Ditty Meow!

The Fires of '68

2010-08-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

You had to think on your feet, you had to remember how much you had to pull from
you remember the water mains
you remember the fires of '68

no one was ready
no one saw it coming

but you

those sky licking red hot flames, furious with black smoke
seeking to destroy
fury and torpor all at once, reckless destiny
and a careless shrugging god

you remembered the mains. you knew where you had to pull from
you knew what it would take to stave this beast of conflagration: more than it had

you have to survive it. you have to pull from everywhere.
you have to look it in the eyes and dare it.
you have to match this monster.

as if every celebration were a war
as if every war
were a celebration.

The Myth of Summer Fins

2010-04-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

Dusk hangs in the air, temporal longing, as the trains make their steely paths announcing the coming and going, something solid you can count on. Trains. Coming. And going. And Amelia breathes, in, and out, and attempts to slow this moment as Jenz chatters on and lightly foots at the white painted two by fours fencing the patio in.

"What're we gonna do, girl?" says Jen as if there were a choice.

Amelia inhales, searches the dead flat horizon beyond, and brings her vision closer into the lit windows of the houses on the street and good ol Mouska the cat, fat and furry, mozying down the street like nobody's business but her own.

She turns her gaze toward Jen and allows her eyes the pleasure her husband has had, to search and enjoy and examine the vision of Her. Jen's tan face, bare legs. Skirt hiked up just over the knees. Jenz always looked good. Dressed well. Took her damn near long enough, for Christ's sake. Town like this. Who did she think would come through and sweep her up? Nobody barely alive here, wouldn't so much as come through long enough to change a flat tire. But Jenz looked good. It was admirable, her dedication to vanity. Amelia would just think, 'maybe, someday. Maybe I'll look good' but in the meantime seemed to tend to the needling needing wringing hands at hand: trying to hear every second and survive every hour.

"Stick together," said Amelia.

Jenz looked at her with that look like she didn't understand a word she was saying. Amelia attempted an explanation, as if she was the one who should do the explaining.

"I guess."

"Yeah. I got you, girl. I love you."

Each of them searched the sky, the overhang of the porch, the grass, the breeze through the trees. Hope and destiny and the future and the past were contained within the connecting atoms passing between the bending of the boughs, the blades of grass, the exhales of mutual and intuitive surrender.

"You want another?" asked Amelia.

"Yeah. Fuck it. Why not."

Amelia swung open the door and kissed Em on her head as she sat in her wheelchair reading People magazine. She pulled open the door to the fridge, grabbed two beers, and walked into the kitchen where the small change purse knicknack with the lid that Gammy kept small unforgettable items in was, and walked through the living room to once again foot open the front screen and plop down, left hand extended with beer toward Jenz.

"Thanks, beeeeeyatch," Jenz took the beer and realized with a shot to the heart what else was in Amelia's hand.

Hanging from her palm was the gold cross necklace Jenz and Amelia had each received from Gammy when they were confirmed in the church. White dresses, full communion. An admission of sins, coming before God. Or whatever they told you to be pure.

"Where'd you find that?"

She could have done it. She could have blown the whole thing wide open. But that's not what she wanted. And if she had anything on either of them, it was that she knew what made her happy, what she was grateful for, why she was here, and What To Do. And What To Do was to keep the last remaining remnants of some life she was handed down to and not add any more fucking misery to this God Damned Fucking World.

"Musta left it here," shrugged Amelia.

"Oh." Jenz said. Act like nothing happened, and maybe, maybe, by erasing it in your mind, nothing did. "Thanks."

Amelia traveled the line of Jen's face again and smiled, smirking down some beer. "Sure thing." She laughed to herself and repeated it. "Sure thing."

*****************************

After she left, the usual talk to you/see you later, meaning within a few hours, Amelia shut the front door with the final gratifying release of the cylinder to unleash the latch into the undying solid wood of the door jamb. Em was asleep and Will was cold-cocked out.

In the low light of the dining room, Amelia pulled open the drawer that nobody ever opens and pulled out the photo.

She sat and exhaled and looked out the picture window. A sliver of golden light under Em's door was reflected in the picture window. But she wouldn't come out. She couldn't.

Staring at the photo Amelia attempted to pin any understanding or hope about the event onto the grainy photo. Maybe it could understand. The only other person who knew, who would ever know. Like a wispy cloud over a dark sea. The tiniest spot. The tiniest spot that breathed, maybe. That pie shaped portion. That would have sucked it's thumb. The blackest sea. The darkest Maybe. The tiniest spot that couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe here. Especially not here. Amelia knew. And she would stop that pushing, pulsing, tearing pain from anything and anyone she could. No she would not have any more misery. Not this time around. Not now. Not while she was alive. Not while Amelia could help it.

It was nothing but blood for a day, and cramps.

And anyway, baby would probably have betrayed her too.

