I've tried three times now to write some kind of journal entry about the election and have just sat here staring at my keyboard, so I'm going to skip it and just write about something else. Yeah. Seriously, is there anyone else out there who's read "Watchmen" that I don't know about? Because I seriously feel like having a, like, book club based around that thing because it's starting to eat away at my brain and I need somebody I can talk to about it before drives me nuts. This does relate to the election, oddly enough.
ANYWAY. On to other topics. A few recent albums that make my brain tingle:
The Arcade Fire - HOLY ... SHIT. FUCK. DUDE. So these guys (and gal) are from Quebec and they sound like The Pixies, Polyphonic Spree, Bjork, Siouxsie, Modest Mouse (who I don't even like, but somehow this band makes me like MM more just by association), and the soundtrack for Amelie all thrown into the personal centrifuge of the LORD FUCKING GOD ALMIGHTY and spun around until a brand new baby Jesus for the 21st century pops out. I hear about 5 million shitty new indie rock bands a nanosecond at my job and when I heard them playing over the store sound system for about 10 seconds I made up my mind to buy their album. THIS DOES NOT USUALLY HAPPEN WITH ME. Anyway, I've been listening to it a lot and it helped me get through the first few days after the election really effectively.
Futureheads - Not nearly as ebullient praise to heap on them as for The Arcade Fire, but what I've heard has been pretty good. They do a pretty bitchin' cover of "Hounds Of Love" by Kate Bush, the only downside of which is that I was planning on doing a punkish version of "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" which will now seem played. Fucking Brits. However, they have a number of songs that have a very cool Buzzcocks / Jam feel about them which is well served by the fact that the singer has a very Paul Weller-ish voice.
Wrangler Brutes - This is a couple of guys from Born Against and I went and checked out their site and DAMN they're old, but you wouldn't know it from this album. They sound like fuckin' yungins who were born after whatever the deadline was where punks weren't allowed to REALLY be into Black Flag AND the Dead Milkmen at the same time. It's got that great "Hardcore-before-hardcore-became-a-specific-set-of-cliched-tonal-and-stylistic-choices" thing going on and the lyrics are truly fucking brilliant and hilarious and odd.
So one of the other really cool things that's up right now that's related to all of this is that I'm working as the Web Editor for Live Eye TV at their website, www.liveeyetv.org , which I think I mentioned in an earlier entry, but I've actually started writing copy for the site now and I went through and spruced things up a bit and added and clarified some links and stuff, so I feel really good about that. But I've also been setting up opportunities for the show to film touring bands that I like and do on-air interviews with
them. I already did The Epoxies the last time they came to town and their live footage and my on-camera interview with them is going to be the featured segment in episode number four! :-) I also set the show up to film Dresden Dolls this weekend when they play at Neumos, but I'm (somewhat) unfortunately going to be out of town so I won't get to interview them. HOWEVER, I will get to interview The Arcade Fire when they come to town in December so I am really excited about that.
I'm going to be out of town because Shannon and I are going to Idaho to visit my parents this weekend which I'm really excited about but also kind of nervous. My Dad has gotten really conservative in the last 6 years and it's really odd to see the man who read me stuff like the biography of Crazy Horse when I was a kid and who's fought for conservation all his life wholeheartedly (and really nastily defensively) embracing this little son of a bitch who goes against everything he (my dad) ever taught me as a parent. But I've made it clear that I want no mention of politics while I'm visiting because I love him dearly and I don't want to make my fairly brief visit anything other than a nice chance to see my parents who I haven't seen for over a year and a half now.
Other stressy things ... this weekend was kind of weird but ended up okay.
We found out our roomate Karen is moving out at the end of the month and now she's acting really weirdly hostile out of nowhere and I finally just came right out and asked her what was going on and why she was being like that with us and she said she didn't want to get into it and that she wanted to live closer to her job and "that was all we needed to know." Weird.
And then Saturday night we ended up going to a Burning Hearts meeting becuase we wanted to say goodbye to everybody as performers (Shannon and I are taking a break from burlesque for at least a year) and the meeting just DRAGGED ON AND ON AND ON and we never even got to offically announce that we were done.
