Best News I’ve Heard This Week

I really hope this story is true. I saw the stage production of C.D. Payne’s Youth In Revolt back in Santa Rosa, after reading the book (multiple times). It was a tiny little show that only touched on the first chunk of the rather large and engrossing story, and the no-budget production with age-inappropriate actors didn’t exactly leave me thrilled. But  Michael Cera would be perfect for the part of Nick Twisp, so as long as there’s a decent director involved, this should be good. Hopefully Hollywood doesn’t fuck this one up.

Quotable

“Since gin to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara…” (Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s)

From my current reading. Wickedly funny, ten times more so than the cinematic version. And it would have to be, wouldn’t it? I mean, on a wickedness scale of 1 to 100, imagine where Audrey Hepburn would fall, as opposed to Mr. Capote. The movie will definitely bear some re-watching when I’m done with this, as I have a feeling the experience will be much different.

In Brief…

Quick update. I moved. I am without DSL or phone service at home. I became everything I despise and bought myself a cell phone (If you need my number, e-mail me). I adopted a bike, which I’ve been riding daily. I’m busy unpacking and settling in, and trying to find the ideal setting on my combination fridge/freezer thing so that my ice cubes freeze but my milk doesn’t (This is a rather difficult process that i fear may cost me a fortune in milk).

Still remixing. Getting excited about working in my new music workspace (a sprawling, accessible area compared to my old setup). Getting excited about visiting Seattle at the end of the month.

Finally finished my months-long Salinger spree, completing Seymour: an Introduction the other night. Tearing through my DVDs of the first season of Arrested Development.

Need a bed. Preferably a futon. Preferably one that won’t destroy my back.

Bloated and Bored

I can’t remember the last time I was this full. I think this feeling is going to last for a few days, from the looks of it. Well, I’ll just have to make some room for veggie thanksgiving tomorrow night though….eh, holiday blogging is boring, so I’ll spare you.

Open Mic was fun the other night. I did Wilco’s “Pot Kettle Black” (which I’ve been listening to a lot lately) and re-attempted Elliott Smith’s “Happiness”, which I drunkenly butchered the week before (I already blogged about that elsewhere). But this week made up for that disaster, I think. It was kind of slow, due to the holidays, but it was a nice crowd nonetheless.

I finished re-reading The Crying of Lot 49 recently also. I enjoyed it immensely the first time, but I feel like I sppreciated it more the second, especially having more familiarity with Pynchon’s other works. It’s interesting to see some of his obsessions carry over to other books. I’m planning on re-reading Gravity’s Rainbow again sometime too, but that’s a pretty hefty time investment, I don’t get to read much anymore these days.

Oh! Almost forgot. I won Green Day tickets and Meet and Greet passes last weekend, which is funny because I don’t like Green Day. I owned a copy of Dookie for about a month when it came out, but it wore off on me pretty quickly. Anyways, I only won the tickets because Emily took me along when she was trying to win them, so the tickets found a good home with Green Day uber-fans Emily and Marisa. Unfortunately, the Meet and Greet passes were not transferable for contractual reasons. We were thinking of giving Emily my old ID (in which I have long hair and look rather less masculine than currently) and trying to pass her off as a transsexual, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Made a stop at Amoeba Records while in the city also, and got a pretty good haul for right around $50. I got Hood’s Singles Compiled and Compilations 1995-2002 pretty cheap, Fog’s self-titled (which I haven’t been able to rip…grrr!), M?m’s Summer Make Good, Son Volt’s Straightaways, the Freakbitchlickfly compilation on Violent Turd (featuring copyright abusing remixes and mashups by Kid 606 and friends), and Mates of State’s All Day EP. Good times.

Not a lot of music happening. “Sweater” is kind of stalled, due to my being somewhat disenchanted with it at the moment. It may be abandoned. I’ll listen to it again in a week or two and see how I feel about it. I’m trying to work on a collaboration track with Celibacy Club, but I need to give myself a crash course in Fruity Loops again to make that happen. That’s the problem with electronic music….there can be more barriers to collaboration due to software/hardware issues. Of course, in acoustic-based music, you can’t really collaborate with someone 2 states away anyways, so that’s a moot point. I did find some people locally who are looking to get a music project going, so that might open up some new musical vistas for the moment…

More Later….