The Myth of Summer Two

2010-04-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

It would be easy to say it was hard. Of course it was hard. The point was in the living through it. Or so they said.

Amelia made it to college, Jenz didn't see the point in going. Jen stayed and did hair with her cousin Lori and made enough to have her own apartment in town. Amelia went up to Northern State and studied Philosophy, Modern Feminist Theory, and Psychology, but not necessarily in that order. Specifically, she was trying to figure out Why Everyone Is So Fucked Up but essentially just had to cut out of Spring semester, second year, and Go Home when the news came in about the accident.

Emma was thirteen at the time, that awful painful age where females go from girls to whatever and realize they are the trash of the world, if they haven't already been treated as such, will soon learn they are, somehow. Mama was most definitely drunk and only going the six or so miles from Bessie's Place back home where Gammy was already full of hate phlegm bile and life lessons painfully excruciating as a splinter under your fingernail. There to stay.

It wasn't Mama's fault. The semi bulled through one of the four or so stoplights in town and people gandered that the brakes had gone out, the man held no ill will. Mama, of course, didn't live. But Emma did. Of course. Of course Emma lived. All thirteen blessed flowering years of this soft gentle soul, to relive every minute, every second, to wonder why Jesus didn't take This Lamb of God, but chose Mama, who wished she would die every day anyway.

But you go on and you make tea and you make dinner and you praise another day and you wheel the chair forward and you make your way around and you just live on. It's just what you do.

Will had come along from Nebraska when his parents moved, and he and Amelia had met in the Library of the University, or at some party. Amelia remembered the Library, Will insisted it was at Joe's party. Either way, they met, and all their friends agreed It Should Be So and so they went on dates and did what those who are interested in one another feel like they should do.

Amelia had been back and taking care of Emma for about nine months when Will said he would be there, "Hon. I'll be there." Which Amelia shrugged of but accepted the same as she accepted pies when she was 20 at her mother's funeral, Emma still in traction in the hospital. Will took three and a half months to just be there, but when he got there and Amelia was looking out the picture window of the Old House and holding one of Gammy's old salt shakers, he came up to her and kissed her neck and put his arms around her waist, looking at the amber, brown, red leaves fallen on the ground. Amelia rested her head on his broad, strong shoulders when he came around to her side and exhaled long. It's going to be ok. Or something.

"Hey," Will said and shouldered Amelia toward him. "You know what?"

Amelia sincerely did not want to know any more What at this point.

"Yeah. What."

He turned her body like you do with blindfolded children playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey toward the trees and leaves outside, and slung his arm around her neck like a yoke on cattle. "You n me? We're a team."

Amelia smiled a wizened smile.

He had no idea she knew that Will and Jen had 'been a team' for at least a year. That vanilla body spray was impenetrable, intractable. Jen loved that sick, sweet smell. Amelia had neither the desire nor the inclination to tell her how disgustingly, maskingly sweet that smell was. It might as well have been gasoline. Then you could set it on fire.

"BITCHES!" Jenz came from up the street to the left which was unusual, Will almost always made the first entrance. Jenz, of course, did the whole shower, do hair, pretend busy thing, as if a shower would wash off the fact that she had been fucking her best friend's husband for three years.

Emma waves and the smiles a wider smile than the red sea at the parting of Moses.

Jen hugs her and playfully pretends a kick at the wheels. Glances aside toward Amelia.

"You dry off?"

"You see me wet?"

"Guess not. Got tea? Nah, nevermind. I brought beeeers! Want one?" Jen pulls a six pack from her giant cloth purse. Could be a diaper purse. Should be a diaper purse. But Jenz just flitted from one branch to another, never long enough to get caught, never long enough to feel. Just enough to rest for a bit on the branch.

"Let's shotgun it. Huh?"

Amelia exhaled and giggled. Of course. What else is there to do. Went into the kitchen and slowly pulled the long butcher knife from the drawer. She pulled the steel sharpener and slowly ran the blade along to cut the blade sharper. I could cut you, but I won't. You could have hurt me, but you don't. I could humiliate you both, by I won't. One. Sharp. Blade. Run slowly along the steel.

Emma was ready with hers and shaking it like an ecstatic baby.

"Oh Jesus," said Amelia. Here. Maybe take a key instead.

"No! Knife." If anyone could handle the mechanics of a butcher's knife, it was Emma. She shook the can like a maniac and carefully punctured the bottom end with a twist. "Gooooo," she smiled and drank the boozy barley fuzz.

Jenz and Amelia looked at each other. "Oh I see. You've got yours."

"Yep, getchurz own!" said Jenz. Two seconds later was the shake, the eye contact, the Double Dog Dare of the shotgunning of the beer. Shake shake shake, shake shake shake, shake you booty, shake you booty, and the quick as lightning no eye contact or second guessing needed pass from one hand to another of the newly sharpened knife, both keenly aware of What Would Happen If, to carefully puncture the aluminum just so like all women know how to do. And take the shooting fizzing liquid into your mouth, as if any liquor would make it in. Jen and Amelia looked at each other with the same Dare, the Same Love You Forever Until look until Amelia spit out some beer onto her lap.

