all the boys go home alone, aww

it's tuesday, and BIG FRIENDS week has well exceeded one week, and today's officially the last installment. here's the towel. i love friends, and i love my friends, but writing like this has been a bit too much of a task. why do you think i got other people to write the entries? i have a very short fuse when it comes to writing and prescriptive topics, okay, like no fuse, no patience, no tolerance at all. so tomorrow it's back to ultra-bratty/spoiled blogging where i write about what i want when i want.


met brooklyn-ites the oxford collapse [myspace] in the summer when they stayed at our house during the constantines tour, and they became instant big-time pals. they didn't come back until just a couple of weeks ago with we are scientists when they won the hearts and crazy-bobbing/bopping-heads of the fashion-y kiddies in the audience and bowled us over with their poprocks hooks, penchant for toe-ing-the-line fashions, way-inimitable manners and surely-innate ability to bring a fucking killer party. a good ground, their newest album, came out last july on kanine records and is still garnering brag-able reviews. the 2006 magic 8 ball reads HUGE things for these BIG friends.

oxford collapse
the boys go home
a good ground
2005 © kanine records

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this is where i talk about detroit
just drove s to work downtown, and MAN is it a police state out there! cops driving around, parked on the medians, hiding in the parking lots of every city traveled -- detroit, hamtramck, ferndale, royal oak, &tc. no city left behind [perhaps the state abandoned its education mantra for the month], no shit!

other than picking him up from work tonight, today is probably the last day i'll see the city before the super bowl [which my mom accidently typed as "super BOWEL" today, har har], and it's pretty crazy to try to look at detroit [and area] from an outsider's perspective. the tents, a few fixed-up buildings, all the flashy signs, for a second i thought the facade had perhaps improved a smidge. the motown building at woodward and I-75 was torn down last week, and even though it's not RIGHT downtown, there's definitely a vacancy in the sky. i stared at that building to the point of nearly inducing accidents each time i passed it. but the other abandoned-ish, way-decrepit buildings DIRECTLY across the street from the football stadium remain erect today. i thought for sure those would be gone. but you can't tear down everything. you can't powerwash an entire city or even an entire downtown. you can't repair every building and erase all the tired and decades-faded advertisements on their sides. for a second i got greedy, thinking "why didn't they get a new awning for that bar?" and "maybe they could have fixed this road a bit better." WHATEVER. fuck that. everyone already hates detroit because it's dirty and scary, and you know what? it's totally dirty and scary. you learn to live with it, live within it and live right outside of it. and if you live in or near the city long enough, you learn to fucking love it. the look of broken, the look of old, the look of decay, despair, hopelessness, abandonment, the whole farm of bleakness feelings. it makes total sense, inextricably. paris hilton doing lines off the mayor's ass and jimmy kimmel pretending not to recoil from the mere thought of the city won't change anything. they'll leave, scorning detroit because it's dirty and scary.

only we can make history oh baby baby

guest blog!

oh happy monday. right? weekend, good. right? my trip countdown is down to the fingers on one hand so i'm basically in la-la land about that. the sun's graced the detroit area for so long it feels like we're living in oz considering it's the supposedly-brutal month of january. and, i was wondering, is there supposed to be snow in the winter? maybe it was just a rumor i heard as a child. our poor city, busy MAKING snow for superbowl season-and-setting-appropriateness.

BIG friends entries still happening. todaytoday, i enlisted my roommate kevin to write about friends of way-close proximity and close-of-heart, thunderbirds are now! [myspace] i feel the most proud of these boys, way proud, way excited. like that feeling a mom has watching her 4-year-old daughter tap dancing on stage for the first time. except the feeling persists for years. AND they're playing soon. come up to small's in hamtramck next monday the sixth for their first show with way-new drummer, matt rickle [like pickle with an r].

[additionally, kevin's been way-blogging-it-up lately with marked prolificacy. check the goods here.]


kevin reports:

Everyone knows the name, everyone knows the songs, but few know the history of Thunderbirds are Now! Although their tale includes both wild success and tragic heartbreak, it is undeniable that Thunderbirds are Now! revolutionized pop music for a brief period in the early 1960’s.

Ryan Allen (birth name: Allen Konigsberg) was born on April 14, 1943 in Binghamton, New York. Four years later, to much joy and celebration, his brother Scott arrived. From the beginning the Allens were a force to be reckoned with. Young Ryan was a math whiz and local spelling bee champion, while Scott excelled in sports, lettering in baseball, football and basketball at Montclair Academy, where the boys attended school.

Upon graduation, Ryan attended SUNY-Binghamton and took a job cooking at a local restaurant. There he met Marty Smith, a music aficionado and skilled bass player. Together, Ryan and Marty delved deep into the history of music, sampling works by everyone from Roy Orbison to Glenn Miller. After meeting drummer Mike Durgan at a poetry reading, the three decided to start a band. Thunderbirds are Now! had begun.

