I'm not what you might consider one of those "current events" type people, those types that are always in the know about the latest catastrophes/natural disasters/presidential elections/Lindberg baby abductions. So I didn't know that the "Sing-A-Ma-Jig" is a toy from Christmas season 2010, I just thought it was a Japanese sex toy gone horribly wrong that had been incorrectly labeled and imported into the United States under erroneous falsified documents and somehow wound up in a Rite Aid in Brooklyn and subsequently found its way into my clammy masturbatory hands after I stood in line to pay $13.97 for it while wondering if I'd be less embarrassed to be buying the Trojan Vibrating Ring that was going for roughly the same price in the "impulse buy" section near candy and gum and playing cards and Abreva. I bought it solely to make the worst video ever, which I think I have done. Enjoy.
I want to make it into a "Feature Length Film" so please donate to the project on Kickstarter so your money will go to a good cause which will be me buying several more plants for my apartment, probably air plants to put in the eyes of my new cow skull hanging on my bedroom wall, or to fund some of the other meaningless whims and temporary obsessions that govern my so called life.
In other news, I have a big weekend coming up: I will be attending the North American Lionhead Rabbit Club's 2011 National Show in Columbus, Ohio. It's only a 9-hour drive from Brooklyn through Pennsylvania and Ohio; or, if you're going to be in the area, you should come too! I don't think there is any entry fee if you're just an average rabbit-loving obese person (like me) and don't have a bunny to show ($7.50 if you do), so you can just come in and walk around and judge rabbits on your own and drink Tab and eat olive loaf bologna sandwiches (snacks unconfirmed). Maybe you'll bid on a show-winning lionhead like one of these, all up for auction! Maybe you're just going for the $20 all-you-can-eat "Italian-American" banquet at Spaghetti Warehouse (15-layer lasagna) and the cheap hotel room with a vibrating bed (unconfirmed) and pool (unconfirmed) to escape New York for a weekend.
Maybe you want to see pictures from a recent Easter photoshoot starring my rabbit and Carlen's shiny rapist rabbit who, thankfully, has been neutered.
like a virgin
touched
for the very first time
(No rabbits were harmed during the taking of these photos, although I was hit with a tsunami of rabbit urine on my lap which, for the second time recently that I have been peed on, I thought was just the animal getting cozy and warming my body with its undying love...)
Speaking of "undying", Happy Easter everybody! Hopefully Zombie Jesus's cannibalistic search for human flesh didn't have him walking across water to eat your brains. Because I think that's the true meaning of John Carpenter's classic 1977 film "The Resurrection", a powerful film in the Catholic educational movie canon, although I haven't been to Sunday School in quite some time and my knowledge of Christian theology is shaky at best and tinged with disbelief and Hollywood and insanity.
I spent a long time on the phone last night, talking to my parents, who are currently very occupied with kitchen renovations. My house, changing. I have never felt emotional about alterations made to my childhood home until now. Or, that is to say, until I woke up this morning. When I was on the phone I just tried to envision the new layout, offered advice when it was requested, let them talk. Yes, them: My parents both pick up the phone when I call home because my mom thinks I will tell my dad things I won't tell her (true) and doesn't want to "miss anything." But I talk to her about things I don't tell my father, too, so I don't really know understand that argument; in the end, I guess it's nice I don't have to repeat myself.
I had a dream later that revolved around cutting the grass in my backyard, and I was failing. I had mowed the yard to perfection for years and now everything was wrong. I was pissing myself with green inability and yet certain in my head that what I was doing had to be right even though I knew it wasn't. Standing out there, for some reason putting the blade setting far too low and doing one stripe around the perimeter of the yard, almost scorching-the-earth short, bald even, my dad looking down from the deck with a look that mixed shock and disappointment, he himself knowing that I was better than my performance. Dreams often don't make sense but I woke up disappointed in myself anyway, because I know what it was: I know it's a subconscious metaphor for the sometimes overwhelming inadequacy I feel as I try to write this book about my grandmother's childhood during World War II. It brought tears to my ears briefly this morning; it is again now.
And you want to know another reason why? I love cutting the grass and I take pride in it. I would cut it every week for my dad and also for my neighbor, and I even sometimes helped my friend Blake with his lawn mowing business. And I had style, too, nobody did it better than me: I had always made two passes around the outside — and never with a change in grass height — before doing either vertical or diagonal stripes across the inside bulk of the yard. That little bit of creativity and focus, vying for perfection in those stripes, was part of what made the mundane sublime. I would have done it for free, so the extra cash I made was a solid deal.