"Ohhhhhhhhh! You fired!"

"Yep," said Emma. "Fired."

It had only been three months.

The Myth of Summer

2010-04-10T20:26:00.000-07:00

Her memory was impeccable; impervious. And miserable. She would walk that very same path and knew exactly where the step down would be. Try to count the steps until the unforseen failing and falling would render her completely paraplegic, strapped for life in a wheelchair with eyes averting and innocent, curious children asking "what happened to your legs, lady?" and the industrious corn-fed salt of the earth types knowingly but tacitly acknowledging that it was God's Will. And God will do what He will. Oh, he will.

But she wouldn't trip. Not this day, walking the same path home from Sunday Funday with Jenz. No last ghost for her.

"You remember the pool with Bobby Flay? Remember how hot he was?"

"Worst name."

"He would - oh GOD! Worst name. But he looked like -"

"Ken."

Amelia sucked on her cherry lollipop, every last tart sweet drip. There's a technique, we hope, to sucking every last drip out of everything that tastes of anything, right down to and including the paper stick. Every spot on the tongue receives a different taste: sweet, summery, sublime, surreal, seduced, surrendered. Cherried. With a cherry on top.

"He looked like fuckin Ken." Jen said in the Sat Down, Yes Indeed tone of agreement they do in the Midwest, flipping her hands through the water in sunglassed recline.

Flay. If we could have stopped to think what a ridiculous name, well anyway we didn't end up with him did we.

Amelia threw the last part of the stick over the fence into the gravel and god knows what cacti. It is literally called god knows what cacti. Well at any point, at this point it is.

Dives in, stays down, opens eyes. Burning chlorine eyes. She shoves her upper body down to hand plant on the bottom of the pool, and fights the water's urge to bring her up to where she belongs. Melia fishtails and points her legs in the opposite direction, opening eyes to see the 3' tile on the other side bathing and waving in blue. She achieves the perfect handstand, accomplished only when the water holds you still enough. Tiny circles like whisking a cake mix, she spreads her hands an inch and pushes till she is fully upright, upside down. Crosses her arms over her chest then extends her arms to swirl her body around underneath. Looking.

Jenz through blue. Legs, motion. Nothing like the motion of water. Her calves and wrists and ass, in a blow up raft bluer than this blue, in contra to, motioning but going nowhere. Going nowhere, going nowhere...

The blunted fluid watery sound of her voice through the water.

Up and harsh air, quiet has gone, replaced by distant sirens, splashing, the kids a few apartments up screaming, television roaring.

"What are you doing down there. Come up and get a tan."

Amelia tries to clear her nose of chlorine. Nothing gets rid of that sting. You just have to let it take its course just like Gammy said. In time, Darlin, it'll just pass, won't even notice that stung anymore.

"You find any pennies? Give me some. I'm fuckin broke." Jenz didn't even crack a grin. Poverty isn't funny unless you really release yourself to it, laugh at the ridiculousness of counting pennies to see the afternoon movie together. Fuck pennies.

Exhale and back float. Cloud watch. Thin strips dragged faintly, whispers across so much blue. Listen to your own breath. Breathe. Float. Listen. Sink. Inhale. Hear the muffled sound of voices through water. Flip over. Breast stroke over to plastic full of margarita juice gone melty and sickly sweet. Still got tequila. Backflip underwater, swim to other side, touch, turn & go, race yourself to the shallow end. Go fast. Keep it shallow.

"Hey what was that bitch's name, the one that stole Mark from you in tenth grade."

Clear nose, half submerge, let the fluid water pull your hair back, pop up half a body in the now sunny cool air top half only.

"Aimee Frisbee."

"AIMEE fuckin Frisbee. Oh god that's right. I guarantee you she got knocked up."

"Yet another ridiculous name. His last name should have been..."

What should it have been. Underwater again, shark attack on Jen. Jen, underneath, grabs her sunglasses still on. All bangles of easily greened gold painted wrists of hers figure 8 to come back up. Amelia smiles underwater and Jenz gives it long enough to flip her the bird, come up, and in one fell swoop scoop the raft under her arms and frog swim around. Slowly paddle toward the other side to palm her melted margarita in the bright lime green plastic cup.

Amelia climbs out and lies on her towel, warmed from the sun baked concrete.

"Fucking Will," Amelia says as she lays a towel over her eyes.

"Oh now it's fuck Will?"

"He doesn't know what he wants. Including me. I'm gonna ask out the hottie that comes into Swoozie's. He lingers."

Jenz laughs. "You are going to ask HIM out." And then, curious, "He lingers?"

"He lingers. Longer than he needs to. Which either means he has brass balls or is doing the I'm-too-shy-to-ask-you-out thing. He's gonna make me do it."

