in which bill withers raises me from birth through adolescence
then my uncle mason williams gets his bicycle stolen
and my mom dates ben gazzara throughout my early teens.
imagined celebrity childhood
rafaël rozendaal
when i play alone, it's always my move
a nice little donald barthelme story in this book. i think a great deal about writing these days, but i don't have a novel in me nor the imagination for character and story. i can't go on writing about myself forever. reading donald barthelme reminds me that there's nothing wrong with working short, a reassurance i've been sorely needing. thank you, don b. there's much to be done.
in brief: that's me on the right
i've made an appointment to have my taxes done on thursday. this marks not only the first time i've enlisted a professional for the job but also the first time i've not done my taxes feverishly, and by myself, the night before they are due.
this is also the second day in a row that i've successfully resisted the urge to take a mid-morning nap before work. i've even been making the bed earlier as a fail-safe against the temptation to sleep, a temptation, it must be said, that haunts my every waking hour. how can i sleep? i have "so many things to do."
i take vitamins and do sit-ups sometimes. also, we just bought a new album and i listened to it all the way through two times without skipping to the tracks i already knew i liked.
and yesterday i had eggs for lunch, not cup o'noodles, and those eggs don't cook themselves, people.
i'm such a goddamned adult it's ridiculous.
blue skies smiling at me
cory archangel works magic with technology. several years ago he manipulated a super mario brothers cartridge and removed all the imagery except the clouds, which you can see scrolling peacefully above. they move soundlessly, so perhaps you can pair it with a nice new song like this. just a thought.
i offer this also to give you an idea of what it's like here lately-- an unseasonably warm and lovely los angeles springtime. can't complain too much.
(thanks to said the gramophone for the song. you might be surprised by who it is.)
help yourself help yourself
the importance of the obtainable goal
what do you think, you're going to be a doctor? you think you're going to be a lawyer? do you have any idea how much time is involved in becoming a professional? a decade of toil and bootlicking and then the job itself, which is unpleasant enough to transform even the most steadfast and honorable minds to putty and trash. have you ever sat down and talked with a doctor or a lawyer? they're terrible, and they'll take every opportunity to put you, that is the layman, down, and why? because while they were busy sucking the shit out of professor bigshot's rose-colored asshole you were living it up, drinking wine coolers in the bob's big boy parking lot in sherman oaks, idly rubbing the breasts of some nameless suburbanite porker and thinking about how strange it is that a television series with as depressing a theme song as M.A.S.H.'s managed such a lengthy, healthy run.
from help yourself help yourself by patrick dewitt, a great little book i recently purchased and more proof positive that i cannot leave this place without spending more money than i should. boy howdy.
(image captured from carson mell's intro for the book here.)
katherine hepburn on buying furniture
"yes, well that's stupid."
we just got the dick cavett: hollywood greats collection yesterday. fantastic.
(thanks to generous youtuber stewf.)
ld 3am / audacity to hope
i know that these fellas don't need a link from us
but i feel i like doing it anyway
in brief: music hypotheticals
sometimes i like to pose hypotheticals to rhan about my taste in things, to suppose out loud what if my preferences were different and how would he feel? i try to propose choices at varying distances from my actual taste; it's a way of sorting out the nuances and stretching his thinking. i reason that this is a marriage, and as such its limits must be routinely tested with difficult and retarded questions. what?
anyhow, below are some recent "what if this was my favorite ____?" questions and rhan's responses:
the album sports by huey lewis and the news
"that would be pretty rough."
recording artist seal
"ugh. he is awful. i don't know."
save the best for last by vanessa williams
"i don't know that song. hey, the other day..." (launches into unrelated anecdote)
recording artist peter gabriel
"ugh. (pause) ugh."
it's good to feel these things out.
“all paths are the same, leading nowhere. therefore, pick a path with heart!”
last night, juliet & i had tickets to go see boredoms on their stop through LA.
we did our usual “do you want to stay home or go out?" dance.
in most cases, it doesn't matter to us if we buy tickets in advance--we are just as likely to go or not go. this is part of our romantic life and most of the time whatever decision we make, to go or not go, is always the right one. the shows that we have blown off would make some folks cringe….
last night we decided to GO, and it was most certainly the right choice.
i can only say that if this band ever comes pounding through your fair hometown, GO, GO, GO!!!!
boredoms are an experience in performance.
3 drum kits make 3 fifths of a circle.
one of those drummers is the fantastic yoshimi p-we of OOIOO (a whole other post can be devoted to that group at another time!).
yamantaka eye (or eYe, or EyE, or DJ Pica Pica Pica) and the guitar sculpture tower technician, who has potentially the most dangerous job on stage dodging the sticks of Eye, constantly keeping the sculpture in working power, and rounding out the oceans of sound that this collective generate.
part gargantuan rock, part shamanistic ritual, part transcendent castaneda revelation, boredoms push past genres & restraint, much like a 2 hour swimming session in the surf after a storm, with wave upon wave crashing down on you, filling your heart with life-affirming nausea and exhilaration.
that nausea element is interesting because starting with the wait for the band to walk on, juliet started to feel a little dizzy and nauseous. after the show, she said that she felt like the queasiness was in some ways appropriate in the face such a physical sound.
i am so thankful that juliet and i experienced this night together!
