Below are the most recent 21 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
shady_lamarr	5:44a	So I relented and I started friending current and former co-workers today. It was going to happen sooner or later, so I might as well get it over with now. I feel weird friending so many "Five O'Clock World" types, especially with people I didn't know all that well, but they don't have to add me if they don't want. I'd also like to think I would be a highly entertaining.person, even if they only barely knew me in real life. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
shady_lamarr	10:42p	"Wind Chill Factor" does not do the phenomenon justice. It should be renamed something which does justice to its real nature, something like "Testes shattering death winds" or "invisible icicle rampage" or simply "YAAARRRFUUUUUUUUUCKINGGGARGGGGGGGGHFUUCK!!!!!!!" which is mainly what I called it today. This is the Boston weather I was warned about, I'm already missing the unseasonably warm winters of old. As I think I mentioned before, I did get to see Amanda P, immediately after quoting her yesterday. My response was "Oh my God, that's awesome!" and I actually meant it. I showed some pix of MJ, and made her promise to send pictures when her girl is born. I'm getting soft. In any case, I was going to do a New Year's Resolution list of celebrities, but all I got was "Chris Brown has learnt his lesson, and now will only be dating non-famous African American women, so America won't care if he beats them." Okay, so maybe not that soft, after all. In any case, my resolutions? Well, get into a meditation routine, I've done very little of late and there's really no excuse. Plus, I vow to shock myself in the nuts if I start to sound a bit too much like James Frey. There's a lot of balls-related punishment in this short entry, isn't there? (Comment on this)
shady_lamarr	3:35p	Wow, so Amanda P. was in today, what a coincidence, since I quoted her yesterday. Six months pregnant. Kind of awesome news. I've had to break my no Boston people on Facebook rule, but I guess I'm just going to change it to no current Verizon employees. I need the room to vent. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 28th, 2009
shady_lamarr	11:22p	Workplace Found Poetry, or Hunter Is A Dick To His Co-Workers Sometimes Some of this I've posted this Facebook, but it works so well as one piece. 1. "He wants your chickenlegs," Deila said. "My chickenlegs have definition," Z replied. "What is their definition: Open me?" "Actually," I chimed in, "those would be instructions and not a definition. I'm an English major These things bother me." 2. "Where are you going?" asked Nate the Younger. "New Year's!" Indira replied. "You know that's not really a place, That's more of an event." "Less of an event even," I added "More like just a point in time." 3. The guy in the shelter had his phone stolen again. "I'll take care of him from now on It's like I'm bilingual I'm fluent in both normal and crazy." 4. "I thought I was in a love triangle once It turned out the girls involved thought otherwise. I suppose it was merely a point on a love graft." 5. Years ago, the first of two Amandas was at the printer. "Did you fix it?" "Yes, I fixed it," She said smiling. "It just isn't working yet." 6. And even earlier, Jen, She was having some trouble with her fiance, And said, "You know what I would do if I were me?" On her last day, we went out drinking, And she claimed that "she pissed excellence." 7. The meeting began, this was when Jill was store manager, "Do you know why we're here?" "What. At this meeting, or, in general, Like why are we here on this planet?" She laughed hard and slammed her hand down accidentally on a thumbtack. Sorry Jill. 8. "Some people think I'm kind of an asshole Because I'm a little too assertive." "Oh," I replied, "Some people think I'm kind of an asshole, Because I'm kind of an asshole." This always gets a laugh from my co-workers, But never a contradiction. I suppose these examples of wiseassery, Don't do much to help. 9. "I don't know whether we hate each other Or we're just pretending to hate each other." "Well, she's like that with everyone, And you're kind of a shittalker who doesn't mean what he says." "Well, at the end of the day, We're both spending the entire day saying incredibly mean things to each other Even if it's an act, even if we don't mean to be mean, That doesn't mean we're not being mean." 10. Back to today. "What is this?" "It's labeled a 'Contingency Box'." "Well? Do we need it?" I think for a second. "Well I guess that depends." (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 27th, 2009
shady_lamarr	7:33p	I Fight Crime! So it was good that I went to work, feverish and delusional as I was, because I think I helped stopped a crime ring. Well I get to work at there's two e-mails, five phones stolen from two stores yesterday. Which is ridiculous and impossible unless it was the same group traveling store-by-store. We tie our fuckers down, so we were fine. Good luck trying to steal the phones from Boylston. So I send out an e-mail saying, "Um, there's clearly a group of two or three people targeting stores in the area." One more was stolen from Natick and by then there was an alert out to the entire District. Yes, it seems like a common sense type of e-mail to send out but, well, you know how work can get. (Comment on this)