It's the smell, I think, that I like the best. Two-stroke engine fuel, the little bit that spilled while filling the tank wiped on my T-shirt, mixing with sweat and dirt and grass; the exhaust hangs heavy in the humid summer Georgia air that's already sweetened by flowers full in bloom. Gasoline, especially the oil-gas mixture that is two-stoke, is such a narcissistic odor, just like permanent markers and rubber cement and your own farts in bed: you know it's bad and you have to smell it anyway to satisfy yourself.
clip-art adds credibility to my glue addiction
But the noise is nice, too. It's fulfilling, that droning engine, a small muffler barely hushing the violent processes powering that sharpened fan blade whirring inches from your feet. I've heard some quote that I'm not going to bother looking up, but it's something along the lines of "meditation is the art of automating the body so the mind can work." The combination of droning sounds, intoxicating smells and physical focus provided me with this wonderful alone time, completely within my own head, nothing to shape my thoughts but the direction they took on their own, and a feeling of blissful contentment I yearn for on a daily basis. I get a taste of it from a long, purposeless walk through the streets of New York, my thoughts wandering like my feet, but it still isn't the same.
That's why on days like today, overcome by wind and rain and gray dreary insanity, deprived of my walk of serenity, I write crazy stuff like this around midnight. I feel nostalgia for a hot July Georgia day. I recall being ten years younger, home from college for the summer, working for my friend's uncle doing custom woodwork and renovating rich peoples' homes, working myself to physical exhaustion through the day, taking a quick shower and heading off again to sit in lawn chairs in somebody's driveway at night with beers and girls and music and fireflies.
I had forgotten that dream over the course of the day as I worked hard on the book, researching and writing and doing. And then I read this and it all came rushing back. I need to get back to work now, to prove I can.
conduct breast cancer screenings every year on your friends
Or maybe not. But with the amount of time I have been wasting spending listening to music lately — both live and, er, dead? — I thought I would share a couple of recent thoughts and finds. In recent posts I have talked about rappers with interesting voices and the fact that listening to late-50s era Hawaiian records on cold gray rainy days could theoretically make you happier and more productive, but I caught a show last week (does that phrase sound like a euphemism for getting a venereal disease?) that revitalized my love of live music, especially "catching a show" that doesn't cost a ridiculous amount of money to see (or cure).
When I lived in Athens, GA, there was always so much music to be seen, and covers/tickets were always pretty cheap, otherwise I wouldn't have gone because I was a broke college student whose monthly budget — and how I spent my time — was usually broken down as follows:
~ 35-55% finding "things" with names like "Hawaiian Sativa", "Princess", "Grape-le", "Outdoor Indo"
~ 25-35% eating, trying to eat, driving somewhere to eat, grilling on the front patio, buying food
~ whatever % is left was for drinking, girls, drinking with girls, reading, drawing, listening to music and school (and school was always last)
But you could go out on a random Tuesday, plop down a $5 cover and see a great performance from a band you'd never heard of before (this link also shows the beautiful Georgia Theatre before it burned down). I even saw Kings of Leon (when they were good, around 2004, which was coincidentally when they could barely play their instruments other than make a bunch of noise and howl) and My Morning Jacket play at the 40 Watt Club, a small standing room only venue that only fits about 300 people. The MMJ show was a "costume required" show they called the Under The Sea Prom — everyone was required to wear prom or "under the sea" attire and they threatened to deny entrance unless you conformed to the dress code. They wore pastel tuxes and rubber Elvis hair, played songs like "Dancin' In The Moonlight" and "Johnny B. Goode" and even elected a King and Queen for the night: it was a three-hour dance party and the most fun I've ever had at a concert.
Pre-show dance party at my brother's apartment, listening to The Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet, the best pre-show album of all time:
At the show, random blond stickin' her finger in my nose, probably because I was groping her all night.
lookin' for love in all the wrong places
All that being said, (probably unnecessarily) I went and saw Morning Teleportation at Brooklyn Bowl last Friday for $5, and it reminded me just how great SOME of the music here in Brooklyn can be: Just like Athens, there is a ton of flotsam, basically the result of the ratio of available time slots at bars, lazy club bookers and underemployed twenty-somethings wanting to have a band and skateboard.
This was one of my favorite songs of the night, because I think it best represents the band's rootsy, picking guitar playing that doesn't come across as folksy, but instead modern and splashy.
The whole performance is up on the band's YouTube channel and is worth watching if only to look for the guy wearing the neon green suit; I think the "hit song" that you may have heard is Expanding Anyway.
An upcoming show that isn't crazy expensive and worth checking out if you're in New York is my friend Kurt's band, Country Mice, at The Knitting Factory on Friday. If you don't like the song "Ghost" (streaming from the link above), I probably won't like you. It's a damn-near perfect rock song, just like Kurt's mustache is damn-near perfect.
