What's playing at the party in my head

Usually my brain functionings and demeanor are not unlike a huge pothead's - everything is funny, way too laid back, and crazed non-sensical babble flows from my mouth. Every now in then, though, my head feels like it is filled with pop rocks and a can of Coke. Iron and Wine's Love and Some Verses eases this incessant effervescence. Also see: The Sea and Cake's Colony Room.

I just discovered The Russian Futurists. This only adds to the bubbles forming in my head, but it is fun. The Russian Futurists is an army of one, which is Matthew Adam Hart in his bedroom with a computer, a library of kitschy noise, and loads of time. It reminds me of the walls of my apartment. They just kept throwing on the layers of paint completely disregarding the simple structure that lays below. Now I am encased in 2 inches of lead-laden fun. RF is like that minus the poison. Hart probably uses his bathroom as a recording studio, as any good DIY music obsessed loner would, which enhances the echo and whine in his Mercury Rev-like vocals. It adds to the tin can sound and I envision him as a kitschy cosmonaut surrounded by looping blips. (Aside: The 3 faces of communism for me - (1) Chinese communism = meddlesome and annoying like an over-bearing Chinese mother (2) Cuban communism = sweaty, sexy and perpetually stuck in 1950s America (3) Russian communism = kitschy, why is that? I think it is due to the Nutcracker, Tetris and Russian stacking dolls). In the end, it's super pop and that's how I like it.

Recommended songs: click to continue >>>> click songs/lyrics
The Science of the Seasons (click on 2nd album cover)
Paul Simon (click on 4th album cover)


And finally, GO SPURS GO!! (scroll down to SA Girl)

Editor's Note: Alexis, please provide your copyediting notes to my work address. Your payment of 5 boxes of Entenmann's donuts has been mailed to your old address that you have moved out of.

What day is it?

This homo-agogo weekend plus other assorted non-homo related goings on have worn me out. My brain is now charcoal. This morning I attempted to analyze whether the 75 year old man in the short-sleeved office shirt and fedora was a relic from the Arthur Miller "Death of a Salesman" days or if he actually worked for JP Morgan, but I felt an immense pressure in my brain stem, my eyes fluttered and....zzztt....nothing. Instead I just became annoyed that he was walking so slowly and passive agressively pushed him out of the way. No longer does my breakfast donut elicit ideas about the state of farmers in America. I'm sure this is a relief to everyone else, but now my brain is just taking up space. If someone could please wake me up in 20 minutes, it would be much appreciated. My extension is x561.

Hopefully, Rinita's visit will throw some vitriol onto my charcoal and reflip my bullsh*t switch. She definitely will have something to say since I am going to surprise her in this hot weather with my air-conditioner-less room. Surprise!!

If anyone really cares and is really in need, I have a cache of Special Addition unprinted back issues that you can read. Let me know.

Sing us a song you're the piano band

Seeing Keane live solidified one issue I had with the band - the lead singer is undoubtedly a doppelganger for a lesbian I know. The first time we were introduced she immediately took my breath away, "Oh my God, it's Keane." That cherubic moon face, those rosy cheeks, that lion's mane, it must be! I have met her numerous times since and still cannot recall her name. Every time we speak my mind is preoccupied with "Keeeeeaaaaaane! lalalala, somewhere only we know, dadadada..."

We arrived at the very end of Regina Spektor’s last song. I really was there to see Keane. My nightmare realized. She was passionately singing when some frat boy hurled an insult onto the stage. Regina caught the insult midair and integrated a “Fuck you” into the lyric she was singing. The 20 member audience gave her a standing ovation. I love her even more.

Most of my predictions for the night were dead on - from the asexual swagger of the lead singer to the heavy use of purple mood lighting. During the highly anticipated rendition of “Somewhere Only We Know” the woods motif was employed. A snowy forest was projected onto the stage from the perspective of the viewer traveling down a road. What was strange, however, was that this scene featured a wandering moose, seriously. Was the audience the moose? The singer? Is my love like a moose?

The key component that I predicted incorrectly was the make up of the audience. Thirty percent of the audience was comprised of VH1 moms and dads, but the other 70% were the high school kids that were embarrassed to be seen with them (0.0001% = those accompanying their aunt because she is a nice niece). Actually, every teenager there seemed to be minus guardian and on a date. The actually capacity was probably double since every boy was standing behind every girl with arms wrapped around her waist whispering sweet nothings into her ear as the bill of his baseball cap pushed her head to the side as he kissed her neck. Where are we, a Dave Matthews concert? Not only was I reliving prom, but each of my four dateless years of high school. I can guarantee that nation-wide the class of ’05 is checking the box next to “Somewhere Only We Know” as class song (note: yes, this is the only Keane song title I know).

This experience was reminiscent of the time that I was a freshman in college and went to see Hanson play a free concert at Sea World. Oh Taylor Hanson, why are you so ambiguously blond? At the end, I asked my philosophical friend Monique her thoughts. “Uh, everyone there did not know they are now at the stage where they need to wear deodorant. It smelled like B.O.” Haha, why yes Monique, I too felt out of place and world weary. Let’s not attempt to revisit our youth. It stinks.