All Hat, No Cattle

Halloween was more sedate than I expected. I think it being on a Sunday had a lot to do with that. Everybody must have got the partying out of their systems on Friday and Saturday. But it was a fun Halloween nonetheless. Early in the day, I went to see Primer with Joey and Reed and Nicole (more on that later…go see it for yourself now!). Then I went back home to suit up in my cowboy gear (leather chaps, leather jacket with fringe, etc), picked up Michelle in her lovely geisha outfit, and we headed back up to Reed’s place, where we all hung out for a while. Reed and Joey and Nicole were playing this pirate themed card game that looked pretty interesting, while Michelle, Kelly, and I decorated Nicole’s sugar-skulls with icing.

Michelle and I headed out to Guerneville for a cool benefit Haunted House, We were originally planning on hitting the Guerneville downtown (Reed advised me to not get raped…so helpful), but things were pretty dead down there, so we headed back into civilization, and ended up at the Tradewinds due to lack of better options. There were some great costumes there, and a pretty tight little funk band was playing, so it was an alright time. I haven’t actually dressed up for Halloween in a while, so that was cool, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with these chaps now….

Well, the subject of cowboys has been raised, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to make an election segue (or does it?). Better, more thoughtful writers have expressed anything I would want to say elsewhere anyways. So I’ll just say this:

FUCK.

Right. So then. I traded Emily my extra wireless card for a home cooked meal the other night (and another meal again this evening), which is a pretty good deal for me. Most of the home cooking I consume involves the microwave or comes out of boxes in foil packets. I have no patience for prearing food. I demand instant gratification. But I’ve certainly got nothing against letting other people make me food. And Emily’s generally good to hang out with anyways.

What else is happening in my life? Not a lot. I’ve got two Airliner tracks in progress that are pretty far along, but I’m feeling somewhat stalled on them. It doesn’t help that I still don’t have Buzz up and running perfectly on my new laptop. Such a fickle little program…it has so many quirks and workarounds. It’s the program I dread installing most on new computers, because there are so many little details that can cause it to crash. I think I’ve got it figured out now though. Which means as soon as I find my inspiration again, I can finish up “Sweater” and “Skirt”. I think that’ll be it for my clothing EP, except that I’m toying with the idea of a remix or two also. Either by me, or others. I guess that’ll depend on if anyone else is interested in remixing one of my songs. I’d like to do a really hip-hop remix of “Panties”, but I haven’t actually started working on that yet.

I’m also re-reading The Crying of Lot 49. I’d like to re-read Gravity’s Rainbow at some point also, but that’s such a time and energy investment. Worthwhile, though. I’m on such a Pynchon kick lately….I’ve been reading what little biographical and critical information I’ve come across on the web, and becoming further and further fascinated by him.

Blah blah. More later, kids….

Asplode

Explosions in the Sky at Cafe du Nord on Friday was pretty awesome, even if I was subjected to some pretty boring self-help-core by the opening act, Lazarus. Explosions are one of the crispest sounding live bands I’ve heard, just really beautiful and clear and together. Absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t see them at all, what with the low stage, and the jam-packed crowd, but I didn’t really need to.

By the way, this is my first post from my new laptop. It’s about time. The clicking noises my hard drive was making have been really bugging me, and they were especially worse this morning, so I decided to a quick back-up…and I’m glad I did, since I got my favorite error message (Operating System Not Found) shortly thereafter. Oh me oh my.

Finished reading From Hell yesterday, and couldn’t help but think of Libra, another fictional tale based on actual events that I recently finished. Both are fictional “what-ifs” centered around historically significant murders (the Jack the Ripper killings, and the JFK assassination, respectively), that stay very close to historical records, while introducing elements of narrative invention to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. From Hell includes some extensive annotations, detailing departures from historical record and the author’s speculation, as well as a short epilogue describing the evolution of our knowledge of the events as filtered through successive generations of theorists, and the inevitable distortion and loss of the primary sources, through time, distance, and misplaced authority. That short read was almost as interesting as the story proper. I wish there was a set of annotations or meta-narrative for Libra as well. Maybe there is….I’ll have to track it down….