"You gonna do it?"

Amelia removes the towel from her eyes, the world turning red to orange to yellow to normal in the sun as her eyes adjust to the brightness, sits up, downs the last of the sickly sweet now warm margarita, looks at Jenz.

"What the fuck have I got left to lose?"

They laugh like it's the funniest thing in the world but looking in different directions, a private inside joke to each, separately. In separate ways.

Loneliness eradicated. Connected forever. Warm in the sun. Pleasure forever. Unending cocktails. Best friends forever. Memories that fade like sunburns weeks later, to peel and die and skin changes anew. Temporary and transparent, like looking through water. Absence of pain. Laughter abound. The myth of summer. Everything fades, like names scrawled with a scarlet polished fingernail through the water. The temporary crackle and spark of sparklers on 4th of July, write your name only to have it disappear forever, like it will disappear from their lips. The sting that lingers as the seasons change is the constant. Let it live. Change is the one thing you can count on.

one tiny tomb

2010-03-22T15:54:00.000-07:00

you got outfoxed
you never learned
how to lie like me

silent
becoming
stilling the sadness

thistle stuck throat
white pastures cut with barbed wire

teaching yourself not to be the wanderer,
the seeker

but slowly

gathering the fabric
slowly under the table
tasting it with your fingers
under that immutable oak
tempting it with a tease, the gentle pull, temptation of the never pulled-off party trick
but wouldn't the place look great
in flames

you knew what this stone was for.

encasing yourself
in hushed
and whispering wonders

to forge your tomb under the covers

well i'll tell you what you reckless despot

silence knows what speaking is for.

Under Byen

2010-03-03T14:27:00.000-08:00

This band is so fuckin amazing I can't believe more people haven't heard of them. It's lonely out here.

Anyway, Under Byen is releasing their latest album, Alt Er Tabt in April, and the great people over at Stereogum gave an update and the video for the title track, which is fuckin amazing. You can view Under Byen's "Alt Er Tabt" video here.

I caught them when they came through LA at the Knitting Factory and it was, to say the least, a pretty inspired show. Any band that includes playing the saw, electrically, is at least worth checking out. They were amazing.

My review for LA Record of Under Byen.

Julian Casablancas

2010-02-20T12:58:00.000-08:00

Cute story! When LA Record sent out their perennial and never regularly scheduled Who Wants What Show email, I jumped to go see Julian Casablancas. Like, wriggled and writhed like the obnoxious know-it-all in class that's waving their hand in the air because they know the answer to the teacher's question. Except, I didn't know the answer to the question. Because in my head? I was thinking Jose Gonzales, who is amazing and wonderful and I'm dying to see. Have you heard his cover of The Knife's "Heartbeats"? Amazing. But uh. It was actually Julian Casablancas. Hahaha, I'm a silly bitch! Aaaaaaaaanyway, I had actually been wanting to see a show I wouldn't normally see and review it. This would be one! But I went, dressed to the tits and with an open mind. Here is the review.

For the record (haha, get it?!? GET IT?), the final lines as I wrote them were:

If one were to compare, say, Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, The Knife, or Ratatat in a live setting, I would say, humbly, that Julian Casablancas is in a whole other game now. And if he wants to keep up, then he needs to do just that.

But whatever. Editing!

Writeup for LA Record here.

The Keepers

2010-02-20T12:50:00.000-08:00

The Keepers were and are a band formed in Long Beach somewhere in the late 90s/early '00s, but who the hell remembers. Three dudes, some of my favorite boys of all time, and 3 of the most sickly talented musicians I'll ever know. Patrick Butterworth and Ed Kampwirth can be seen presently as the (completely amazing) rhythm section for Dios. Fred (Dirt Clod) Fight can be seen biking down mountainsides in Oregon with his bro Phil fight. He also recently finished his Master's Thesis on the Long Beach punk scene, which, yes, has enough material in its history to merit an entire Master's Thesis.

New Dios here.

Article for LA Record here.

Gag Order

2010-01-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

I have wanted to keep this, here, free of my usual political rants and raves, but given this past week, and the weeks leading up to it, I'm lifting my own self-imposed gag order.

In light of the passing of Howard Zinn, may his great soul truly rest in peace, I recall a few gems. "Most wars, after all, present themselves as humanitarian endeavors to help people. " Sound about accurate? But my all time favorite and a constant go-to for this liberal is his saying about how, in America, they're always telling you that you can make anything out of yourself, you can do anything if you just work hard enough. They don't tell you how easily you can fall. One pink slip, one family member getting sick is all it takes to wipe everything out. He added "I saw my parents work their fingers to the bone every day, and they never made it out of the tenements."