Searching for my homeless grandma

My local Key Food doubles as a self-service recycling center. It is a reverse vending machines; enter your bottles and cans and out comes shiny coins. In turn, it also serves as a community water cooler for the enterprising homeless, green-minded citizens, and old Chinese grandmas. It’s obvious why the first grouping frequents this area. Of course there’s the money and those huge plastic bags are cumbersome when navigating between car doors on the subway. Additionally, they need to make room in the cart for others things…anything…everything. The second category utilizes this facility to ease their wasteful urban guilt. I know when I put my recyclables outside someone else has left a lid on, placed in the green bin, or not adhered to the NYC Recycles website motto “When in doubt, leave it out,” which will cause the recycling machine in the plant to throw a screw, explode, causing a green Chernobyl now turning my recyclables into trash. But in my mind, I have just set a baby humpback whale free. As for the old Chinese clan, you may think there reasoning is not too dissimilar from the homeless collectors. But I believe they do it for the sheer joy of sticking their heads into trash bins and the fulfillment from a hard days work of dumpster diving. You know these grannies have money squirreled away in the First Chinese Bank whose main branch is located under their mattress. Regardless they live in Chinatown in a 15 floor walk up tenement building that they have lived in since the Chinese Exclusion Act so their rent is 50 dollars anyway.

Every time I pass one of these tiny smiling grannies loaded down with their wares on the street, I think of my grandma and give them a huge smile. I want to ask them in my broken Chinese if they need any help. They, in return, pay me no attention. I have an affinity for the elderly like most people have towards small children. They share the same innocence and helpless quality, granted one is based on a puerile naiveté and the other on dementia and frailty, but both are endearing none the less. In the end, with children, I am left with Twinkie in my hair and the feeling that this imagination and trust was squashed in utero for me. With the elderly you are left with a certain hazy wisdom gained from years of knowledge and Twinkie in your hair.

When I first docked ship here I saw a posting to help elderly Chinatown residents learn how to use email. This was perfect since I was determined to adopt a surrogate grandma. I did not take the volunteer position since I learned Chinese from my grandma it is probably the equivalent of Old English. My vocabulary consists of food words and not much else. Unlike romance languages, Chinese is tonal. Therefore the pidgin form cannot not be determined by simply adding a vowel at the end, such as car’o’ in Mexican. I don’t think yelling com-PU-ter and mou-SEY would clarify anything for them. I am still on the look out for that special bra-selling, bored grandma to take me in.

My grandma recently turned 97 years old. Therefore she is no longer the robust 80 year- old I remember growing up. Around age 90, she abandoned all of her previous grandmotherly duties. Her favorite activity became going to Luby’s and ordering the chicken or going to Cracker Barrel and ordering the chicken or going to Fujita and ordering the chicken. She now uses every geriatric attachment on the market to aid her in her travels to said restaurants and the grocery store. We just throw them all in the trunk and let her choose her weapon of choice. The most successful arrangement we have found is the wheelchair-cane combination. I would wheel her through the aisles and she would knock down any item she desired like we were on the geriatric version of Supermarket Sweep. It was chaos and the most irritating 45 minutes of my life, but she was entertained, so it works. Since it now takes my grandma 30 minutes to walk down the hall to the bathroom I don’t she will be able to visit and my dreams of wandering the streets together rummaging through my neighbors trash have been dashed.

In defense of Lucinda (unopposed, again, and for the last time)

This illustrates nothing other than the fact that Sergio is a hilarious idiot. ahaha

The elevation of the urban cowboy as the current hipster aesthetic has bolstered Lucinda Williams‘ popularity and/or tolerance among the masses. Assuredly I will still listen to Lucinda and wear my bolo tie once everyone else has moved on to Detroit box factory chic. Can people from areas with a public school system that ranks above the lowest 30 percentile actually relate to Lucinda Williams? Do you even know what a gravel road is? Loose asphalt is not the same as the gravel road that runs beside the train tracks. One is decaying urbanization and the other is still waiting for the pavement to be poured. Give us a break, the region is still playing catch up after Reconstruction. I’m protective of Texas and the South as a whole. They are akin to my newly immigrated relatives who use their front yard as a winter melon patch. I can criticize their ‘can do’ attitude, but you better not bat an eye. From this, one would assume that I was raised on a chicken farm and my biology degree was honorary and accredited from years of animal husbandry. Like everyone else I am a product of stripmalls and TGIFridays, but the overall chicken farm culture is deep and pervasive. It’s quite possible that I value the outsider quality Texas affords me more than the state itself, but coming from such a strange place you cannot escape its subconscious influence and the ensuing nostalgia.

Place plays an equal role to the heroes of Lucinda’s stories and often acts as an antagonist to the lonely, encumbered suicide victims created within. Her liberal name dropping of East Texas and Louisiana cities is like speeding past these city exits as you attempt to leave Nowwheresville, TX for Swampvalley, LA. Though the themes are American universals, the scenes are so region specific it is difficult to remove it from that context.

