November 2009 Archives

"I'm too cheap to take the bus so I walk twenty minutes to get to the store and I carry my groceries home in my packsack -- which is fine with me -- and I don't buy crackers and cheese and pickles and cookies because they are too expensive. I know the prices on almost everything in the little shops -- if oranges are 59 cents a pound here and the same ones 49 cents a pound across the street. I will cross the street to save whatever it is on my 2 oranges - and brag about it."

that is a Mecca Normal song that has been haunting my brain for months.  when I wonder how to keep doing things I love as I get older.  because I don't want a job like my parents have, but I also don't want to cross the street to save ten cents on oranges when I am Jean Smith's age. 

cake + eat it too.

I am working retail and I guess Jean Smith is working retail except I am placing my hopes on leaving it someday rather than making it "a sort of abstract comparative study- how conventional people live," which is how she describes it in a guest piece on Monitor Mix.  simultaneously: admiration for her/dread for me.  because I like fancy groceries way too much to do it her way, me + my bourgie shit.

it would be really, really great if all of the folks who grew up punk and are sticking with it could write some sort of how-to guide, "how to not lose your edge AND have dental insurance."  like a compendium of ways to stay radical as you age and still keep most of your teeth and maybe even have a job that puts your college education to use in a cool way.  I would buy that book.

M. Matos on new Rihanna:

It's impossible to listen to "Russian Roulette" and not see that hospital portrait in your head. That's clearly one of its aims--stars don't make moves like this by accident.

vulvalovelovely

Connecticut Four plays their final show at the end of the month.

And maybe I am feeling like this is a good marker indicating that I have been in town too long, that I have seen my favorite Bellingham band break up, its members form new bands, and now those bands, too, are breaking up ...

Mostly, though, I will miss seeing a band of such ladies on stage on a regular basis, formidable technical abilities and razor-sharp wits clearing space for girls in the front row.  And schooling any masturbatory dumbfucks with whom they might share a bill- that part is always pretty sweet, too.

Jessy says she knows that is actually a 12-yr-old drag queen at heart.

Sometimes I feel like my true ID is a super-faggy punk kid.  When I am feeling like this, I think about selling my guitar for a pink Daisy Rock electric and citing my deepest influences as Cody Critcheloe, Hunx, and Brontez.

The other day I put on my 10 Killing Hands cds, the first time I've listened to them in over a year.  I was midway through a major nostalgia kick when the cd started hiccuping and shuddering in the cd tray.  Uh-oh.

As more and more of my friends' bands are going the analog + digital download route (including a download card in the deal when you buy their record or cassette), those who have cds are tending towards minimalist.  No more full jewel cases- slim paper sleeves, hand-assembled or silk-screened or sewn, disk burned off somebody's Macbook.  It makes for cheap and charming merch and cuts out the album-packaging middleman.

But the short end of the stick is that these cds have no shelf life.  I don't know enough about the technology to make any real guesses, but I think it's mostly just the deterioration of shitty CD-Rs.  Now I have a small but growing collection of unplayable cds- all of them by bands that were just small enough to make it real hard to find replacement copies.

Looking at the pile of friends' cds that I have, most of which are really valuable for sentimental reasons, I feel like they've all got expiration dates on them.  Time to digitize (finally)?

I keep having dreams that I'm on tour again.  Last night we were in Montana hanging out with Fagrag.

My subconscious can sense the onset of winter monotony and is looking for a way out.