After months of practicing, they realized something was missing. But, a weekend visit from Scott Allen and his accordion filled the gap and rounded out the band’s sound. The quartet played various gigs around Long Island, eventually releasing the “My Baby Loves Me” single on Fun Tone Records. A national tour was to follow.

The Thunderbirds could not have prepared for what awaited them on tour – “My Baby Loves Me” was a smash hit, and they were met in every city by screaming young girls and adoring fans. The band’s subsequent appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” catapulted the group into superstardom.

But, the tour was not without heartbreak. Bassist Marty Smith contracted typhoid fever at the Oregon State Fair and had to leave the band. Further complicating the situation, drummer Mike Durgan was injured by a meteorite at a show in Nevada, temporarily paralyzing him from the waist down. To fill the void, the Allens turned to drifting grifter Howard Chang to take over on bass. Although a sketchy character with a checkered past, Chang was one hell of a bass player, leaving Ryan and Scott little choice but to hire him. Next, the band turned to recently-crowned Mr. Oklahoma, Matt Rickle, to replace the departed Durgan on drums.

Following the tour, the band went their separate ways, with Ryan retreating to his Montana sanctuary to write the follow-up to “My Baby Loves Me.” In his months of seclusion, Ryan started taking alcohol and painkillers to help get through the songwriting process. After six months, the band went into the studio to record Justamustache, a collection of pop hooks unrivaled at the time. Again, they set out on a national tour.

This time, however, the tour was less than a success. Although met by huge crowds of star-struck fans, Ryan became more and more reclusive, while falling deeper into the throes of addiction. Chang’s conversion to Isalm and subsequent name change to Jabar Abal-Chang coupled with Scott’s arrest for soliciting an underage prostitute made the situation even more combustible.

Backstage at a show in Bethesda, MD, the situation came to a head. What began as a quibble between Ryan and Scott turned into a four-way, every man for himself brawl. Ryan left with a broken arm, Rickle with fourteen stitches above his left eye. The next day, the band decided to call it quits.

The band made their amends and reunited in for a 1985 world tour, but could never quite recapture the magic of Justamustache. Their time together may have been short, but the magic of their music is undeniable. The music of Thunderbirds are Now! will live on forever.

Included from their 1965 album Justamustache on Frenchkiss Records is the #1 single “Eat This City.”

Thunderbirds are Now!
Eat This City
Justamustache
© Frenchkiss Records

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i am daylights edit:

i'm also posting one of the way-new thunderbirds demos. a way-good jam. here ya go:

thunderbirds are now!
make history

i'll write some more

guest blog!

"the guy on the couch" is back again today, after doing such a terrific job yesterday writing about NEW friends judah johnson, i enlisted him to write about a terrifically OLD friend of his, leaving rouge. you should know that this week's resident guest blogger is not only a leaving rouge SUPERfan, he's also their biggest fan. a client and a near-member. i'm observing traditions of workweek internet activity and taking the weekend off from BIG friends. monday will start with another guest blogger writing about some more friends, and i'll be continuing BIG friends well into next week. happy friday, sun drenches us in detroit. here ya go:

Leaving Rouge [myspace] will release their 3rd record entitled “Elsewhere” March 14th on Portland's Greyday Productions. It is a pretty drastic change from the broad, atmospheric sounds of “White Houses” which was itself a departure from the first record. The new songs have a decidedly more driving and concise nature while retaining singer and lyricist Sean Hoen’s beautiful and haunting knack for telling stories of life and loss. Don’t let the new found pop edge throw you off. These songs are incredibly intelligent and feature some of the most poetic words being put to music in this day and age.


The song “Chain Letters” is probably the hardest hitter of the new songs and presented here for you. If there is any justice left in the music world, this song and the others on “Elsewhere” will finally put Leaving Rouge in the spotlight they deserve.

Leaving Rouge
Chain Letters
Elsewhere
Greyday Productions © 2006

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i am daylights edit:

leaving rouge is playing tonight at the magic stick in detroit with brave rifles, light [highly! recommended] and saint james infirmary.
only 2$
9pm
18+

i'd be in attendance for this, but i'll be in lansing at mac's bar for the bound stems show. this is a first-time for both me and for michigan, and there's nothing but huge excitement to see one of my very much new favorite bands. chicago's bound stems totally get it right without fail or end. they get pop, they get complex AND catchy, they get fusing but not mashing them together. they get notions like hope and loss and being-in-your-mid-to-late-20s. they get loving-living-in-chicago and loving-someone-far-away. and they get it so damn well, soon you won't be able to ignore it. they're going to SLAY the the critics, the charts, the blogs. trust me.