My feeble musical mind has always compared Lucinda Williams to Bruce Springsteen. They are linked by their poetic and exacting tales of regional Americana woe. Springsteen’s underdog everyman lyrics combined with his dynamic live performances have a produced a cult of fist-pumping little Stevies. First I rarely employ the fist pump, but for me his tales of abandoned refineries and factories do not elicit the fervor that warrant even a little pump. Such personal portrayals deserve authentic reciprocal appreciation. Unlike the Reagan administration, I understand “Born in the USA” is not an appropriate soundtrack for a national pep rally nor should it be taken as a battle cry by the anti-immigrant contingent, yet somehow I was never able to take on his cause. One of his major causes, the plight of the unionist, seems to be an issue confined mostly to the Northeasterly region, which I am slightly unfamiliar with. Didn’t Sally Field stand on a table somewhere? Perhaps the disconnect is due more to time rather than place, but time is a major determinant of place especially in terms of class and/or immigration .

Just as I am relegated to orienting myself in Springsteen’s town via Academy Award winning movies, I would think non-Southerners would feel lost on Lucinda’s desolate dusty road. Though her depictions may not be as overt as Bruce’s, every detail accentuates the accuracy. Lucinda’s exaggerated drawl only enhances the idea of place. It may be described as a twang or nails on a chalk board, but this heart break warble perfectly compliments and even mimics the pedal steels and dobros essential to her sound with flourishes of Zydeko accordions and Delta blues slide guitars rounding out the musical roadmap of the South. Personally, it conjures up images of my co-worker and her stories of her adopted daughter she literally found wandering the street and the doublewide trailer she shared with her mulleted rockstar husband (seriously, ask Rinita. We both witnessed it together). Unlike the sufferers of the nouveau mullet and the inhabitants of the ironic double-wide trailer parks located off of the “L’ on Bedford, these are real people.

Although Lucinda may have literally and poetic moved from Texas and Louisiana to places such as Ventura and Minneapolis, she will always embody that Southern snake charm from which she originally came.

Worms, horses and disabled mice

My subscription to numerous cultural/political listserves, the haphazard distribution of my email to others, and the immense amount of downloading music files and various types of media has put me on the cutting edge of virus technology. I am usually able to scoop McAfee on what worms are changing my home page to porno sites or what email virus has disabled all of the functions of my computer.

The latest infection the cool kids are sporting is W32/Mytob.ca@MM. This slick new worm “combines W32/Mydoom@MM functionality with W32/Sdbotworm functionality” (credit McAfee website). I’ve always wanted the functionality of Mydoom, but still wanted to retain the distribution capabilities of Sdbot. Now I’ve got it! And it’s perfect! Well, I’m not exactly sure that I have it, but whatever I have renders any clicking useless. The list of disabled functions is quite extensive; I don’t know if my ARR.EXE is working and I haven’t had to access NEOWATCHLOG.EXE for some time, but nothing works and everything is listed, so I’m going with yes to infection.

As is such, I am devoting the morning to scouring websites to find the right McAfee AZT cocktail so that I can continue my reckless computer prostitution. Luckily, this worm is easy to remove. I only need to start up – wait that is disabled. Then I can download, umm that route is closed off as well. I will attempt to use my technological inept, old school technique of unplugging my power source and then crying. My only form of contact with society has been rendered inoperative, so I unable to alert anyone. But look out for that email I send you, it will contain “IMPORTANT INFORMATION.”

Somewhere Where We...zzzzz

Tonight I will attend the snooze fest known as Keane. I admit that I was drawn to their single ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ by its sweet melody, high school heartbreak lyrics, and beautiful castrato vocals. I received a copy of the CD and by track 2 I was lulled to sleep. After I awoke from my Brit pop slumber I attempted to listen to ‘Hopes and Fears’ consciously. Ten minutes into track 1 I realized that I was 4 tracks into the album. Though I appreciate ‘consistent’ albums, this is one entire laborious swan song.

However, this will allow me to see Regina Spektor perform again. Regina and Keane have nothing in common. It is unfortunate that all artists that utilize a piano are lumped into the same category. “Yeah, Regina is kinda like a updated Sarah McLachlan with a Liberace sensibility and the playfulness of Ben Folds.”

My predictions:
Audience: ‘hip’ moms and dads; seated through entire show - possible swaying (C-)
Venue: RadioCity Music Hall is gorgeous - red velvety interior accented with gold curtains; makes the Rockettes seem like a classy act (A+)
Stage: possible magical woods motif or soft purple lighting;; lead singer making out with the microphone stand
Exit lines: well-mannered, single file

Edit

I changed the title of this since the other was irritating. The title conveys the same message, bleeker....bleaker, and it refers to one of my favorite topics-my apartment. Muhaha, genius. I hope my fans can still find me. Rinita? Sergio? Are you still listening?