Watching the State of the Union on Wednesday, his words coursing through my mind, several things occur to me, as they usually do. As much as I'm not only an Obama supporter and cried the night he was elected, and again during his inauguration, but I'm a huge admirer of the man and his abilities and his audacity of hope. Now, having said that, I also concur with my patriots in arms, other liberals who feel like this particular president has a pretty golden window and perhaps isn't doing as much as maybe is possible, or that somehow has lost that audacity.

I'm also fully aware that after the past 8 years and a Machiavellian (at best), idiotic, jingoistic, and criminally reckless Administration, whoever won the '08 election was going to be inheriting a pile of shit.

But watching the SOTU, it just smacks of empty rhetoric, doesn't it? Doesn't it make you just wanna give it all up? I realize there's a distinct difference but I wanted to hear at least a twinge of the kind of speech we heard at the Dem convention in '04 that blew everyone away. Instead, per usual, you have POTUS speaking and half the room acting like kids who got their candy taken away. But this year in particular really fucking pissed me off. Just looking at John Boehner's petulant smirk on his over tanned face (it's January in DC for christ's sake) was making me insane. And the man's constituents are in Ohio. OHIO. Not South Carolina even. O. HI. O. So, I get it, this is politics. You're either with us or against us.

Everyone has known that even just bringing up health care reform is touching the third rail. Not only that, it's potentially a career killer. It happened to Hillary just, like, a few years ago really. But then again, as my darling Gore Vidal always says, the country we live in is more like the United States of Amnesia. Look I had to really rack my brain just yesterday to remember the neighbor's cat's name, but I still remember that knock down drag out career (almost) killer that the Clintons went through when they approached health care. But even then, maybe behind closed doors it was happening, but we didn't have the level of public - oh, we'll just say "debate" that's been happening. People taking to the streets in protest and talking about socialism. There we go. Bing! The button. Drop the S bomb into an idiotic constituency and bam. They're your zombie soldiers arguing vigilantly for...

For....?

What are they arguing for? Nobody can answer this for me. These people, these tea partyers, these Fox News watching terrified idiots, what are they fighting for? Honestly. I don't get it. Is it really just change? Is it that simple? Is the theory of Occam's Razor in full effect here? That the simplest explanation is the answer here?

The number one mistake in American history is not letting the South secede. Don't get me wrong, I love the South. Love it. Most of our great American writers and a good majority of our best music comes from the South. But we shoulda let them go, you know what I mean? But the biggest mistake of American politics for at least a century is the bipartisan system. Sunday after Sunday after debate after debate I am absolutely sickened, mollified, indignant at the binary level of discourse. Who will take back Congress. Which team will win. How will the Reps battle the Dems, vice versa.

All these years of supposed evolution, and we end up in the Coliseum watching Jersey Shore, I mean, Gladiators fight, standing and applauding or sitting and smirking at every well rehearsed and focus grouped line of the State of the Union.

Welcome to the vomitorium, my friends.

Binge, purge, the excelsior elixir of the end of the Empire.

It's not a fucking Super Bowl game, god dammit. There are people's lives at stake here. And all it takes for everything, everything they've worked so hard to earn to be taken away is one pink slip, one natural disaster, one family member getting sick. Are these people protesting, now I'm not specifically talking about the politicians yet, but the Fox Newsers, the people in the streets, are they seriously telling me they don't have a single family member that has a health problem? Or that they're so set they can afford to put Mom through chemo without worry? In the words of Bill Hicks "I dooooooooooooooooubt it."

But then! It's a bird, it's a plane! President Obama went into the lion's den, the Republican Retreat (wait a minute, they have retreats? Did anyone else know that they camp out together and have team building retreats???) in none other than Body More, MD and intelligently and cogently and passionately argued (of course, per usual) his case for, let's all say it together, bi-partisan cooperation. Normally this is the stuff of barfdom (see: vomitorium) but there is so much at stake here, now, especially with healthcare, that this one act was truly an act of heroism. Truly.

I'm not sure how long this link will be active, but here it is for as long as it stays up. Obama at the House Republican Retreat.

And to end this highly charged political week is our old standby, the always great SNL Weekend Update. Seth Meyers said of the Republicans inviting Obama to speak and argue his case was like "inviting Aquaman into the water. You guys do know that's how he got the job, right? By debating? It's like in Indiana Jones where the guy waves a bunch of swords around and Indy just pulls out a gun and shoots the guy." Or something like that. That link, for as long as it's up, here: SNL Weekend Update.

Not that I'm pulling for any team or side on this thing. But well played, Sir. Well played.

Pogues

2010-01-22T12:59:00.000-08:00

Maybe my pervasive and eternal draw to Ireland, my people, or my recent poetry reading spree, or my almost innate, instinctive desire to drink whiskey and indulge in said poetry and break out into sad yet cheery song, or just because I hadn't put anything up in a while...here is my writeup for LA Record. Pogues, Halloween. One of the best. Hopefully one of the memories that will flash through my mind at the end. Whenever that may come. Here's to you, Jean Paul. Cheers.