Also, my token African friend Jasper's band, North Highlands, is fresh out tha studio and is playing later this month at the Mercury Ballroom. Go see them immediately (later this month). I will be in Ohio filming a documentary about Lionhead Rabbits, but you should go and dance and twirl and go to Nice Guy Eddie's afterward to eat cheap hot wings, drink shitty beer and play Naked Photo Hunt and just have an all-around classy night out on New York's hip and trendy Lower East Side. (That is the grossest sentence I have ever written.) Here's their amazing video that features Jasper's amazing van.
Finally, for a band that I have no ties to but has come onto my radar (which sounds vaguely dirty porno sexual if you change the spelling a little) is a band with a relatively awful name, Apache Dropout, but with a lo-fi anthemic sound that I'm diggin' on right now. I want to listen to them while dancing with girls dressed all in black with bleach-blond hair, drinking whiskey and cheap beer from cans and making out while waiting in line for the single bathroom with a broken lock. You can download the first side of their LP at the link above: Listen to "Sam Phillips Rising" over and over and support your bad habits and theirs by buying the album.
Love the cover art, courtesy of Bull City Records:
Also, I think my rabbit's tail is getting too long? Does anyone have any information about this? How long is too long for a bunny tail?
Oh, three more things then I promise I'm done. One: You should save up your allowance and get cultured and smart by seeing my dear friend Cat on Broadway in War Horse, which officially opens today! It had a huge run in London and it is Steven Spielberg's next film, which is slated to come out in December. Congrats to Cat who is the hardest working woman in show-biz that I know, and here's to a long, multi-season run! While you're in that area of town gettin' some culture, don't be fooled by thinking you'll take a break from being smart if you follow this sign:
It is NOT a midtown location for the Insane Clown Posse but instead a bunch of artsy photographs, if you're into that kinda thing, so don't be fooled.
Two, I want to once again issue a formal apology to my friend Stephanie for missing my call to be in Abel Ferrera's new film and get yelled at by Willem Dafoe. That was a mistake I'll never live down and I'm sorry.
Three, I am now going to start editing/programming my friend Matt's great website, Staccato, featuring the best micro-fiction available on the webz. What began as a literary mag in Athens is being reborn once again in Brooklyn and soon in paper form! But for now, check out the website where we will be publishing submitted stories twice weekly. Submit! Read!
Final non-sequitur, this disturbs me: What is corn up to? And what is Korn up to?
I made this today. I don't know why. I rarely find memes funny, but somehow I stumbled upon a picture of a chayote squash or, as it's called in the South, a mirliton, and thought of how it looked like the face of a grumpy grandma with her dentures soaking in a glass on the nightstand.
Chayote squash are very delicious, I have had them pickled and also fried, which makes them taste very similar to fried green tomatoes. There is even a Mirliton Festival in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans every year, because people in New Orleans love frying things and hosting festivals.
While making this, I have been listening to some amazing old Hawaiian music, Leo Addeo & His Orchestra, Hawaii in Hi-Fi, that I found at that record store.
It's wonderfully calming and soothing, and although I can't find this album online, Stax-O-Wax has the follow-up album for download and it's great, too.
A few weeks ago I stumbled across an amazing vintage turntable at Housing Works and decided to buy it. I know what you're thinking: How did you not have one before now? Aren't you a part-time barista, freelance editor and Brooklyn resident? You write a blog. Two blogs, actually, and one is about Maury Povich. Don't they hand those things out at the Bedford L stop? I get it. Stop yelling.
(Oh, also: If you're unaware, Housing Works is a well-curated thrift store whose mission is to end homelessness and AIDS, global problems that need every bit of funding they can get. But ... and I'm sorry for saying it, but am I the only one who finds it odd that in doing so they've created an orgy of discount-priced designer clothes, modern furniture and whimsical art? This seems counterproductive to the cause. Throw in a nice martini list and a tapas menu and you've got a Chelsea nightclub. Or why not just get those cool clothes on some hobos? A briefly sobered-up wino wearing a Valentino suit is ready for his Wall Street interview, and who wouldn't prefer their local flasher to reveal not only his hook-shaped penis, but also show off that soothing tan-red-black-white plaid from inside his newly donated, gently used Burberry trench? I know this is going to count against me at the Pearly Gates, Angelic Saint Peter pausing briefly to leer at me over his reading glasses then saying, "Remember when you wrote that thing on your blog? The thing that insinuated stereotypical prejudices about certain types of people?" I'll say yes and *poof* I'll be in the 'other' place roasting like a marshmallow. It's just that I need to know if I'm the only one who notices real-life irony.)