bound stems
crimes and follies
the logic of building the body plan
flameshovel © 2005

alright, i talked WAY too much. gotta go hang out with friday now. xo

i'm seeing things...i want you to know

guest blog!
HUGE friends written about by HUGE friends. friends who, however, want to remain anonymous. well. "the guy on the couch" MAY or may not have written about judah johnson. :)

Judah Johnson [myspace] does not fit into any typical notion of what happens here in Detroit musically. The thing about it is that it does not come across as a protest against loud rock n roll or the explosion of a scene (which shall remain nameless) that was starting to gain worldwide exposure at the time Judah Johnson was getting off the ground. It is not a pretentious revolt or some sort of art school statement, it is the sound of what you can achieve when you let music happen and ignore everything and everyone else. Since I first saw them nearly 6 years ago, their honesty has remained intact and sound progressed ten fold.


Seeing Things is a track off their upcoming album on Flameshovel Records. I chose it because it dares to take on a feat that few bands or songwriters can pull off. Subtle dynamics allow the whole song to feel like a release. No start/stop, overly dramatic tension building. Bringing layers and instruments in and out of the song so carefully, that it demands repeated listens. It is the audio equivalent of having a five minute orgasm without even having to work at getting it up.

Judah Johnson
Seeing Things
Honey Pouring From My Eyes of Sound
Flameshovel Records © 2006

[-S]

wake up in some wild, familiar time

i guess i live under a rock? last night i asked scott, "do you want to watch this penguin movie? it's some movie about penguins, i don't know if it's a kid's movie or a documentary. i think it might be animated." he thought i was kidding, but i wasn't! the rock i live under is pretty damn huge, and it covers the entire mental lobe dedicated to movies. nothing can seep in.


BIG news today. my recently-high-school-graduated and VALEDICTORIAN sister is leaving very so soon for the culinary institute of america in hyde park, new york in pursuit of a bachelor's degree in baking and pastry arts. and man, is she a nut for that shit. a fiend! a baking fiend. a total BIG pastry mongrel. anyway, she got this ultra-stupendous scholarship from the cia itself. it's called CREAM OF THE CROP [aww cute], is good for $5000 a year and only awarded to a super-select amount of people each enrollment term. i brag about it here, and the cia brags about it here.

BIG friends has not been abandoned. scott's stepping in today for a surprise guest blog. i guess it's not a surprise anymore. i keep doing that lately, doh. that's coming up in a bit. if i'm meticulous and lucky, i'll rope him into writing a more entries than just one.

secret for the winter months

toothache wednesday.

→ taking the day off from writing about my friends to spend the day on meds, on the couch, on soup, and on working of course.
→ blowing a stop sign ticket on the way home from my mom's last night. 110$. big unfun.
→ constantines last night on carson daly were soso great. totally proud, totally impressed.
→ i would love nothing more than to sleep for days on end and wake up next friday. waiting is the worst. the pits!

i will love you an insatiable, unbeatable amount if you can give me some prescription-strength meds. please.

we are tossed aside on the line

big friends, HUGE friends, fantastic friends.

for toothache tuesday, i'm taking us back a year+ to yet another way-broken-up band, i, the magician. for some months in 2004-2005, i was way-palling-it-up with these guys and girls. didn't miss a show. partook in all band drama. carried equipment. tried to have a say in cover art and set lists. they were a hot item in detroit for a hot minute but quickly formed and re-formed and re-formed again, eventually parting ways for reasons too numerous and convoluted to even begin to pick apart. this "instrumental-with-vocals" band did, however, manage to play a bunch of shows around here, put out a full-length and make more than a bit of a stir. i, the magician is the soundtrack to a breakdown. and with respect to myself, i mean that oh-so-literally.


so here's the thing, i, the magician is [was!] the kind of band with really long, dynamic songs. soaring, totally. these two tracks are connected on the record, but because of my primitive blogging and mediocre knowledge of mp3 manipulation, these two tracks have to stay separated. BUT you can pretend by playing them one quickly after the other. and the last word: never ever have i met someone with a voice as absolutely mind-blowing as mr. lavaque. and unless i fancy to meet perhaps jeremy enigk someday, i doubt that i ever will.

i, the magician
i got xanax today...
...sixty of them
the lonely illusionist
down peninsula audio © 2005

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additionally, the constantines are going to be on last call with carson daly tonight! for us eastern time-zoners, the show comes on at 2:35 AM on NBC. little late for a school night, but totally worth it.

i hear ya/i'm achin'/i'm milkin' the miles

detour from friends' bands week. ugh. waking up in the four am hour with pure agonizing toothache, compounded with the knowledge of having nothing-stronger-than-over-the-counter-meds and dental-insurance--what's-that?. ugh. merrhugh. AND no one to bitch to except a fucking computer screen.