AND THEN. We went to Taste of India for a late dinner and just barely made it in time to get seated and we got stuck next to this fucking lummox jocko frat boy type idiot who sat there (with his really weirdly middle aged yuppie looking friends) and talked AS LOUD AS HE COULD into his cell phone to his drunk 14 year old sister in Tacoma for about fifteen minutes. How do I know who he was talking to, you ask? Because he was repeating everything she said to him to his friends at top volume for their entertainment. So this goes on. And we get progressively irritated. Then the phone call ends. Whew. Oh wait! Nope, he keeps going on at top volume to his friends about how he's going downtown to Fado (the super-frat Irish pub) and THEN (a litle foggy on the connection here) he starts talking about the ... "TRICKS" who work at the Lusty Lady. Where a number of our close friends work. Yeah.
So in the exchange that follows, the main gist of the point that I make to him is that I'm not a rich frat fuck so I can rarely afford to take my girlfriend out for a nice dinner and I really don't appreciate having the ambience fucked about with by some dumb fucking ox without the social grace to take his cell phone outside and to keep his dumbass sexual comments to himself and besides it looks like he and his buddies are done with their food so could they kindly fuck off. ANd the main gist of the point that he makes is that I shouldshut the fuck up, or, barring htat, stand up and fist fight him int he middle of the Indian restaurant and that failure to do so will result in my manhood being severely in question. So I make the point through a series of gestures that he can hit me sitting down just as well as he can if I'm standing up so if he's going to hit me he should stop fucking talking about it and just do it. So then the management comes in and calms shit down and re-seats us by the door and I know that if he comes out of the back room where we'd been seated before we go that he's going to do something to fuck with me and I'm going to end up stabbing him in the neck with a fork which I'd like to avoid so we get the remainder of our food to go.
When can I leave high school? When do I get to stop having to deal with these people? Because they're the same fucking people I was going through this fucking dance with TEN YEARS AGO. Feh. Bah.
But the evening ended exceedingly well because we went home and watched Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind for the first time and I think it may be my favorite romantic comedy (if one wants to call it that)ever made at this point and there's something essentially real about it in that way that only things with a bit of sci-fi / fantasy in them can be truly real. SO it was very cathartic and it put us in the perfect mood for the remainder of the evening and hooray for that.
Not much other than that. Finally finished the goddamn fucking computer D&D game I've been playing for the past three months last night. Yeah. I know. I'm a big fucking geek. I just crank up the cheat codes and blow off steam hacking beasties to little bits, but inevitably it becomes an excuse not to do anything useful.
Wow. If you've made it this far I really applaude you. You're my best friend ever! Mwah ha ha! And so forth.
xoxoxo
BiLLy
ANYWAY. On to other topics. A few recent albums that make my brain tingle:
The Arcade Fire - HOLY ... SHIT. FUCK. DUDE. So these guys (and gal) are from Quebec and they sound like The Pixies, Polyphonic Spree, Bjork, Siouxsie, Modest Mouse (who I don't even like, but somehow this band makes me like MM more just by association), and the soundtrack for Amelie all thrown into the personal centrifuge of the LORD FUCKING GOD ALMIGHTY and spun around until a brand new baby Jesus for the 21st century pops out. I hear about 5 million shitty new indie rock bands a nanosecond at my job and when I heard them playing over the store sound system for about 10 seconds I made up my mind to buy their album. THIS DOES NOT USUALLY HAPPEN WITH ME. Anyway, I've been listening to it a lot and it helped me get through the first few days after the election really effectively.
Futureheads - Not nearly as ebullient praise to heap on them as for The Arcade Fire, but what I've heard has been pretty good. They do a pretty bitchin' cover of "Hounds Of Love" by Kate Bush, the only downside of which is that I was planning on doing a punkish version of "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" which will now seem played. Fucking Brits. However, they have a number of songs that have a very cool Buzzcocks / Jam feel about them which is well served by the fact that the singer has a very Paul Weller-ish voice.
Wrangler Brutes - This is a couple of guys from Born Against and I went and checked out their site and DAMN they're old, but you wouldn't know it from this album. They sound like fuckin' yungins who were born after whatever the deadline was where punks weren't allowed to REALLY be into Black Flag AND the Dead Milkmen at the same time. It's got that great "Hardcore-before-hardcore-became-a-specific-set-of-cliched-tonal-and-stylistic-choices" thing going on and the lyrics are truly fucking brilliant and hilarious and odd.
