The Economistress

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

I am almost like a Dr. of Economics today!

Wikipedia.

Sunset Rubdown, Echoplex

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

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

My writeup for LA Record here.

Iran

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


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


Sound familiar?

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

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

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

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

love, Mochi

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

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

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

You can listen here.

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

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

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

Cubbies

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

Cubbies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spencer Krug

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

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

because the words are already there.

New Swan Lake here.

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

and, of course, Wolf Parade here.

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

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

Dear Portland,

I still hate your guts.

Love,

Chesney

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

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

and I quote:

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

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

YOU MEAN SOUL. YOU MEAN GRIPS YOUR SOUL.

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

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

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

Die. Already. Hate. Portland.

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

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

Talib Kweli

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

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

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



Originally published April 2007, and found here.

Tinariwen / Coachella

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

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

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

Floating in the ice tent...

Biiiiiitch, pleeeeze.

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

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

But this storm's been a bruja-ing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What she said.

And then there was this poster.


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

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

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

Fame, faaaaaaaaame

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

Fishbowl LA covers LA Record issue release party.

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

This is fiction. "Hazelnut."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


written Winter 1998

The Dodos Interview

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

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