For LA Record.

The Look In The Eyes

2009-12-28T20:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-10-19T18:15:00.000-07:00

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.

The Hoof & The Heel

2009-09-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-08-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-08T16:40:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-22T09:49:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-16T14:35:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-05T18:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-26T11:29:00.001-07:00

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

I am almost like a Dr. of Economics today!

Wikipedia.

Sunset Rubdown, Echoplex

2009-06-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

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,

2009-05-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-28T20:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-23T15:24:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-04-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

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."

2009-04-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

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

The Dodos Interview

2009-04-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

Update! These guys are selling beer! Crap beer, according to Stereogum. But awesome, because, money! Money > smelly carpet filled room.

My interview for LA Record here.

The music is where it's at, I'm telling you this for surreal.

Truly a pleasure to speak to. Hear their music here.

La Di Da...La Di Da

2009-04-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

I guess when you wake up and the first headline you see is about the jobless rate being 8.6% pretty much the best thing to do is to look at some of the good things that have happened in your life; to meditate on your achievements.

Yeah, that's right. I flew a fucking plane over the Pacific Ocean. This plane.

It was inexplicably amazing. Leaves you pretty much speechless. So speechless that when you go to write the article about it, you end up taking an unlucky 13 runs at it and still hate it. But I still got to fly a fucking plane. Over the fucking ocean. Next time I'm going much higher, faster.

Article here: Look, Ma. No hands.

Xu Xu Fang

2009-04-02T12:44:00.000-07:00

That Hulu That You Do

2009-03-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

The great motivating factor of economics is the same motivating factor of all of the great pursuits: how things move, and why. And by things, I mean people. Why? Where? Why there? All of the matrices you can draw with your mechanical (is it, though?) pencil won't draw for you where the school of fish will swim. If you follow.

The miner laments that they're just not buying coal the way they used to, my father worked this life, and his father before him, but the system is dying, and people just don't buy coal the way they used to...but what happens as a result of where people, thereby the market, wander and settle is where I choose to lay my hat and my own wandering mind. To settle. Because mining coal is risky and dangerous and a hellish life, and miners still, as recently as, you know, now, run the risk of being trapped underground in mines. Whereas the exploration, study, and analysis of solar panels runs little to no human lives risked and less, certainly less, damage to people and our environment. So in the end, if the rudder of the market is set swiftly into the sea of economics, the ship will sail with ease and more efficiency.

So newspapers are folding (intentional pun) and there is a reason for that. But for every door that shuts, the market opens a window. The White House Press Corps becomes a snotty in-group and occludes true transparency to what is purportedly a democracy. They begin by wanting to tell the 'truth' and end up dining at the Animal Farm table. Just to name an example. I don't have those illusions either, I know it's a corporate oligarchy and it got bought into when the capital kept growing on the belief that the united states of US were the strongest Olympians in the world. But democracy is and still will be what in the end it ends up being, because, again: the people. Will move the way they do, for a reason, understand it or not. It's the flow of the river, man. Ride it.

I hate television. No. I don't. I actually, kind of? Love it. But truthfully don't mind not having in my life either, and I'm no luddite. But the frying pan over the head and the over and over with it. Oy. The constant supplication and lowest common denominator. I hate the talking heads the "information," the "experts" on Fox "news" the filling of time, the constant filling of time. The lack of what the Japanese have so deftly and acutely and wisely witnessed to be the saving grace of silence and contemplation. That in silence, we might learn just as much, if not more, than when talking.

But dear heavenly Hera, I love me some stories.

I live for Sopranos. I live for so many great shows. In there, in that little box of the opiate of the people, lives as many voices and stories and lives as we see everywhere, you just gotta know where to look. Contrary to how it may seem, I like the stuff.

And here we get to the crux of what I'm trying to say. That you know, it used to be you raced home to watch Knight Rider (yessss, and I loved it) but now we have the dvds, and the youtube, and you can watch on the network website. So what will happen to the commercials that we all mute and walk out of the room to reload the noms and pour another glass of wine? Who the fuck cares! Fuck them! We have Hulu now. For all those Madison Ave shark skinned behemoths, now they are learning to adapt or die. (I vote die. But the money has to come from somewhere, Virginia. Santa doesn't come for free.)

because I love her, because she is mine

2009-03-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

My proudest moment.

Photo by the one and only Tom Child.

Article here.

SXSW

2009-03-20T11:23:00.001-07:00

Wow I am so glad I'm not at sxsw this year. I'll leave the coverage to those more masochistic and maniacally insane than I am. I mean look at just this Friday's lineup, and this is just according to the brilliant and brave peeps @ Stereogum.

Those Stereogum guys are crazy!

No but seriously I was going to post something kind of sxsw appropriate and then I realized I don't really care, especially this year, and is it just me or is music really boring right now? Like, really boring. There's maybe 3, 4 bands I would want to check out there, out of the bazilliogillionquatrillion bands that somehow will make it to TX (mess with it! see what happens! remember the alamo! bill on your rental van!) even though their van broke down 3x on the way there.