the moment i opened my eyes in pathetic, self-pity-full agony, this song began playing on repeat on the record-player-of-the-mind. this charlatans [uk] song originates in my life in that way-life-altering year 1997 at 16 years of age on a mixtape given to me by my boyfriend at the time. titled "british recolonization," it was back when mixtapes still had names and the ability to change someone's life. change someone's life. i mean that in entirety. do you know what i'm talking about? there are a myriad of stories; mine: you are 16. a boy gives you a mixtape with ride, my bloody valentine, spiritualized and slowdive [and all the other shoegaze/britpop/space rock flag wavers] on it. you listen to it every day. you fall in love. you drink black coffee and smoke harsh cigarettes with him. he leaves you, swiftly, for the u.s. navy, of all things. he leaves you, in numbing, languishing heartbreak, but you still have that mixtape. and you buy all the records by all the bands on it and try to track down the crazy verve import singles. and you grow up. and you forget what year he was ever supposed to get out of the military. and it's nine years later, and you're still talking about that charlatans song on that mixtape. ha!

charlatans uk
toothache
the charlatans [uk]
beggars banquet © 1995

i'll travel across the country and still end up on your front steps

jeanne, so right-on today:

i can only love you for the weekend.



we need to take some more pictures like this. we will. soon!

these are the words of whiskey

with the inception of yesterday as BIG day in my blog-life, this week is officially set aside as BIG FRIENDS week. friends' bands everyday. if i was writing this nearly ten years ago, the words "BIG FRIENDS WEEK" would be marquee-ing across the top of the screen, inducing both homocide and seizures. luckily for all of us it's the year 2006, and we just have to deal with the meager annoyance of my penchant for easter egg hues.


bang! bang!, who i'm going to simply call a punk rock band from detroit from 2003-2005, broke up this fall, setting it off with a last show worthy of a term like "a fall" in the roman sense of the word, not without all the trimmings and more of that truly marked spirit of ringing-down-through-the-centuries hedonism. this track is their last recorded song, was once slated to appear on a split 7" with the holy fire and has been very recently become available after a new mix by friend mr. s. hoen. i post this track with bittersweet clicks of the keys for detroit nights that actually emanated something magical, something electric, something no one in this city has, hope for a way out. for chrissake, raise something for them, a glass or whatever. preferably something of an illegal ilk. then, let's raise this fucking city.

bang! bang!
bourbon and bruises
unreleased
2004

give your love to me

today, totally BIG day. not only am i still high off having vacuumed the entire apartment last night [small pleasures, yes] AND having gobbled up scrumptious green eggs and ham at the fly trap AND waiting with much-notable/remarkable anticipation to vacation in less than a mere two weeks, today marks the official commencement of my at-my-fingertips web hosting access. i can't deny having been a rather mediocre mp3 poster since the inception of this. but hey, i have an excuse, and that excuse is that i want to both impulsively and compulsively post songs at whim, and prior to this day, BIG day, i was not lucky enough to enjoy that luxury. but then today ms. angela plugged the info into my cuteFTP, and today became a decidedly BIG day. expect marked prolificacy regarding mp3s. also, i'll be more mindful to not post those ultra-pesky m4as. promise. additionally, songs will stay up for a week on average.

it's sunday evening, and i couldn't be more sluggish from a week of partying and recovery. i've listened to this low skies song at least ten times today, and its way-less-than-subtle hints of incest have been helping me to stay awake. it's off their appropriately-and-"aww"-inspiring-titled new record due out on chicago's flameshovel right smack on valentine's day. aww.

low skies
cousin
all the love i could find
flameshovel © 2006

additionally, by request, i'm including a couple photos from friday night that i omitted for sheepish reasons. schaffer putting me in the figure-4 [i called a "finger"-4 when drunk] wrestling move. doesn't make much sense to me drunk or sober, but maybe it does to you.

in the fire of my youth/we were racing with the sun

at this very moment in two weeks' time, i will be in nyc with my ultra-main squeeze, ms. jeanne, crunching some numbers, losing some sleep and letting life go off, borough by borough, block by block, bit by bit. incredulity still consumes me quite entirely. AND--aside from airport traffic, i'll escape town neatly and completly from the goddamned superbowl.

picture plethora

life goes off

sometimes an abundance of "energy of change" wells up, swirls around us and lets loose all at once. life bubbles up and just bursts.