More later…

Death by Cable Car

I was supposed to go out to lunch with my family, since my sister is in town from Eugene this weekend with her new boyfriend. And I did, but it turned out to be more of an ordeal than I’d been led to believe. I was thinking, great, drive down to P-town, have some lunch, see the sis, hang for a few hours, sounds fun. But then I got there, and Lindsay and Kit had gone to In n’ Out. Um….OK. I thought we were going for lunch? Oh, we are….in San Francisco. Where we will proceed to spend 6+ hours riding the cable car in the frigid drizzle and browsing the tourist traps at Pier 39. That was more than I was expecting to deal with. Especially considering the lack of sleep and degree of hungoverness I was experiencing at the time. See, I had been up drinking too much beer and having my ass handed to me, repeatedly, in a friendly little game of pool at Michelle’s. Until roughly 2am. I was actually planning to go to a couple of parties that night, but apparently, nothing was destined to work out according to plan this weekend. Not that that’s a bad thing. I’d much rather write songs and drunkenly harmonize to the Smiths than party with a bunch of people I barely know. IT would’ve been fun, but I think things worked out for the better.

I tore through Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower this week, after Erin insisted I borrow Morgan’s copy. I highly enjoyed it. It’s one of those fast, easy, and involving reads that sucks you right in, and you find yourself reading a little bit every chance you get. Waiting for the kettle to boil in the morning? Read a few pages. Commercial break during the Daily Show? Read a few pages. Etc. etc., ad infinitum.

Speaking of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart’s recent Crossfire appearance (which is available in text and video forms all over the internets) is the most inspiring and astounding pieces of television I’ve seen in recent memory. More powerful than a locomotive, and more unexpected than an uncontested Florida election result. My hero.

Favorite new website: Girls Are Pretty. It’s genius, I swear it.

This site is such a Livejournal. Did I actually used to write about anything with any substance? Probably not. But it seems like I did at some point. But substance requires effort, and that’s not something I have a good relationship with.

Hmm. A bunch of other stuff happened, but I don’t remember most of it. There’s probably a reason for that. I’ll remember it later. And promptly forget to write about it. Which is probably no huge loss.

Page Turners

I’m quickly drawing near the end of Love in the Time of Cholera, which I’ve been making slow, somewhat steady progress in for the last few months. It’s a great book, but it’s not a book you can just pick up and read in bits and pieces. There are very few easy break points to set it down, and every event and thought in the story flows easily into the next, implications and emotions unfolding in slow arcs across large chunks of pages. You can’t just read a little bit, because a little bit isn’t enough.

And of course, I’ve had a shitload of comics to read lately. I even went so far as to avoid picking up this week’s batch (100 Bullets #51 and Love Fights #11, a good haul, quality wise). But, I finally finished reading the Maxx, which i thought ended really appropriately. It’s a shame that Kieth’s Friends of the Maxx series didnt’ stick around as long as it could have. But really, Zero Girl and it’s sequel fit so well in that vein that it might as well have been part of that series. Different characters, similar themes (especially the bit about shame), and since the Maxx ended with one of many possible universes ending and splitting off into variations, then it could be seen as a new “bubble-universe”. Hmmm.

So Transmetropolitan was pretty disappointing. I like the idea of a comic series centered around a journalist, as it gives the series a real freedom to find different milieu in which to explore, but so much about this book was really uninteresting. The suppporting characters are all pretty wooden, and there’s no insight into anyone’s motivation, except for the occaisional superficial plot device (Spider’s editor likes money! Deep!). The plot had very little tension. I really couldn’t bring myself to care what was going to happen, and didn’t feel like the level of conflict built very convincingly. And the setting was pretty cliche Blade Runner/Neuromancer sci-fi drek. I don’t think I’ll be looking much further into this series.

Played some music with Josh tonight. We kicked around some funk, played a little Radiohead, and chatted about 4-tracking for a while. I haven’t been making music outside of my laptop much lately, so it’s nice to play with someone else every once in a while.