So instead of posting a writeup on one of the bands going to sxsw that I have covered, I'm just posting this old Tyde review. Cus, again. Don't care.

Am I the only one that doesn't like the Dirty Projectors?

Oh wait, you do care?

Lesson Learned

2009-03-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

See, this is what authority figures make the mistake of doing.

Lil Juwahallal is getting in trouble and hanging out with the wrong crowd and you think you're just going to ground him, take away his Sony PS3, and tell him to pull up his grades and stop hanging out with that bad boy Daresh. Well you know what he's gonna do? Exactly the opposite, and Juwahallal is going to hate you.

What you do instead, is you make him do something charitable, teach others, act for the greater good, so that he sees he's a part of a much bigger thing.

What you do is make him wear this:

Look at the guy 2nd R. He's like "I am such a miserable dumbass. Fucking dress up like a condom day." I actually titled this photo "Indian Condom Kids."

Battles

2009-03-09T16:21:00.000-07:00

Fuck I'm in love with John Stanier. And his drum kit. I want to be his fucking drum kit. I want to play his drum kit. I want to play him. I want him, to play me, on his - ok, you get it.

This show was amazing. The band was so good, so tight, so into it. There was a crowd stage right that were clearly so into it. We, unfortunately - my trusty show companion and I - were on the other side near the stage where the crew in front of us were so drunk and obnoxious I blogged about it here. I think they thought they were at Lolapalooza circa 2001 instead of inside. The Henry Fonda theater. Watching Battles. Who are like, the best band to come out in fucking years. Stupid drunk people. I have no problem (obvi) with being drunk and having a good time but shut the fuck up during the show ok? SRSLY. You will get laid. I promise. Not. You'll be passed out in your own vom. Have fun! K now shut up.

Article here, courtesy of LA Record.

In case you don't believe me. (You should always, always believe me.)

Contempt Mandala

2009-03-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

I actually woke up thinking about this one. Woke up kind of giggling. Inside. Waking up actually giggling = creepy.

This guy, this artist, sat around and was all, you know what I'm gonna make?

I'm gonna make THIS.

The more I researched it the more I was all WTF?? and laughing and thinking this man is an insane genius person that wholly believes that this completely off-the-hook vision might be shared with other people in the world. Right on. ?

100 words was not nearly enough to even touch the surface. Of the concept. Of the thing. I think I submitted about 450 words that had to be cut down. What would (insert hero here) do?

The Shining, it's funny

2009-03-05T16:07:00.000-08:00

Or not. Actually the first time I saw this it was a date movie. I was 16.

I should have seen it as a sign.

Or here.

Grand Elegance & Crystal Antlers @ Que Sera

2009-03-04T17:42:00.000-08:00

Crystal Antlers are getting hyped everywhere, from Pitchfork to Stereogum and all the bloggers in NYC that got their minds blown first at sxsw and then at CMJ in 2008 and it couldn't have happened to a better band from the poverty torn, nearly ancient (for So Cal) "ocean"side (read: cesspool) town of Long Beach.

Proof of my love of them was captured by the great kids over at Videothing at this show for LA Record at Charlie O's in downtown LA. I come in at about min 1:16 with my longtime loving feelings for Damian, aka Sexual Chocolate, with Jonny Bell looking on. If you have seen Crystal Antlers play, you know how funny it is that I commented on them "taking their top off" as they never, ever play with their shirts on.

But this night in particular @ Que Sera, one of my all time favorite venue/bars ever in the history of the world, it was Grand Elegance making waves, as usual, "keepin it weird," (tm War Tom). Warren was so trashed he literally could not stand straight up. And the band still sounded amazing. I guess playing with your best friends for 11 years can do that. I was there dutifully covering the show for LA Record. You know, what can I do. It's a party.

Full article here.

One of the Best

2009-03-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

"I believe in the rule of opposites.
that the two sides of a coin
are loss and greater loss, that grief dribbles
out of the bottle as effortlessly as joy.
And if you scoop up everything sad,
your hands
will discover the texture of hope."

-Jane Bailey

The Theft of Islam

2009-02-27T17:27:00.001-08:00

Link to article here.

Architecture in Helsinki

2009-02-27T15:51:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, this interview which was so graciously given by Cameron of Architecture in Helsinki, allllll the way from Melbourne and a whole day away (thank you, Cameron!) was cut tragically short to get as many Coachella 2007 bands into that issue of The District. Still though, I got this to show for it.

For better viewing of the article, click here.