"you're miserable and i'm useless"

monthly trip to pp in aa. always a woo hoo. eating the good foods [gf] with a.

good reasons.

s escapes from cali today!

i'm throwing rocks at your floor/i'm knocking down your front door

perhaps the most exciting thing that has happened lately is that i finally learned the lyrics to lifetime's "hey catrine". the ones not printed in the booklet. i want to run circles round the house like a hamster escaped from his cage.

lifetime
hey catrine
new jersey's best dancers
© jade tree 1997

so
so-o
you're the one girl i should have never met
and it's you [i think?]
it's you-o
you're the one girl i should have kept it together for
it's you-o
it's you-o
you're the one, it's you-oo-ooo
it's you-oo
you're the one girl i should have kept it together for
you

pretty much totally haunted

having just recently become a person who has "parties" at their house, it is somewhat alarming to find dirty socks in the refrigerator.

gotta get a new bell to ring

how many days does it take to recover from taking it a bit too far on a sunday night? so far, two. i'm so tired i can't think. will i be able to think tomorrow? thai food remedy barely made a dent. soon, so soon i will have endless sleep without an alarm clock at the other end. i also want an endless back rub. and the knot out of my shoulder.

the devouring

an overwhelmed mind is like a incurable, chronic illness that i have, and its only remedy is the age-old saying of my mother echoing in my head, "everything will be clearer in the morning, honey."

so so new

life is so totally totally insane sometimes, and it never fails to hand us very new, previous-foundation-shaking situations. i am mostly okay with this. nothing passes me without a severely high sense of affect [does that make sense?]. it's undetermined whether this is a strength/asset or a fault of mine.

cramming the whole farm into the shot


princess buds

we entered casually but left a wreck

this isn't schoolboys
don't assault the girls
they like the taste of blood
the claim of love

there actually things not to be written publicly

today i wish to grow young.


you're not working tomorrow so go the magic stick tonight for the oxford collapse/we are scientists show. i can think of no great reason to not toast to mlkj and drink the night away [accidental rhyme]. it's only 8$. additionally, another highly important reason to come to the show tonight is that i will be wearing gold jewelry for the first time since it went terribly out of style.

i'm posting this mp3 again because i finally got my late birthday present from kevin, the new radio dept. ep, and i've listened to this track ten times already today. it's a gift and a gem.

the radio dept.
pulling our weight

hold my life 'til i'm ready to use it

one of the best things ever was said to me by a friend of mine today. if i had just taken a drink of something, it would have spewed from my nose with laughter:

"man youre about a half step away from aa date rapist."

i can't stop laughing.

oh you've got grey eyes

time for C-cup. fucking scary.

even in time, we'll give in to crime

an excerpt from an email to a friend regarding the topic of blog readership:

i know that "strangers" read my blog, and i find it pretty crazy that no one ever mentions it to me. when we write on the internet, we write knowing that our friends, acquaintances and strangers will read it. it's PUBLIC, and both the reader and the writer know it. but for some reason in many cases, i believe the reader feels that he/she is spying, which is of course absolutely not the case. i write whatever i write however good it is or isn't because i have to write it, i have to let them out, i have to say many many things verbally and in writing, and i put some of them on the internet. people--those i share a house with, the guy at the end of the bar, my mother, my best friend, &tc.--reading my blog is both a motivation to write publicly and a consequence of writing publicly.

time to drink some whiskey. that my mom BOUGHT me. ha!

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forgot about the war
we barely touched
as if being watched

okay and make it go away and all good, honey honey

jeanne said shopping is therapy, and this is very true. anthropologie and forever 21 have excessive amounts of cute stuff right now. hit up not just one but two malls. shopping [and purchasing] at both forever 21 and saks fifth avenue in the same day makes me giggle a little bit. i should buy that amazing 60$ kiehls lycopene moisturizer, but i really can't bring myself to do it. truthfully, i can barely bring myself to not just shop the sale racks. do you know about this? additionally, don't think i can write intelligently or insightfully today, perhaps it's the rain. i desperately need to clean the house, as we will have many visitors/guests this weekend. a small knitting circle/session is taking place here tomorrow. the brooklynites on sunday. but i don't care for we are scientists, a statement made without shame. there are always so many things to be hung upon the walls. some may say they are already far too populated. i can't wait for the hanging plants to be hung and start growing like spitfire crazy. sometimes i'm not sure how i ever lived with any satisfaction prior to all the philadendra. or the expansive, westerly-facing windows. certainly i was not capable of the depth of happiness that i am now able to experience, mood permitting. tonight i'm using the flask shannon got me for xmas for the first time. perhaps one day i'll stop thinking it's ridiculous that in the past year i developed a penchant for drinking whiskey straight.

i wish more people i knew wrote blogs. you really should write.

sour grapes?!

i wrote something about some movies, and mozilla totally crashed, so the essence of what i said is that munich is eons better than brokeback mountain, no contest.

more importantly than musing on movies and big bird [big DODO?!], red wine, sour moods and pms, buds the oxford collapse from brooklyn are coming into town sunday and playing at the magic stick with hyped major-labellers we are scientists. and you should go.

echoing up the mountaintops..distant as ever

thank god for sun-shiny 50° january days, stila lipgloss, noodle soup, a fantastic tailor and canada, as they have graced us with such a wealth of great music in the last year.