shady_lamarr	5:20a	"Closing Time" I'm keeping the last entry as is. It was less written in pain, than written by pain, and pain's spelling and grammar is hideous. In much less pain now. Was able to keep down the aspirin. Have to be at work in a few hours. This will be not fun, but it's that or go to the hospital, and I'm really really not sure if I want to hear anything they'll tell me. Been listening to "Closing Time" by Leonard Cohen (you were thinking maybe Semisonic?) over and over again these last few weeks. Sadly I can't now, head still pounding. "It looks like freedom / But it feels like death / It's something in-between." As this year seems to finish its process of completely dismantling my soul, I didn't realize I was so simple and had so few moving parts so it was a swift process, and there's a "???" where the remainder of my life should be, I've learned that the only two things I know is that I can't stay where I am and I haven't even the barest or foggiest notion of what to do next. (The Zen monastery idea has turned out to be the MOST practical idea I've come up with, which is frightning.) I thought this night of hell would help me gain perspective, but it just made things worse. When I started this year out I had maybe a dozen "next steps" that I was contemplating. This year razed all of them. Every time I came to focus on one goal or aim or another, I realized it actually wasn't something I wanted. And now we've reached the end of the year and all I can say definitively: I don't want to be in this much pain too often in my life. That's it. So I guess that's some perspective. The '00s are closing. An identity I've been harboring for at least a decade is being shut down. Last call was announced months ago, and all I have to show for it is a lot of melodramatic public diaring and a halfway decent (yet incredibly vulgar and self-absorbed) play. I don't have to be enlightened, but I can't be me. It's closing time, friends. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
shady_lamarr	2:39a	It is unwise to not give pain its due respect. I don't think I'll make the mistake of underestimating it any time soon. I was begging for death sometime around eight. I've had nasty stomach viruses, massive hangovers epic in length and severity, and a case of pneumonia that grew worse when I attempted to self-treat it (yes, I know that this contributed to the deaths of both Lester Bangs and Dori Seda and this was a stupid thing to do) that lasted two months and lingered much later. I've never ever ever felt in more pain than I have today/yesterday. Thankfully I was able to clonk myself out for most of it. When one pain starts to recede I realize that another part of my body that I haven't noticed is in pain. I've heard people talk about migraines and opiate withdrawl, and this is the pain that I've heard described. The Immaculate Withdrawl? At least I can keep liquids down, especially since I'm sweating like crazy. It's raining ice cold rain out there, it should have froze my nutsack off, instead I was relieved to finally cool off. I've been fighting something for weeks now, to the point where I was sweating when the heater was borken at work and I was asking if anyone else was warm. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 25th, 2009
shady_lamarr	9:40p	Merry Christmas I do have two routines on Christmas. First, of course, "Fairytale of New York" on Christmas eve, and then, as I mentioned earlier, William S. Burroughs's "A Junky's Christmas" on the day itself. These may sound bleak to you, but they really honestly appeal to my sentimental side. Especially once you realize that the most well-loved holiday movie is about a guy about to kill himself. It really needs to be read or heard in its entirety, but its ending is wonderful. So Danny the Car Wipe is dopesick on Christmas and his regular dealer's been arrested, so he ends up begging a doctor for some painkillers. He grabs himself a cheap room and ties himself off when he gets distracted by anguished screams from next door. It's a kid in agony, passing kidney stones. He's been refused treatment (presumably due to Joe Lieberman), so Danny does the right thing and sacrifices his fix, dooming himself to withdrawl: "The boy lay down stretching, 'I feel real sleepy. Didn't sleep at all last night.' His eyes were closing. "Danny walked across the room and pulled the shade down. He went back to his room and closed the door without locking it. He sat on the bed, looking at the empty dropper. It was getting dark outside. Danny's body ached for junk, but it was a dull ache now, dull and hopeless. Numbly, he took the needle of the dropper and wrapped it in a piece of paper. Then he wrapped the needle and dropper together. He sat there with a package in his hand. Gotta stash this someplace, he thought. "Suddenly a warm flood pulsed through his veins and broke in his head like a thousand golden speedballs. "For Christ's sake, Danny thought, I must have scored the Immaculate Fix! "The vegetable serenity of junk settled in his tissues. His face went slack and peaceful, and his head fell forward. "Danny the Car Wipe was on the nod." Merry Christmas all. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
shady_lamarr	9:35p	OMG! I'm An Adult! There's a thread on Metafilter about the exact moment when you realized you were an adult. Well, I suppose soon after I moved here, I had this brief realization of adulthood when I had to take a ridiculously convoluted system of public transportation, in full dress shirt and tie, to get from Boston to Woburn for training, along with other professional types. I felt a little like an adult then, mostly because I was extremely frustrated about the commute and had learned how to use a copy of the Metro to soak up coffee spills on empty seats on the T. In any case, I certainly felt like a city person during this long, long month. I hated being stuck in the sticks, and while the guys from Vermont were crazy and the girls from Maine were ridiculously hot, I somehow still copped a superior attitude towards them even though I was living in the same suburbs maybe four months earlier. (Also, this was when one of the girls I was training with said I looked like Johnny Depp, which was weird because it was ridiculously flattering and also completely and utterly incomprehensible. I chalked it up to "people of other races think all people who are, insert different race here, look alike" syndrome. But I still made sure that I had witnesses that can say that somebody, even if they were blind or high or both, once said this about me.) Of course, maybe I first felt like an adult when I started to advise