So one of the other really cool things that's up right now that's related to all of this is that I'm working as the Web Editor for Live Eye TV at their website, www.liveeyetv.org , which I think I mentioned in an earlier entry, but I've actually started writing copy for the site now and I went through and spruced things up a bit and added and clarified some links and stuff, so I feel really good about that. But I've also been setting up opportunities for the show to film touring bands that I like and do on-air interviews with
them. I already did The Epoxies the last time they came to town and their live footage and my on-camera interview with them is going to be the featured segment in episode number four! :-) I also set the show up to film Dresden Dolls this weekend when they play at Neumos, but I'm (somewhat) unfortunately going to be out of town so I won't get to interview them. HOWEVER, I will get to interview The Arcade Fire when they come to town in December so I am really excited about that.
I'm going to be out of town because Shannon and I are going to Idaho to visit my parents this weekend which I'm really excited about but also kind of nervous. My Dad has gotten really conservative in the last 6 years and it's really odd to see the man who read me stuff like the biography of Crazy Horse when I was a kid and who's fought for conservation all his life wholeheartedly (and really nastily defensively) embracing this little son of a bitch who goes against everything he (my dad) ever taught me as a parent. But I've made it clear that I want no mention of politics while I'm visiting because I love him dearly and I don't want to make my fairly brief visit anything other than a nice chance to see my parents who I haven't seen for over a year and a half now.
Other stressy things ... this weekend was kind of weird but ended up okay.
We found out our roomate Karen is moving out at the end of the month and now she's acting really weirdly hostile out of nowhere and I finally just came right out and asked her what was going on and why she was being like that with us and she said she didn't want to get into it and that she wanted to live closer to her job and "that was all we needed to know." Weird.
And then Saturday night we ended up going to a Burning Hearts meeting becuase we wanted to say goodbye to everybody as performers (Shannon and I are taking a break from burlesque for at least a year) and the meeting just DRAGGED ON AND ON AND ON and we never even got to offically announce that we were done.
AND THEN. We went to Taste of India for a late dinner and just barely made it in time to get seated and we got stuck next to this fucking lummox jocko frat boy type idiot who sat there (with his really weirdly middle aged yuppie looking friends) and talked AS LOUD AS HE COULD into his cell phone to his drunk 14 year old sister in Tacoma for about fifteen minutes. How do I know who he was talking to, you ask? Because he was repeating everything she said to him to his friends at top volume for their entertainment. So this goes on. And we get progressively irritated. Then the phone call ends. Whew. Oh wait! Nope, he keeps going on at top volume to his friends about how he's going downtown to Fado (the super-frat Irish pub) and THEN (a litle foggy on the connection here) he starts talking about the ... "TRICKS" who work at the Lusty Lady. Where a number of our close friends work. Yeah.
So in the exchange that follows, the main gist of the point that I make to him is that I'm not a rich frat fuck so I can rarely afford to take my girlfriend out for a nice dinner and I really don't appreciate having the ambience fucked about with by some dumb fucking ox without the social grace to take his cell phone outside and to keep his dumbass sexual comments to himself and besides it looks like he and his buddies are done with their food so could they kindly fuck off. ANd the main gist of the point that he makes is that I shouldshut the fuck up, or, barring htat, stand up and fist fight him int he middle of the Indian restaurant and that failure to do so will result in my manhood being severely in question. So I make the point through a series of gestures that he can hit me sitting down just as well as he can if I'm standing up so if he's going to hit me he should stop fucking talking about it and just do it. So then the management comes in and calms shit down and re-seats us by the door and I know that if he comes out of the back room where we'd been seated before we go that he's going to do something to fuck with me and I'm going to end up stabbing him in the neck with a fork which I'd like to avoid so we get the remainder of our food to go.
When can I leave high school? When do I get to stop having to deal with these people? Because they're the same fucking people I was going through this fucking dance with TEN YEARS AGO. Feh. Bah.
But the evening ended exceedingly well because we went home and watched Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind for the first time and I think it may be my favorite romantic comedy (if one wants to call it that)ever made at this point and there's something essentially real about it in that way that only things with a bit of sci-fi / fantasy in them can be truly real. SO it was very cathartic and it put us in the perfect mood for the remainder of the evening and hooray for that.
Not much other than that. Finally finished the goddamn fucking computer D&D game I've been playing for the past three months last night. Yeah. I know. I'm a big fucking geek. I just crank up the cheat codes and blow off steam hacking beasties to little bits, but inevitably it becomes an excuse not to do anything useful.
Wow. If you've made it this far I really applaude you. You're my best friend ever! Mwah ha ha! And so forth.
xoxoxo
BiLLy