boredoms show last night
eight thoughts i had while seeing boredoms at the music box last night:
I. this is one of the loudest and most relentless concerts i have ever been to
II. man, they're tightly orchestrated and disciplined players--japanese-style!
III. yoshimi makes me want to wear my hair down and move my arms real fast
IV: i think i'm going to throw up
V. this band makes me feel lazy
VI. this is dance music, at least in the way that hypnotic, tribal pounding is dance music. the crowd is hopping!
VII. boredoms are quite possibly the best band that ever was
VIII. (upon leaving) this is in my head now but it's not boredoms:
there's also this clip of an old interview with boredoms translated into german:
i don't read german but it gives you an idea of what they're like,
which is awesome and loud and adorable, too.
it was an amazing show. i'm now officially a fan.
in brief: beach house
the beach house show was last night. victoria legrand was all swinging hair and big voice, a bigger and more powerful voice in person than the records would make you think. rhan noted the bluesy guitar. the audience was filled with faraway looks and skinny jeans. the music was sedate but the speakers were loud.
a brief, white noisy dream of a show.
been thinking about...
the period of frank o'hara and friends
in the mood for love and its beautiful dresses
badlands and other doomed fairy tales
the world's loss of spalding gray
for monday morning: poem
Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
listen to frank o'hara read this poem (and another) here.
i like starting the day this way.
koro koro koro
one of the few things i know i'll miss about los angeles is the farmers market on fairfax and third. it is one of the rare places in LA that feels authentic to me, unchanged with the exception of the old chinese man who used to sell roasted chestnuts in red paper bags--he's been gone for years now. i've visited the farmers market a lot lately, and being there already makes me feel wistful, even though we haven't left the city yet.
it is difficult to determine the genesis of your feelings about things, to get underneath them and discover their source. i mention this because of my premature sadness about this place, but also in light of something i saw there today--i saw an old lady buying a coke. i saw her buying a coke and i realized how much it delights and comforts me to see the elderly buying coke and drinking it.
but then i thought, what is that? where does that come from? what's at the root of it--my feelings about old people, my feelings about coke? maybe this line of questioning is ridiculous, but then again what if it isn't?
the only feelings i know for sure come from movies that make me cry, songs that make me dance, and people that make me laugh. other than that, i have no idea.
koro koro koro. chestnuts rolling down the hill.
today i went to the eye doctor
...and learned that mine, egads, is the eyeball on the left. this eye doctor i saw was a young, pretty lady, perhaps the youngest and the prettiest doctor i have ever visited, and also the first doctor in my experience who forcibly removed the contacts from my very eyes. also, today's was the first eye chart i've read that had numbers in it, which i didn't even know was possible. 5? is that a 5?
i like the rituals of an eye doctor visit--the following of bright lights, the "better? or worse?" questions, the gentle click-clicking of the lenses turning over. and the best part is that it all culminates in this sudden, brilliant shift into clarity! which never fails to make me feel truly super. cheers to my eyeballs.
in brief: embarrassment
i have a long memory for embarrassment. it is so long, in fact, that embarrassing things that took place years ago can make me grumble and shake my head in public, forcefully and without warning, walking down the street like a crazy hobo. they're mostly mundane things--moments that make for boring stories--but still they nag at me like little, skipping demons. this feeling must be fairly common.
what occurs to me most often? here are the greatest hits of my life so far:
-using the word "indignance" instead of "indignation" in front of my favorite professor in college
-calling an unpopular girl a "fag" behind her back in the seventh grade, failing to realize not only the ugliness of that word but also that calling a girl a "fag" doesn't make any sense
-visible sweatpits (various instances)
-the day in fifth grade when i wore my sister's acne prescription foundation
-mispronouncing "episcopal" for the duration of a presentation when i was twelve
-that one time when i insisted the film "the princess bride" was based on the book "the once and future king" for about two days
ridiculous, i know.
but surely everybody has things like these?
the first of the month: march 2008 *
FOOD: rhan bought a box of girl scout thin mints last week. i enjoy thin mints (especially cold) but became less excited about them when i realized that your keebler grasshopper tastes almost identical and is available all year round. that's not the kind of thing i like to say out loud, however, because it brings up too much about life that disappoints me.
RELUCTANT DISCOVERY: that the barnes & noble at the grove (the disneyland of shopping malls) has more extensive art and magazine sections than the smaller independent bookstores i'd rather (and more often do) patronize. my only response to this is to buy things from barnes & noble, take them in my fist, and then shake that fist at the store from the outside. 
WANT: things i have learned in my life so far by stefan sagmeister.
the inside is composed of several smaller booklets, all of which look beautiful. 
CONCERT CALENDAR: beach house on the 13th, boredoms on the 16th, jens lekman and little teeth on the 21st (we have to make a choice!)
skipped: the magnetic fields, which would have been tonight.
WORST RECENT MOVIE SEEN TO COMPLETION (FINALLY): juno, because i've never heard dialogue so lousy with its own preciousness,
and i say this as a staunch and admitted fan of the gilmore girls.
(an important aside to the above being the worst recent movie not seen to completion, which was be kind rewind, which sucked my balls.)
PREVAILING MOOD: these first few days of march have been marked by a tremendous urge to get out of los angeles. we've been speculating on craigslist, looking at different cities, but until our money turns around we're staying put.
there's a place for us, somewhere a place for us...
* sorry this is two days late.
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