Dad, who has been a huge computer / gadget / electronics guy forever, about cell phones and Blackberries. He was always the handyman. He cooks, he's a great cook, he can fix nearly everything, he can rewire electronics, he loves video game systems, stereos, and computers. He's Frankensteined a bazillion PCs. He once built a theremin based on instructions from "Popular Science." I've, of course, been a fumbler. I've broken so many things, and I've always seemed to be unable to fix or assemble anything. In the immortal words of Yahoo Serious, "Less of a Mr. Fix It, more of a Mr. Accident." I was an English major! I operated on a higher realm! That's what I told myself at least. This is still mostly true. I never want anything to do with cars ever. I'll sooner learn how to fly a plane than learn how to drive a car. But over these last few years it's been really strange. First, I got assigned to work with the store's security systems and the general merchandise layout. Then, as we lost technicians, they had me fill in on occasion because I've had a lot of hands-on experience. I had logged a lot of time with our operating system, and was always great with inventory (I've got a librarian mind, I've always been something of an expert as far as sorting things goes, that's maybe my one real world skill). They call when something needs to be fixed or if there are changes to be made on the sales floor.. Now I still don't fix everything, but nobody else even wants to try. I do want to try. A few years ago, when Hurricane Wilma hit and shingles shattered the patio window, all I could do was just sort of stand around awkwardly as Dad tried to limit the damage. I felt worthless. And now? Now the Space Cadet Rock Critic English Major has a tech geek job and a handyman reputation. I wish I could say it was something innate in me, but it's clearly not, (both Travis and, especially, Dylan are way more adept at these things, I can't even play video games which have a joystick). I guess you pick up things if you log enough hours, even if they're against your nature. So, yeah, the first moment that I felt like an adult was when I stepped into work and one of my managers shoved the store's constantly malfunctioning PDA into my hands and said, "Please fix this." And, somehow, I did, and I was surprised because I wasn't surprised. I wish I had a chance to share this with Grandpa B. ************ Offiical Christmas Entry tomorrow (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
shady_lamarr	11:53p	My Christmas As a retail lifer I'm always eager to dismiss Christmas right away, but there are some Media Products about Christmas that I genuinely enjoy. Well, where to begin? Well, yes, most Christmas music is awful but there's some stuff that I love. Of course, you probably know "Fairytale of New York" (the greatest Christmas song in rock history" and "Christmas Wrapping" and "Happy Xmas - War Is Over," and the still-strange Bing Crosby / David Bowie duet on "Little Drummer Boy / Peace On Earth." Phil Spector's "A Christmas Gift is overplayed but good, and the Beach Boys had some great ones as well ("Santa's Beard" is my favorite.). "200 Miles" by the Pretenders is amazing, but there's over three trillion terrible covers. Yes, of course, the Ramones gave us "Merry Xmas I Don't Want To Fight." Some more modern acts released some great Christmas songs. I'm a huge fan of Smashing Pumpkins' "Christmastime," XTC's "Thanks For Christmas" is rollicking (gotta love a Christmas song from the guy who wrote "Dear God"). "Christmas at the Zoo" by the Flaming Lips doesn't really have much to do with Christmas, but I'll let it slide. Belle and Sebastian do a glorious "O Come O Come Emmanual.". Beck's "Little Drum Machine Boy" is also pretty awesome and not overplayed. On the classic rock side, I even like Greg Lake's "I Believe In Father Christmas," and Chuck Berry's original "Run Run Rudolph" is pretty fucking good, but I've heard it three million times in the last month alone. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers gave us "It's Christmas Time Again," which holds up to repeated listenings. There's some other more obscure songs, too. Atom and His Package's "What We Do On Christmas" is a hilarious song about what Jewish people do when the Gentiles are celebrating (Robert Smigel would do something similar with "Christmastime For The Jews"). It's not a Christmas song per se, but Walter Becker's "Book of Liars" has a great bit re-imagining Santa Claus as a derelict drunk. Robby Roadsteamer wrote "Xmas In Allston," which I'll probably quote in its entirety here in my fourth (FOURTH!) Christmas in Allston. Movies? Well, there's "A Christmas Story," and the original "Grinch Who Stole Christmas," and the MST3K version of "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians". "The Simpsons Holiday Special" has stood the test of time despite how hideous the art and voices seem now. Still, my favorite Christmas movie of all time is, of course, "Scrooged" with Bill Murray. And at the end of the day, I recommend reading William S. Burroughs's actually really profound and moving and heartfelt "A Junkie's Christmas.". Better yet, listen to the man himself recite the story. There's a version out there, "The Priest They Called Him," with Kurt Cobain accompanying him. It sincerely brings me to tears almost every time. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
shady_lamarr	4:36a	Crackberry The Blackberry server has been down for twelve hours or so, and I'm not going to lie to you, I've had "I'm Waiting for the Man" type jitters. I have to admit, however, that it was a freeing experience. While the server was down, I've written something that could actually be a song. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