But back to the story for the zero of you who haven't quit reading: So although I have probably the most ostentatious stereo system to ever grace a 10'x10' shared college dorm room (at high volume, it could be heard 4 floors up), I didn't have a turntable until recently. As my preference in pant legs gets narrower and I patiently await my FleaBay'd leather jacket so I can finally emerge from my fat winter cocoon blob into a spring-weather-loving alcoholic unemployed stereotype, I have been repairing and restoring this turntable. I disassembled it, cleaned everything, put it back together and it works like new. Pat on the back for me. One of the biggest draws of my new hobby/obsession is that I live only a few blocks from the largest selection of used records in NYC, a junk store with — no joke — at least 100,000 records; I think it's way more than that but I'm being conservative. The guy who owns the place makes up arbitrary prices and I've never paid more than $2 for a single item in the shop. It's great, because I don't think he cares if he makes money, he just likes people coming into his store. He sold me this oil painting, in its frame, for two bucks.
it's like a stained glass window on acid
I always find a few great records rooting through milk crates full of vinyl. Yesterday, however, I stumbled upon a treasure from my early high school days:
luv 2 luv my nostalgia for this album
This album was the jam back in the day, and I believe "Luv 2 Luv Ya (Remix)" went on the very first burned CD I ever made. (In 9th grade, my buddy and I went halves on a CD burner because they were really expensive and we were really cheap, which is why we were buying a CD burner in the first place — to download music illegally from Audiogalaxy or Napster and burn CDs.)
Listening to this for the first time in probably 12 years got me to thinking about being a freshman in high school. I have a, let's say, "distinct" sounding voice: deep, slightly nasal and with a twinge of Southern accent. I didn't know I had a distinct voice until I was about 15 years old and guys on my baseball team did an impression of me, for me. When I was still writing for magazines, I showed up to an interview with a famous hip-hop/pop/R&B producer who, surprised to see Saltine cracker me waiting in the studio lobby, said, "When I talked to you on the phone, I thought you was a brotha." So I apparently sound a little bit black on the phone. I guess. But this is where I was going before I started asking questions bound to send me to hell: Was Magoo ever teased for his voice? Were any other rappers? I mean, Magoo's real name is "Melvin Barcliff", which sounds like the kind of name that could get you beat up while waiting for the school bus.
So here's my list of "7 Rappers With A High Probability of Childhood Teasing" who, in no particular order, also happen to be some of my favorites:
MAGOO: Timbaland & Magoo, "Luv 2 Luv Ya (Remix)"
CEE-LO GREEN: Cee-Lo is just more fun when he's rapping, not singing. His verse in Goodie Mob's "They Don't Dance No Mo" is the part I look forward to every time I hear the song.
CHALI 2NA: The deep-voiced dude from Jurassic 5, my guess is that kids would've been holding him down at recess and making him recite James Earl Jones quotes. He's the first one to rap on "Thin Line" and his voice juxtaposes nicely with the sweet-sounding hook.
ODB: A man who needs no introduction and a voice that cracks like a teenage boy going through puberty and eating animal crackers at the same time. ODB was great.
BIZZY BONE: I know for a fact that Bizzy gets made fun of for not only his voice but also his effeminate mannerisms (see comments here), but he is/was part of Bone Thugs and this song makes him manly.
KRAZIE BONE: Can't talk about Bizzy without his balancing act Krazie Bone, who also has a deep voice with a little country twang like me.
EAZY-E: Last but not least, Eazy has a high-pitched almost Urkle voice. I actually had to stop listening to Eazy's sex-laden lyrics for awhile — I had been listening to him a lot and thinking about sex constantly then had one of those "scares"... luckily she got her period and now I can listen to him again.
Maybe the world is ready for another white rapper: I'm calling myself Roscoe Listerine.
You ever wonder what marks the final death of a trend? Like, when was the last slap bracelet slapped or who owns that last pair of parachute pants ever manufactured? When it comes to fashion, I'm not sure, but I guess when Target does a collaboration with Pendleton it'll be the end of the Native American print era (although I could argue that seeing it all over Urban Outfitters marks the end just as easily). But I'm talking about bacon, a product made from a piggy and something that I do enjoy. But we need to end this nonsense. The nail is officially in the coffin (and by that I mean you are going to die). When Denny's decides to make a bacon menu and starts airing teaser trailers with pornographic grunting, it's over.
We need to MoveOn.org. I like bacon, I love bacon, it is a salty tasty treat and its rendered fat makes for just about the greatest thing to fry with in the world, except for maybe duck fat. But it's over. That place Sage General Store in Long island City has a bacon brunch. If you ask me, it's pretty similar to Denny's, except that Sage uses better products and Denny's front of house staff supports more aging ugly divorcees.
Seriously: There's not much else to say, this isn't really funny, I don't really care. Bacon on everything isn't cool anymore, the South isn't going to Rise Again, and we'll never find who killed Biggie and Tupac.
And I'll just climb down from my soapbox now ... good. R.I.P. Bacon, you had a good run.