and while you're at it, please bring back k from working doubles everyday and also free s from the bitter tangles of la. the house is far too quiet, and i am exceedingly bored. please and thank you.

the clay in your hands

having an exceedingly reminiscent/sentimental day. maybe it's the house having been so quiet with my roommate working doubles nearly every day and s's extended stay in california. being alone so much all day and all night, you realize how little you actually speak with your voice. thinking about how there are people you meet who have such a dramatic effect on your life, they spin it like a top. or perhaps it's not an effect so directly; perhaps some people are more like doors that let in scores of other key life-players, new towns, new hands, new hearts. does it mean the others you become close to who have not been doors or windows, just humans with vast hearts and big minds, are any less important? i don't think so. i can't stop thinking about how without a few quick keystrokes, a stop at an off-path bar or that extra personal introduction, how without moments uncalculated and so spontaneous and un-prepared-for, life would be so drastically different.

don't wanna weep for you

you say i'm living in the past, i say mind your own business, kid. where the hell did we think we were and how did we achieve such distance from that place holding our minds and hearts dangling over the edge of some insanity bridge.








it says:"jumps"



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ps. is it just me, or does anyone else sometimes genuinely "miss" elliott smith and get all sad about his death? not all the time, just some-times. i love his records backwards and forwards ["back and forth...forever"?!], but i'm nothing nearing a super-fan.

there is nothing worse than japanese websites

today is
waiting at the secretary of state an hour only for the computers to go down right before my number is called, down internet all day so work at night, fastidious brand loyalty to rowan yarn, cooking perfect garlicky asparagus, knitting nine rows [40-50+ stitches each] of jeanne's hat, coming up short one stitch and pulling out two hours' work, row by row. like the feelings of liberation and failure shacked up real quick and married.

what i want right now more than anything is to ride my bike in the sun and go to texas [not related]. don't question it.

if you're so funny, then why are you on your own tonight?

i had been wondering if age twenty-five is too old to wear a miniskirt. the answer came to me today when i found the perfect one in denim by french connection at loehmann's for under 30$. a voracious no.

came down with the blues/mean reds [used the term twice today! thanks t.capote] quite severely after sundown. drove, but not as far as i would have liked, for food-based vitamins and fishy soup and a sunnier mind. i want to post the song "i know it's over" by the smiths because it's just such a perfect creation, but i think posting songs through yousendit.com is pretty lame. so since i'm paying for netflix for my roommate and i, i think it's high time i have access to his web hosting. expect more songs, songs forever. i have so many loves, they outnumber my memories.

gecko dictionary/salamander treasure

there comes a time in many people's lives where they decide it's time to try to make an omelet. my day was today. there must be something noble in attempting a task you know WITHOUT QUESTION you will fail at. at least a couple pennies in the karma jar, please. i really wanted it to be a entire egg yolk omelet, but i knew that each absent yolk meant a directly-relational increase in level of difficulty of omelet construction and success [read: degree of failure]. settled with a half-yolk. [does the word "yoke" remind you of the oregon trail computer game from grade school?] mix egg, check. melt butter in pan, check. pour in egg, check. cook, check. prepare fixin's [smoked gouda and veggie sausage], check. flip over, decent check. apply fixin's, check. flip in half, check minus. half the fixin's stay in the omelet, and with each flip over like the game hot potato [as the omelet was already overcooked], all morsels of cheese and meats subsequently jump ship. the gouda never melted, so perhaps it is too squirrely an ingredient for beginner omelet constructers, and the egg was so decidedly NOT light and fluffy that i had to cut it with a knife. it did, however, look like an omelet [if you ignore the insides surrounding it on the outside], red hot played like a food band-aid, making the mess taste all the same and creating a false sense of success.

a tab for color codes, for special characters, dictionary, thesaurus

thinking/writing staccato..

so thesaurus ends in "-saurus," and so do the words dinosaur, brontosaurus, apatosaurus, brachiosaurus, tyrannosaurus, xenotarsosaurus and yangchuanosaurus [duh!] but WHY?! what is "-saurus"?! and why is it so hard to find a dictionary of suffixes on the internet? ok, dinosaurs are names are based on where the fossils were found, who found them and upon any discriminating physical features [i think?]. what the hell does thesaurus have to do with this whole business of dinosaurs? THE saurus?! the totally quintessential SAURUS? [btw, why isn't "saurus" the name of a car yet?] regardless, in thinking/writing about this, i found the answers to all of my questions. "-saurus" comes from the greek for "lizard", and thesaurus itself comes from the latin for "treasury." the treasury. the lizard. the pinnacle lizard. the most meatnormous dinosaur. treasured lizard. lizard treasury. those dumb greeks, it's not lizard, it's a dinosaur. meat dinosaur. lizard treasure. why did i let this raise my blood pressure this morning?