shady_lamarr	12:55a	The List Continues This list of my favorite 150 songs of the '00s is going to be ridiculously hard for three reasons: 1. I've missed out on a lot of great music because of the complete collapse of any sort of coherent musical narrative. 2. If I'm actually one hundred percent fair and honest, my list would contain a ridiculous amount of songs from certain artists, and especially certain albums, which would make for a great confession but a lousy list. 3. On the other hand, it would be really easy to mix in a bunch of songs I kinda like in favor of songs I really love in order to make a well-balanced list, and that's the kind of middle-of-the-road thinking that led to this watered-down health care bill. So, I'm still working on a master list to whittle down. It's been interesting. For instance, when I did some research on the Rondelles, a beloved act on the New College campus at the turn of the century, to see if any of their best songs were released in the Naughts, they weren't, I found out that their drummer went on to form the Witnesses, a band I strongly recommended during my tenure at PopMatters, and I actually used my ridiculously positive review of their final album as my kiss-off to the life of an unpaid rock critic. What an odd thing to learn after the fact. Also, I've been contemplating whether or not Lou Reed's "Edgar Allen Poe" should make the list. I mean, it's an incredibly terrible song, but it's just so ridiculously awful it reaches "Glen or Glenda?" levels of enjoyment. I mean, I would knock off "Someday" by the Strokes, or "Kamera" by Wilco (better songs from albums that will be well-represented by other tracks) to make room for this one-of-a-kind travesty. Am I right or wrong to do this? (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 21st, 2009
shady_lamarr	4:27p	I'm worried about my heart and for once I'm not talking about girls. I mean. I'm already close to be dangerously underweight and I lost a few pounds.in the last few months somehow. Couple that with my extended periods of unhealthy lifestyle choices, plus my highly strung manic personality. I think this is why Brittany Murphy's death has unsettled me. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
shady_lamarr	2:11a	Erik Nelson just informed me that Marlon indeed is alive and well. He saw him at a bar, out of the blue, a few weeks back. This is what I'm talking about my friends having a charmed life. I'm still around, this has probably been the best year of my life in fact. Cassandra's running marathons. Ben's out there in Russia and holding on. Travis is a family man. Brian mellowed out seemingly centuries ago (thanks Amy). TSK seems to be doing well in China. Michelle and Joey settled down (thanks Chris and Lisa). Punk rock Danny's still out doing his thing. The last I heard from Drew was very encouraging. There are many others I'm leaving out. If it weren't for that one awful exception, the New College crew would have a perfect game going. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 20th, 2009
shady_lamarr	10:20p	"Tonight's the Night" Yesterday I was thinking about Marlon, wondering whatever happened to him. And by "whatever happened to him" I mean the date and circumstances of his death. Although, maybe I'm just pessimistic, he might just be in jail. Needless to say, when incarceration is the Best Case Scenario... So Brittany Murphy died. I hope it's not drug related because I'm just fucking sick of young creative people dying from drugs or killing themselves (intentionally or not). This story has finally started to bore me. For "Desperadoes" I found myself reading essentially about all of the untimely deaths of young creative types, and believe me there's billions of stories and they all generally end up being the same fucking sad stupid story. I never connected the dots, but it's clear this obsession was born when I had that ridiculously near-fatal vodka OD all those years ago. Like I was given a second chance. And a few years later I was back where I started, drinking even more. I was much smarter about my drinking, but I wasn't any wiser. I'm sick of these stories, I'm utterly fucking sense of stupid pointless deaths. The crazy thing is that I seem to not be personally affected too often, I've known a few people who are no longer with us who suffered similar fates, but only a few, which is a huge miracle considering the type of people I've known in my life. Yet it still fucking hurts when I think about them. I wish there was a save option in life, a button you could hit whenever you went on a bender. Just in case you die, you could just hit the reset, and you'd be right there before. And sometimes I think even if there was a reset button, you'd do the exact same thing still, "I just have to be more careful," you'll lie to yourself. Regardless of the cause Brittany Murphy is dead, that can't be reversed, death has no undo option. She was the only highlight of "Clueless" and I fell for her hard in her role in "Girl, Interrupted" (you all know my type by now). Then suddenly she was blonde, freakishly skinny, and starring in hideous Romantic comedies. The only link to her previous self seemed to be her ridiculous and glorious crazy eyes. I've watched some of those Romantic comedies, they're very bad, oh man are they bad, but she was always really fun to watch in them. And now she's dead. That's it. That's her story. I wish there were more to it. When I first started planning "Desperadoes" I was going to dedicate it to every talented young person who died of drug related causes during the course of writing it. I had to cut that dedication a few days ago. It was just too fucking long. *************** EDIT: The reports are saying that it was of natural causes. There's also information out there that she was diabetic. She also clearly has not been at a healthy weight for a long time. I'm not sure if this makes me feel any better. At Shaw's today I ran by a tabloid "Health" magazine and it took me about a minute to recognize that Pink, or some sort of skeletal zombie version of Pink, was on the cover. I felt sick. Then when I got back to the apartment I found I didn't have any suitable pants for tomorrow, so I tried on a pair of slacks that I hadn't been able to fit in for a year, and found that, although snug, I was easily able to get them on. Which means I've actually been losing weight these last few months. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
