than ever because she kept forgetting she wasn’t actually alone, just felt like it. The stark contrast of real people in the cafe and the empty space she felt was so painful it wrenched her stomach, and solitude would have killed her. So she poured the coffee. She heard them whisper Jesus she’s tall when she turned her back. She held back the reflex to lunge across the table and say let me help you with that with her hands around their throat. She smiled. She would close her eyes for a second and the darkness would swallow her. She opened her eyes and saw the same thing in the same order. She tried to reverse the order, to bring him in. Telepathy was not totally out of the question for options to weigh, why fight it if you don’t have any options anyway. She got asked what her name was where she lived how tall she was if she had a boyfriend and how long have you worked here. She had some questions of her own she wanted to ask. She kept her mouth shut. When her smile showed her teeth it was the way a wolf does, in her mind, bare her teeth, better get back. I could kill you and you haven’t even thought of that yet. I could kill you but I won’t. I could run but I don’t. I could call but I won’t. Won’t even ask. Be such a good girl. Sit, stay, be silent. And wait and see. With every second like a new strain of virus, a new way of hurting, thinking, laughing, feeling, pondering, nodding.

When there’s nothing at the end of the story, do you still wait to hear the ending?


written Winter 1998