i dye my hair myself, and half the time i dye it the wrong color. because i'm an idiot. over pie and cheese fries last night, kevin and i discussed different areas of intelligence, and though i failed to mention it at the time, certainly the area "remembering-what-color-to-dye-your-hair" is one of extremely low aptitude for me. so i guess it's back to grammar school logic for me. i know i want my hair to be a coppery rust color in the ORANGE family, decidedly NOT a color in PURPLE family. and i should never buy the dye from anywhere other than sally's. so why did i buy "pomegranate" dye at cvs? so dumb. it was a no-contest purple cream going on. there can be no explanation other than it's a mean-reds case of hair karma coming to get me, as i have not had a haircut since march. i concede.

nightmares become me

is it fucked up that i signed up for netflix today and the first movies i'm receiving are big bird ones from childhood?

ps. if anyone has the sesame street video don't eat the pictures, i will pay you top dollar for this rarity. the scene where the little egyptian boy's heart is weighed opposite a feather has haunted my friends and myself for a lifetime. heavy, heavy shit.

like a kiss upon the forehead

it's the second sun-drenched day this week; rejoice.

this song fits. he's at his best. when are you at your best?

cass mccombs
sacred heart

a week-lag, but, it's a new year; newness, new hearts, new hope, new warmth; but, i want more new things. getting greedy.

she's not one bit on the ground//dress me like a clown

a show of hands, who's having domesticity notalgia?

not i; but many of you. what's in the air?

and when we kissed, it didn't feel poisonous

in extended sentence format:

broken flowers gets a total thumbs down, knitting skinny scarves sometimes takes eons, the sun drenched us today for the first time in eons [also], used car salespeople are far less intelligent [and incidentally less manipulative] than you'd think, the only offical symptom i got from the sickness going around is a sore throat, and i have less than an hour of work for the entire weekend.

going through another raving, venomous, rapid american analog set phase. finally decided promise of love is their best. enjoy!

american analog set
come home baby julie, come home

a very plum plum

i'm not the biggest, flag-waving fan of movies in general. there are, however, a few that i hold frighteningly close to my heart like tiny emaciated children. i saw the english patient in the theater [huge rariety] when it came out in 1996 and i was 15. no, its widely-criticized length has never phased me [if only it was two hours longer even], and all jokes about the high drama contained in the film have fallen heavy and flat, very flat to me. surely, the english patient is a dramatic movie, but, for an american film, it sits steadfast at the summit of its genre. this movie transforms the adulterous love affair into something to fight for, to live and die for, and nearly, to war for.


count almasy and katherine make me want to tear my hair out. lying on the couch in demi-slumber, i want to rewind their monster-inhabited-body sex scenes so that i can memorize them and copy their essence under the entry for "devour" in the ol' oxford. i want to sit future lovers down with insistence on the pedantic instruction of count almasy's inability to carry out daily life and his subsequent beast-rabid jealousy and ownership of katherine, like once he entered her, loved her, he colonized her and laid down unlawful laws. in some instances, sure, this might seem creepy, but it's done in such a way that thoughts of a restraining order are steaming up the windows inside your head. [i'm giving away the ending here] count almasy is one of the most desperate lovers in history, in movie-life and real-life. this insane motherfucker carries katherine not once but twice, TWICE he carries her, through the desert, over-the-threshold style, first alive but injured, then rotting-in-a-cave-in-the-desert-for-days DEAD. he's walking all slow because dead weight is crazy heavy, the music's sweeping large and tear-jerking, sand's blowing and he's just bawling. so you're all lying on the couch like, "oh my god this movie is so desperate, so decidedly impatient that i think i can't bear it without plunging my hand right through the screen for one of those morphine bottles and plowing a needle far into my arm. under the weight of this film, titanics buckle and casablanca looks on as a captive, classroom audience in hopes of understanding where it could have bulked up."

locked up with the choir vandals

it's quite funny--actually it's not funny or curious at all--how a house of three people in bad/sour/grr! moods swiftly infect the third. like a quick blunt chop. last night i thought i could scrape the miniature colony of sick right off with a toothpick from the back of my throat. this morning, after nighttime mating, it's swelled to a size far too expanisive to elicit [not solicit]--okay, the words's ENABLE [note: kevin and i had a gigantic dispute surrounding the phrase "elicit/solicit a response". (it's elicit and the use of "solicit" is unacceptable. --ed.)] --successful or even efficient scraping off of those burgeoning, squirrely, evil colonies. sleeping on the uncomfortable couch didn't help.

the cause for much satisfaction and glee yesterday [with endurance through today, surely], is the website bloglines, a compiler of rss feeds from news/blog/&tc. sites that tracks updates on all the sites of your choosing so you don't have to check them with any frequency in hopes of new morsels of info. additionally, i installed a notifier into firefox [not sure how it works with other browsers] that situated a B in the lower right-hand corner of the browser that has a little red dot on its corner when one of your feeds is updated [props on non-intrusive/non-annoying means of alert].