move	10:48p	I have a few short minutes to try to write things, have a deadline of a phone call happening soon, Jacob on his way to my house now. Last night, I met up with him at an SVA house party in Williamsburg. Lots of young kids in black drinking tall boys of beer and seeming very art school. I felt old, older than them, removed from whatever scene was happening. As some experiment in contemporary anthropology, I enjoyed the party. We left there, went to Adam's party - more my scene, Brooklyn homos past their mid-twenties. We started chatting with Diego. I told him to come back to my house with Jacob and I. He did. We fooled around and had sex and it was really quite lovely to have the both of them in my bed and to feel close with both of them in this nice, open way. This morning, I woke up really happy, saw that the three of us were cuddling and it made me quite happy. We woke up, had coffee, talked about the snow that was predicted. I had brunch later today with Diego, Bob, and Nick, a Brazilian place. The snow started while we were eating. Some cocktails were had then. I went back to Diego's and lay in his bed with him watching the snow fall through his window, a church out his window, the backdrop to nature's display. We went to the West Village to go shopping for presents for family members, but ended up getting more cocktails at the quite lively for 3pm Boots and Saddles. And that was my day - not one present bought. I was soon wasted and wandering through snow with this boy I like, occasionally kissing him. I came home, took a nap, and now am going to be homebound in this snow, a boy coming over, us going to get stoned and watch crap and cuddle and I am really loving the snow and these days and my relationships with people. Unrelated to these thoughts and because there is that time limit here - no time to try to segue nicely between subjects - I saw Avatar in 3D yesterday and as a visual treat, it was pretty spectacular, the best 3D movie I've seen. I kind of want to go rewatch it really stoned. The film has these really strong pagan sentiments that were a bit weird to see argued for so forcefully in this Hollywood spectacular and there's a lot of not so subtle stuff about Native Americans and recent wars that the US has been involved in, all of which made the movie more interesting, more of an oddity, less of what I was expecting. I have a bag of cookies at my side. I am about to eat some of them. (Comment on this)
shady_lamarr	12:20a	"Lazy Line Painter Jane" Sam pointed out that in the interest of promoting "Dear Catastrophe Waitress," I devalued Stuart Murdoch's amazing lyrics from Belle and Sebastian's early years. To right this wrong, I thought I would take an extended look at "Lazy Line Painter Jane," which gets my vote for the best song of the '90s. Much of what makes the song great is its performance, how it starts low-key and acoustic and barely there and just gradually builds and builds and builds until it ends with a two minute rattle of gorgeous noise that would make Kevin Shields swoon. Also Murdoch's fey, ironic vocals are counterpointed by the glorious belting of Monica Queen. (I have no doubt that the New Pornographers had this song in mind with their Neko Case sung songs, "The Laws Have Changed" especially.) But the lyrics themselves are really perfect, notable for being ridiculously and forcefully rhythmic, the lyrics essentially keep time. Take my favorite lines (emphasis mine) BUT you READ in a BOOK THAT you got FREE in BOOTS THERE Are LOtions THERE are POTions That YOU can TAKE to HIDE your SHAME from ALL those PRYing Eyes. It's not exactly iambic, but it's close, and the short tight initial lines relax the final line of each verse which is allowed a little extra space and time. It's tension and release, really. The title character of course is a... Fuck it I'm declaring a moratorium on the term B*d N*ws G*rl for a bit, I've pretty much overused it here. In any case the key to Lazy Line Painter Jane and the progress she is trying halfheartedly to improve her life lie in the first verse and the last verse: So she starts the song "trying hard not to please / Anyone, all the time / Being a rebel's fine / But you go all the way to being brutal." It's that eternal question: when are you being a rebellious Romantic antihero and when are you just an emotionally hazardous asshole? The last line is something of a halfhearted resolution: "Lazy Jane, all the time / Painting lines / You are sleeping at bus stops / Wondering how you got your name / And what you're going to do about it." You never give yourselves nicknames. My nickname in high school, decided by a group of my peers, was Time Bomb. Which I first hated, but then sorta "took it back" during my college years and early '20s, until really very recently when I asked myself do I really want to live up to this two-dimensional identity? How can we fight against this? There's of course some major sexual titillation here, or at least by the standards of '97, as Lazy Jane sleeps with members of both genders, contracts a VD, and openly ponders about selling (renting out really) her body: "You know a girl who's tax free on her back and making plenty of cash / While you are working for the joy of giving." I'll give Murdoch the benefit of the doubt, that he's not just trying to pull of a "lipstick lesbian" tease here, especially since two of his best early songs, "The State I Am In" and "Seeing Other People" deal with young men with uncertain or deliberately vague sexualities. In any case, it's an incredibly vivid character study, and I've always felt that there's a movie in here. Early Belle and Sebastian songs often created brief sketches that seemed to be concise summaries of entire short stories (or possibly novels). So, yeah, Sam, The characters and situations in these early songs are naïve, but the songs themselves are complex and often profound. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 18th, 2009