Afrika Bambaataa

2009-02-24T17:07:00.000-08:00

I never in my whole life thought I'd have a chance to see Afrika Bambaataa live. Like Kraftwerk or Coldplay (I'm SO kidding about Coldplay). So when you get all dolled up, dressed to the nines (I was ba-ZAM that night. Too bad I have no photo to prove it), and the mofo doesn't even hit the decks until 1:30am (no joke), and then is not even playing the decks but instead Serato software and never once dropping down a record, well, it's disappointing. To say the least. Thank rock for LA Record who let me write the truth. Truly.

LA Record

Your Name's Lebowski, Lebowski

2009-02-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

I've seen Lebowski so many times it's, like, pathological. Or obesssive, or something. But clearly, I'm not alone in this endeavor. Surprisingly, I've rarely watched it stoned. I know. Weird. But every time, it makes me laugh so hard, at the same things, and every time, each line and scenario absolutely sends me. It's really in numbers so high I couldn't even count. I remember going through a particular heartbreak and I would drink Black Velvet (we're talking breakproof bottle, here.) and Pepsi One and eat pizza and watch Lebowski. Something about it was incredibly soothing and ritualistic. My dear and wonderful Sanaz would call and in her sweet childlike voice say "you have a very special relationship with that movie." Although it doesn't seem like what you'd watch when you're going through heartache, I'm not alone. This guy said that too:
So, you know, like, great minds and all.

Naturally I was thrilled when my editor told me "have I got a dream assignment for you." Although it's not my best writing, I suppose, this one, I have to admit, is one I'm particularly fond of.

I think the only other movie I might have seen more than Lebowski is this one:

time to get out of the rain and into a dry martini

2009-02-17T15:35:00.000-08:00

Written for Long Beach's very own The District by yours truly.

Damn. Makes me want three. Right meow!

Welcome to Your New Rubric for Artistic Growth

2009-02-05T14:05:00.000-08:00

-amrit singh

Well here we are at the first detour sign. Upon re-viewing my writing in the various publications all I did was edit them. Literally, like, red pen and re-wording. Reviewing, revising, re-visiting. A lot of re's. I'm fully conscious that the work won't be re-submitted. I'm fully conscious that it doesn't really 'matter.' But some of the sentences, I just couldn't let them live that way. So instead of picking some good choices, I just went back and rewrote them. This is as lame as going back and reading a college essay, and making adjustments and grading yourself 10 years after you graduated. You're receiving the lame pointlessness, I gather?

Do I do the same with my photos? I criticize them, harshly, but I don't want to re-shoot them. And the performances, they're never good and everyone that's ever done it knows that. Unless you're not thinking. Stop thinking!

The problem ("I'm a writer, but nobody's perfect." - Billy Wilder) with being a writer, or writing, or whatever the fuck you want to call it, is that you are never done. It is never finished. You can never step back and say, there it is. Even Nabokov admitted that all you can do is try to structure the sentence that fits the best, that does what you want it to the best. "That doesn't mean," he added, "that five years down the road you won't look back and hate it, but there it is." This is fucking Nabokov saying this, man. Na. Bok. Ov.

So here we are and instead of me now being able to pound out 5/9 rhythm or sing up to 5 octaves or be able to shortcut my way through explaining how the interest rate doesn't immediately affect you as directly as you think but it does affect you (actually I guess I could if I had the time), I'm just here asking 'why' again. The answer is: because. You can, and you do. Because if you don't, you're dead already. And what else is there to do anyway.

Doubt in any artistic endeavor is death.

Remember that I said that.

The Fling

2009-02-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

LA Record

The Fling can be found & heard @

The First One, Here.

2009-02-04T13:21:00.001-08:00

Oh hello Blog. See, now this is funny. About three years ago I decided to burn all my journals. It was an attempt, I think, to essentially burn the past and move on. I debated the move for a long time - it's a horrible mistake to attempt to erase history. But I would never go back and read them, really, and all of them said the same thing. Over and over again. So, I decided, burn it. Burn the shit. What I know is in there is already in my heart, my mind, my soul. What I need(ed) to learn, and do, needed/needs to manifest itself in action. Not just thoughts. Not just musings. No more 'when will this happen.' Dig?

But, so wait. Three years later I start a blog? Ehn? Whu? Where am I? Oh fuck. I had too much to dr/eam/ink last night (I had too much to link last night! Oh god, it's on now) and now I'm in the blogosphere.

Well, you do what you know. And as the saying goes: a writer writes. I find it endlessly comforting that nothing and no one can ever stop me from that. These musings, these muses, these phrases I have kissed I know not how oft, will come and flow like whatever simile suits your pleasure. Breeze=cheese. Moving on...

So yeah, not that this one needs any explanation: it's clearly my blog (hello, Lady!) and I'll write if I want to. To follow: previous writings (I'm actually published, it's true. Crazy huh.) from several places, and maybe if I can wrap my head around the legal security of doing so, some short stories, and maaaaaaaaybe (probably not), some really really bad, scratch that, possibly good poems.

Till then, thank you for stopping by. And spell check is already on my ass. Shut up, SPELLCHECK!