it's the thick soup of winter, like walking in warm, really dry sand on the beach; insurmountable.

i've made enough friends

today's a prolific moment. er, day.

my sister bought me these gorgeous wooden salad bowls for my birthday recently, and you have to "oil" them with mineral oil to keep the wood good and sealed from "baceria" [surely, that fatal lives-in-wooden-salad-bowl-strain], bad smells and other all-around nasties. but get this. on the back of the bottle of mineral oil, it says verbatim:

You should oil new woodenware once a day for a week before using it. Once used it should be oiled once a week for a month and once a month for a year or whenever the wood seems dry.

no wonder we're prescribed so much prozac and xanax.

ps. i totally rented tampopo
pss. that sickness that everyone has? yeah, i'm getting it too.

grounds for divorce! i know

neither the alarm or my new teapot alert loudly enough. the teapot causes more of a rift.

was going to write something about the cable network tlc and how after watching "the 750-lb. man" [nightmare-worthy] last night and "born without a face" [LIFETIME-of-nightmares-worthy] and "born with two heads" [incidentally more captivating, as it is set in egypt], tlc is dropping the bar in favor of more jarring programming. i was going to rant about all of this, but for fear of saying even more uncouth/un-pc statements than i already have, it ends here. it's not nice to not be nice. two of three of the programs had bad [and surprising endings].

in lieu of [not the lame band] this, a mention of a strong, thick, tight! rope attached from songs to my heart lately.

do yourself a favor and listen to "i'll believe in anything" by wolf parade. i know i've posted it before, but desperation leads once more. i think the word "imperative" got chopped up last night and injected into my bloodstream.

wolf parade
i'll believe in anything

then read the lyrics

don't like this favor? there's another later.

continuous hit music

thinking about one movie and one tv show this morning. sunday, in the very midst of angela's total height of sickness, we wanted nothing more than a feast of some asian noodle soup. 6pm sunday night, new year's fucking day, and we decide that a big noodle soup would be the only thing to revive her back to a more healthful state and, additionally, satiate my craving [sympathy? like guys having sympathy pregnancy symptoms]. it being the absolute least opportune time to be on an asian noodle soup quest [except perhaps finding yourself located anywhere downriver at any given time], we withdrew from the challenge after calling a few places repetitively [maybe they'll open at 6pm!], half in hope, half in scorn, and settled for thai. this whole noodle soup thing has got me not only now really yearning to satiate that unsatiated craving [no, not a metaphor] for a big-ass, overstuffed-with-unidentifiable-ingredients like quail eggs [frightening], noodles-slapping-against-cheeks, impossible-to-eat-with-that-lame-ass-japanese-spoon-thing SOUP! -- it really has me thinking about the movie tampopo. touted as the japanese noodle western [eastern?], tampopo is this insanely hilarious japanese comedy from 1985. named for it female heroine, tampopo is a modest [not modest] tale of tampopo creating the best noodle soup, and consequently, the best noodle soup bar/shack/whatever in tokyo [seems like the outskirts of tokyo] by the help of this japanese john wayne guy [no joke, he rides a horse in japan] who puts her through some sort of bootcamp thing, but of course she wins out in the end. yep, there's some romance. and then there are these odd food-sexual vignettes that involve eating shit [raw eggs?] off a hot japanese chickie. if i remember correctly, yes, there are naked boobs.

perhaps you had previously been thinking that the notions [only semi-platonic-theory-of-forms-shit]
LOVE & VALOR & SEX & NOODLE SOUP & JAPAN
could not in fact be kindred conceits. not after tampopo. it's ALL related.


smoke, eat, smoke, work, then talk about television.

oh oh oh oh, oh-six

so i have mushmind this afternoon? i've been staring at the screen for at least fifteen minutes, not blank of thoughts but considerably and surely absent of words. i think i stared out the window for thirty minutes preceeding staring at the computer screen. perhaps it's club bart breakfast food coma. really, truly, it's the best place for breakfast in detroit. erh, ferndale. we win. oscillating between couch break/nap and work. can't write blog but can work? not likely.

straight-forwardly, this new year's eve was one of the best in my memory, but i do, remember, have a horrendous memory. something about the holiday historically makes me nervous, uptight, unsure. no, you certainly wouldn't know. it's something to do with the formalities involved. something? something about a build up and a let down. is that just one giant metaphor for the entire holiday? for the year? passed the eve with all the close friends [except unfortunately jeanne, there in spirit!], the very good ones. shed a baby tear in the advent of durgan's parting. there was newness, much welcome. woke to some sort of rebirth courtesy of the weather. like a gentle religion dressed itself up, posing as springtime on new year's day. this year i will be stronger, happier "in spite of."