shady_lamarr	2:45a	Revising "Desperadoes" I'm a little glad that my Top 25 Album List is over, both because my top 150 songs of the '00s (100 is too few, 200 is too many) is going to be way more interesting, and this also gives me a little more freedom here in LJ land. I'm starting my serious revisions of "Desperadoes Under the Eaves," with the goal of a decent sendable draft within the next few weeks. One thing I'm really starting to love about my first draft is how ridiculously dense it is with pop culture references. My first impulse is to cut these obscure references down and reduce their number to make it more accessible, but this just waters down the whole story. It's like what Burgess was trying to do with "A Clockwork Orange," thinking that Russian vocabulary was going to infect later generations of troublemakers. The truth, of course, is that Entertainment and not the State or Culture will continue to infect how we speak to one another, and we will always shift from one frame of speaking to another depending on the audience. So when the late twenty-something white middle class college friends talk to each other, they're going to use very, very specific slang that may be complete gibberish to just about anyone else, and when the same characters talk to figures outside of their peer group, the language may seem stilted and unnatural, like when an Englishman who knows Spanish has to talk to a Frenchman who knows Spanish, so they both are speaking in a stilted, foreign, ugly, alien language, just so they can understand each other. Here's an example of the first kind of speaking, the almost entirely opaque dialogue between close friends with the same pop culture reference points: "Buddy - Heh heh, what is this? You're trying to be all human after all here? Jesus Creed, what a Christian Rock thing to do, trying to be all sincere-like. I long ago decided to do the reverse a-Ha and become a cartoon character, it's a way to escape the pain of being human. I've been turned down by billions of women, I haven't seen my kid since he was six weeks old, and her mother feels guilty about wanting to see me in my grave-slash-urn but I know she wants to see me dead. I don't even remember if my parents disowned me or if I disowned my parents, but I get by, I'm like Wile E. Coyote humming "Touch of Grey," okay man, I get blown up, I get flattened, I get DASHED against ROCKS, but I shake myself alive, my droogs, and I'm healthy and cool as fuck again. I will get by. I will survive." ******** The other trick I've figured out comes with the idea that addiction is a demon that possesses a human mind, that so whenever a clearly defined character gets too messed up they start to lose their individual voice, instead they start to speak in the language of their disease. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
move	1:30a	dirty laundry It's when I greet him at my door or when we walk out of it together in the morning that I notice it, his age, that I am aware of some striking difference between the two of us. When he is in my house though, this studio of four not too large walls in which my own reality rules, that difference seems not noticeable. We are often stoned and naked, making out, staring into his eyes with bossa nova music playing on 91.5, an hour of it for some reason. And I am not sure you can imagine it, not sure you get the same heartswollen feeling when you listen to bossa nova music, but the stuff is pure sentiment and tugs at my heartstrings and makes me weak in the knees about what it is to be alive on this planet at this time, but more so at any time - what an entirely weird and fragile little thing this is here, our existence for some period of time in this world. And something about bossa nova makes an awareness of that seem more present, that the music seems to be informed of those things, that this is music written from people profoundly aware of these things, experienced mystics accepting of these things, and so it is this beautiful and sad and loving and lamenting thing. And so I was stoned last night and we were sitting on my couch drinking wine, and I was kind of thinking this boy was insanely beautiful, that his eyes were full of magic, and that I wanted to kiss him so much, make him aware through some tactile form of communication how it was I was feeling, how much I was feeling then, and a large part of that had to do with the music, some part of it had to do with the weed and the wine and the cold weather outside making the idea of cuddling up with a boy, some warmness against the frigid world outside the bubble of your couch, of his arms, making that idea, the idea of cuddling up with a boy seem so amazing - and so not even that makes up all what is happening here, not all the parts - some part of it was the eyes, the skin, the dopey expression on his face, something else. We kissed and kissed and eventually turned off the radio and started to watch a movie, The Big Lebowski, because I am kind of obsessed with the film and he had never seen it and his failure to have ever seen it struck me as outrageous, made me feel that there was some noticeable age difference here between the two of us, that someone my age would understand why this movie is so necessary on a list of films that you must see numerous times in your life, that this would be one of them, that he would know that, and so I insisted we watch it, me also a bit stoned and wanting to see this movie so bad during that moment. This took us to my bed, laptop on my lap, and the two of us wrapped around each other. I have spend quite a few nights in a row now with this person, who I have decided I really need to stop referring to (even jokingly) as "the 19 year old," that that was the only real detail about this person I knew when he was just some person that came over to my house for sex from Grindr. But now he is Jacob, this nice sexy person