A Ghost is Born is really growing on me. I thought there were a few good tracks at first, and the rest of it didn’t grab me right off the bat, but the more I listen to it, the more I like it. “I’m a Wheel” is the only song I don’t think is absolutely great at this point. The dynamics on this album are really wide, which is great i this age of overcompressed LOUD ROCK ALBUMS. Makes it hard to listen to in the car, but my car speakers are blown anyways. I hope they plan a US tour soon, because I’d love a chance to see them live.

I’ll be off to see the New Trust and the Polar Bears at the Phoenix tomorrow night. Haven’t been there in a while. Should be interesting….

More later….

Comics, Books, Oregon, Features, and More!

Lots of good comics out today, although I’m a little pissed that a copy of Love and Rockets Vol. 2 #10 didn’t show up in my subscription box. I thought I added that to my list? Hmm….Anyways….I did get Demo #7, 100 Bullets #50, Bone #55 (the big finale!), Y: the Last Man #23, Love Fights #10, and PVP #7. I’ll write a little bit about some of that, along with Blankets, which I recently finished.

I’m off to Oregon on Friday for Lindsay’s graduation. It’ll be nice to hang out in Eugene for a couple of days, and miss out on a couple of days of work. Especially nice since work has been super-busy lately. Always a perfect time to take a couple days off, although I feel a bit bad about leaving my co-workers to fend for themselves!

This week’s Bohemian has a really interesting article about Santa Rosa author Robert Heinberg’s new book, The Party’s Over, which is about an idea called “peak oil theory” that’s gaining some attention since it was formed in the 70s (if I’m not mistaken). Sounds like a really interesting book, and I was thinking about picking it up at Border’s tonight (went there with Michelle for a few this evening). I couldn’t find it, unfortunately, but that may be a good thing. I’d probably end up reading it ont he way to Oregon and getting even less reading of Love in the Time of Cholera done. I’m slacking on that book. I took about a week off reading it to read my huge stacks of comics from Mile High from last week. But I will probably end up picking up either that book or The End of Oil, a similar book I saw at Borders that was a bit too expensive for an impulse purchase.

I’m thinking about adding a new feture or two to this website: one would be a monthly mixtape, a downloadable playlist of 8-12 or so MP3s that would rotate every month. Sometimes it would be a themed mix, sometimes, just what I happen to be listening to at the time. The other feature would be a weekly wallpaper graphic. I’ve got a serious backlog of fun desktops I’ve made, and I’m always looking for a good graphic to use to make a new one, so maybe I should give myself a public outlet for that. That way all 3 of my readers could download them. Har Har….

More later….

Note to Self

I’m on Day 8 of ….something. i don’t want to talk about it. So I won’t. But I did want to note that something different was going on, more for myself than any of you. So forget all that.

I spent the morning feeling like shit, for some reason. I felt hungry, vaguely sick-ish (but not nauseous), and most of all tired, and had to wade my way through a stack of work left over by the co-worker who’s gone off to Dallas for a week, a stack of my own work to catch up on, and oh yeah, an unexpected (but welcome) trans-atlantic call. What an odd, surreal morning. For many reasons.

I downloaded a lot of music this weekend. Yes, yes, tsk tsk, I know. Spare me the lecture. I got some Mokira, a little Jeremy Enigk, a tad of Jacques Dutronc, a handful of Storm & Stress, a tidbit of Tujiko Noriko, and a little something by Eu, which is one of my favorites of the batch. And I finally replaced my copy of Operation Ivy’s Enegry/Hectic! This is the one album that I can truly say changed my life. It got me interested in music, and clued me into the fact that music existed outside the realms of commercial radio and chain record stores, along with the Specials’ first album, and a tape by a local band called CFB. Those were the first things that made me investigate music that wasn’t being pushed in front of me by other forces, and inspired me to make music of my own. So it’s great to have that influence back in my possession.

Finally made it out to the flea market on 116 on Sunday, with Keith and Michelle and Anthony. I picked up the Car’s Candy-O on vinyl, and a couple of books I used to check out of the library repeatedly when I was in second grade. They’re books of spaceship illustrations and such, made to look somewhat like encyclopedias, with fake “history” and blueprints for each ship and the different scenes they’re in. Pretty cool stuff for a 7 year-old, and kinda nice to have around for nostalgia purposes.

Anyways….that’s about all the excitement in my life right now. More later, perhaps….