that makes me feel really comfortable, and who I am beginning to like a little bit. I question it and wonder if it's real or what's going on here or what this feeling could stem from. I am a bit doubtful, and think that I am resisting liking this boy, holding back for a bit but that those self-restraints I had originally imposed are coming loose. It was a lovely and dirty night with him, sweaty fucking and gentle cuddling all night, and kind of everything I am looking for right now - a person that is into me physically and wants to sleep next to each other and get stoned and watch movies. It's kind of perfect and sort of everything I have always tried to push my relationships toward but have always failed at, and here it is right from the start. I also think I have forgotten what a new flirtation feels like, those first few dates with a boy, having been thinking things might happen with this one boy for a while and now trying to maybe move past that, but only kind of, and also why I am only kind of into this person, Jacob. When I walked out of the door with him this morning, around 7, when I was leaving for work, his sweater was oversized, making him look tinier, younger. I saw some age difference, wanted some other bearded boy, my peer. And then today, I texted with Jacob and got giddy and there are ups and downs and swings from my thoughts of this person to that person to another person, to the two or three of them together, and me with them, and also thoughts about this threesome I have been trying to facilitate and really so many silly thoughts, pretty much all about boys. I turned my sheets inside out this afternoon when I got home from work, them kind of disgustingly dirty with sex stains. I could have taken them to the laundromat, done laundry, but I didn't want to, didn't want to be outside in this cold, and so instead will sleep on them, will drop them off at the laundromat tomorrow morning before I go try to find my family some Christmas presents and will pick it up later in the afternoon, clean sheets and towels and clothes in a bag all neatly folded, and me paying some monetary amount per pound of clothing for the pleasure of this task being taken care of by someone else. (Comment on this)
shady_lamarr	12:11a	My Two Favorite Albums Of the '00s We've hit Boylston, and we're just about to pass the finish line by the Boston Public Library, folks... 2. Belle and Sebastian It's a rare thing to grow up with a band, I suppose my parents' generation got to grow up with the Beatles. Me? I had Belle and Sebastian. My late teenage years I had "If You're Feeling Sinister" and "Tigermilk" and the early EPs, which perfectly fit my delayed adolescence, songs ridiculously naïve about life, but also songs that sort of made you appreciate being young and stupid, seeing so many things for the first time that you get overwhelmed by it. Still to this day, "Lazy Line Painter Jane" and "Seeing Other People" carry me back. The later period of Jeepster-era Belle and Sebastian wasn't as shocking and new and awe-inspiring, but there was a confidence in "Boy With the Arab Strap" and the best moments of the lesser follow-up albums,there's a sense of polish, maturity, and accomplishment. It lacks the same emotional thump, you can only come of age once, but there's this sort of more balanced, somewhat adult swagger to these best songs. Again, some of my most vivid and wonderful moments came early in college, but they were also chaotic and ugly and difficult times. My late period college life was some of the best years of my life, sacrificing a sense of wonder to becoming an actual somewhat adapted social animal. Songs like "The Model" or "I'm Waking Up To Us," more structurally complex and well-played then earlier tracks, coming from a perspective older than that of the young students that populate early Belle and Sebastian albums. And here comes "Dear Catastrophe Waitress," released right as I started job hunting, trapped at home, already missing horribly many of the friends I've made. I needed a new album, something with ties to the past, but a new beginning. So, at the same time that I began my "retail lifer" stage of my career, shit I do it well so what the fuck, I fell for Belle and Sebastian's Trevor Horn produced "major label" debut. It's all there in the title track, where the titular character saves her money, does her job, and hopes to escape to a better world. Where "Legal Man" was more of a standard rock and roll take on working professionals that have lost their way, "Step Into My Office Baby" enters into the white collar world without being condescending. Even the lesser songs, like "Asleep On A Sunbeam" and "Roy Walker" are given such a, and here's the key word here, "professional" production that they dig into your brain, nest, and lay eggs. The only weak spot, a decade too late "official version" of their old song "Lord Anthony". This poor kid seems so out of place on this record, I would substitute "Your Cover's Blown," but so it goes. 1. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Yeah, I know. It's lame. The number one is always lame. Let me start by saying that at NO point did I ever even consider "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" the best album of the '00s until I finished my list and started to order the albums, and this was the last album standing. I mean, I guess SOMETHING has to be number one, and you could do a lot worse than Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". Even (especially?) in the alternative/indie/modern rock scene, the notion of a great album was a very very good album with one or two stone cold classics (think Clinic with "Distortions," or Franz Ferdinand with "Take Me Out" or Regina Spektor with "Us"). If you took the songs from "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and gave them to other really good bands, every single track would be the "stone cold classic" track on their accompanying records. I mean, they released the album's weakest song, "Heavy Metal Drummer," as their single, and almost got away with it. Fuck, I'm not even a Wilco fan. Their early Americana stuff leaves me cold, I liked fragments of "Being There" and "Summerteeth". Their post-YHF albums have barely even crossed my radar (their team-up with the Minus Five was pretty good, but I'm a Scott McCaughey fan), but "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" simply is that good. It begins with one of the best opening lines in rock album history "I am an American Aquarium Drinker" and ends with the one the most poignant closing lines in rock album history: "I've got reservations, about so many things / But not about you." There's a song for every possible mood here, from the dismal despair of "Radio Cure," to the resigned yet hopeful "War on War" ("you have to learn how to die / If you want to stay alive"), to the bubbly power pop of "Kamera." This album was recorded in the midst of a lot of chaos: the bandmembers were in conflict with each other, the record label ended up dropping them, and there were clear signs that personal issues, including drug abuse and relationship turmoil were spilling into the music. So, when the album was finally released, shortly after 9/11, it was no wonder that Wilco had somehow channeled, and predicted somewhat, the sorrowful and apocalyptic vibe of post-September 11th America. At least that's what I try to convince myself. Even today "Ashes of American Flags" and, my God, "Jesus Etc." creep me out, if there weren't an abundance of evidence of when this music was recorded, you could never convince me that this wasn't explicitly recorded in the aftermath of the Twin Towers. "Tall buildings shake / Voices escape singing sad, sad songs.../ ...Voices whine / Skyscrapers are scraping together." You know what, the more I think about it, this is definitely the album of the last years. Jeff Tweedy laid his cards out on the very first song: "I am trying to break your heart." Congratulations, you succeeded. Long may you run Jeff Tweedy, may you rest in peace Jay Bennett. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
shady_lamarr	10:04p	My Favorite Albums Of The '00s: Three and Four 4. Spoon - Kill The Moonlight I dunno. "Girls Can Tell" is probably just as good, and "Gimme Fiction" might be better, but the minimalist anger-pop of "Kill the Moonlight" makes this the definitive Spoon album (so far). I suppose I knew how good Spoon were when I tried to describe their sound and I couldn't come up with a modifier. I just had to say "Spoon is a rock band". That's it. It didn't hurt that I also heard them play almost the entire album live, maybe the most fun I've had a concert. My ears bled after the show, I'm fairly certain that this night contributed to my significantly inferior hearing in my left ear. It was worth it, just hanging out with friends in a city I may never visit again, singing along with perfect rock anthems about getting high in back of cars and how it "feels so good Friday night to Sunday," and all the while musing over the fact that "All the Pretty Girls Go to the City," a hard truth to reconcile when you're stuck in Southwest Florida. Plus, like the White Stripes, Spoon's actually still making great music that even sometimes gets airplay! 3. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black First, Winehouse either wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on this album, and is entirely responsible for her two trademark numbers "Rehab" (which was actually hysterically funny when it was first released, and is now just bleak and sad) and "You Know I'm No Good" (don't say she didn't warn us). So, yes, she's not only blessed with a frighteningly powerful voice she's also written some of the finest songs dealing with loneliness, heartache, and addiction. This is an album I can reach to in any state: drunk, sober, withdrawling, in recovery, relapsing, lovesick, broken hearted, girl afraid, manic, depressed, what-have-you. Which makes it really almost tragic that there's a good chance there'll never be a real follow up. I've already been working on her obituary, I've told you this before. I'm sure the news wires and the major music magazines have gotten started one as well, but mine will be better. I hope it never sees the light of day. At one point, the only question about whether I would get a chance to send it out wasn't because I wasn't worried that she might die soon but rather whether or not I'd still be around when it happened. Right around when I had this observation, and it's a scary moment to realize that your death clock is comparable to Amy Winehouse's, was also right about when I dedicated myself to the first sobering up process sinc college, which lasted nearly a year. I was popping sleeping pills like crazy, but I at least I wasn't drinking. So, yeah, with other celebrity meltdowns, like with Britney and Lindsey "Lohab," I can follow their lives through the same jaded trainwreck eyes as the tabloid addicts : "Wow what are they thinking?" Now, Amy Winehouse? Nah, sadly, there's no such emotional buffer between her and me. I think I'm well aware of what she's going through. I mean, okay, smoking crack after being diagnosed with emphysema, never been there, but self-medicating for bipolar disorder with booze and drugs and getting increasingly and increasingly immersed in a cartoonish public persona? Yeah. I think I know a little about what that's like. I wish I could say more about "Back to Black" itself, it's really and utterly impossibly great, I mean I almost had it at number two, but there you go. It's like how I would really love to think that when my family talks about me they talk about how I've managed to find and keep a great job, get around in a large city fine on my own, and how I finished the rough draft of my play, but, I have to realize that it's more "Is he drinking again? Is he on his meds? Is he OK? Will he be OK?" So it goes. I guess I'll end this the only way I can: Dear Amy Winehouse, Please don't die. Love, Hunter (2 Comments |Comment on this)