Friday, September 28, 2001
how wonderful to sit outside on a cool night in a sweater under a great palm and read by candlelight the end of a good book and then some poetry aloud quietly to oneself or to an audience of souls surrounding you unhearing and unaware and asleep in their beds but with their windows open because the night is wonderful and cool and there is poetry in the courtyard being read in a voice too low to hear. un perro de lacrimas. a dog of tears. Thursday, September 27, 2001
jeez. it's been a slow week for posting, kind of universally, it seems. i guess after the horrors and excitement of the past few weeks, things are beginning to get back to something like normal. for example, i'm back to feeling conflicted between what i want to do with my life and what will pay the bills, and confused as to where my obligations lie, and how to overcome the various mental blocks and paralyses that put me in these stupid situations over and over again. ugh. heavy thoughts on a beautiful evening. in case you haven't noticed, i've added a music section to the site, on the top menu. it's more of a reviews and opinions page than anything, though i'm using a blog format. anyway, not much there, but i figure i think enough about those things to want to write them down somewhere. additionally, i'm contemplating a redesign of the site in general, but such things tend to creep along slowly with me, so i'm making no representations. i find myself watching more tv than ever before - at least since i've lived alone, and had a tv. i'm not sure why this is, but i think it may just be a residual effect of so many nights going to sleep watching the news over the past few weeks - those evenly modulated, smooth, well-trained newscaster voices became sort of a security blanket - here is what's happening, we will continue, we will rebuild, we live in a great land, we are strong, we are resilient, we will find the responsible parties and they will pay - and it's always hard to put those down. fox news has been fun to watch, because no one there apparently feels the need not to editorialize, no one there is constrained by the quaint ethical illusions of journalistic tradition, and you get some news shows hosted by some journalists who are inclined - indeed paid - to flaunt their biases. which is sort of refreshing. i particularly enjoy, if i don't always agree with, bill o'reilly, who can be downright disparaging to his interviewees with whom he (often) disagrees. it's like jerry springer for the national review set. I keep wanting to write about the book i'm reading, but i'll wait till i'm finished so i can speak from a more complete perspective. which should be later tonight. finishing a whole work of fiction, in under a week, is, sadly, a rare occasion for me, since college, really. so this is something of an accomplishment. i'm tickled. and it's a wonderful book, to boot. perhaps it will lead to more completions. i'm also currently working on two books of poetry - they should, theoretically, be easily finished. maybe i'll make it a goal to read them aloud, even if only to myself or whatever audience is handy around the apartment. hmmm. be warned if you decide to visit... Tuesday, September 25, 2001
well, i was able to pick my parents up from the airport the othern night, and get to the wilco concert in time, and was able to find hayden and evette. sadly, the show was pretty disappointing. jeff tweedy's a good singer and all, but there was just something about it i wasn't comfortable with. too crowded, too much mermaid avenue (i prefer the billy bragg-less stuff) and too... southern-rock fratboy sing-a-longy. which is strange. oh well. and then afterwards, i found out that the opening band was the handsome family, which i would rather have seen than wilco to begin with. much rather. oh well. fall is come, even to new orleans... it's absolutely gorgeous outside. i'm going to go play. Sunday, September 23, 2001
nice weekend. rod came in town from shreveport, and i got to see the old 97's play - twice in one day, and then people-watched for a while in the quarter last night... i'm off to see wilco tonight, hopefully, but that may or may not work out, unfortunately depending on the ifs and whens of picking my parents up from the airport. oh, and i'm reading a really good book, jose saramago's 'blindness'. anyway... i'll elaborate later, once tonight has worked itself out. Thursday, September 20, 2001
well, folks, i think we have a real president on our hands. i think the speech tonight was inspiring. and scary - as i suppose it should be. it reminded me of that part in the movie tombstone when wyatt earp's brother morgan is killed, and he declares war on the 'cowboys' - "anyone wearing a red sash dies!" and he tells ike clanton to go back and report to curly bill, "you tell him I'm coming! and hell's coming with me!" and then wyatt and his posse hunt down and kill every last cowboy. in other news, i'm sick as a dog. no joke. my head feels like it's in a vice grip. not to mention the cough, the fever, and sore throat, and the complete exhaustion. ugh. it hurts to blink. i think i'm going to take up playing quake3 again. it makes me feel safe, and lends an eerie - but maybe now useful - quality of paranoia to everyday life. Wednesday, September 19, 2001
it's funny how i have a habit of not blogging the most important, personal life changing things, for various reasons. like today. i'm sure the effects of this change will become apparent, over time, and those of you closest to me are already aware of it. but for now, let's just say that things are suddenly different around here. in a good way. tell me this girl actually works for the fbi. no way. she must work for a modeling agency. damn. better than scully. (almost...) Tuesday, September 18, 2001
back to the grim reality of the news - this is what we're up against. this is a good article on why. i have issues with organized religion in general for just these reasons, and fundamentalists in particular. fundamentalism is unhealthy in its every incarnation - it is mind control at it's worst - and allows good human beings to be robbed of reason and indoctrinated with hatred and evil. there's enough of that around without religions force feeding it to the masses.
i think i need to wait until later today to write my review of the white stripes show, so that i gain a bit of critical distance. from where i am now, only a few hours post-show, jack white is the most important thing to happen to rock and roll since, um... tom waits? robert johnson? chuck berry? elvis? i don't know. he channels robert plant's voice with the soul of mick jagger and the spit, sweat, intensity and righteous anger of johnny rotten, he has the rock star primadonna confidence, ego and attitude of john lennon, and he plays guitar like - robert johnson, james hetfield, eric clapton, r.l. burnside, keith richards - by turns and at the same time. and his sister plays the drums to match, with the uncanny sort of timing that can only be the result of that sibling bond...and they're it. that's the whole band. guitar and drums. and more sound than you've ever heard. the white stripes are either the latter day missing link between or the ultimate synthesis of gutbucket delta blues, real, hard, cocaine driven rock n' roll, seminal punk, and indie rock. i just clapped, stomped and screamed my way through the encore renditon of "boll weevil blues." amazing. and what's even stranger is that the white stripes are the hippest thing going in the avant garde music scene, the current indie rock annointed - so the show was packed. usually the really amazingly good stuff doesn't draw crowds... i wonder how many people there even realized they were listening to the blues... Sunday, September 16, 2001
the veins opened for edith frost tonight. they're apparently turducken's alt.country outfit, of sorts. kind of a post-rock meets alt.country sound, maybe in the vein (no pun intended) of dirty three, but a bit harder edged, like mogwai meets the blacks, maybe. lots of atmostpheric, minimal, repetitive guitar, courtesy of art boonparn (also of girl distraction) and sparse lyrics, delivered in that alternately breathy then falsetto indie rock style. with one exception - the last song they played was more southern gothic than the rest, lyrically and musically, and at one point the vocals really stood out - almost spoken, loud, slow, dark. overall, they have lots of potential - they even said they're just in the "cookie dough" stage now. edith frost seems like a very sweet person, and she clearly loves every minute of what she does. i have reason to suspect she has a quite wonderful, high-lonesome singing voice, and that her lyrics are thoughtful and intelligent. but unfortunately, after listening to her whole set and two encores, i really couldn't tell you, because the sound at the mermaid tonight was so damn muddy it was almost embarassing. maybe it was that way on purpose, maybe it was just the venue's mistake - but the mixing was terrible. every instrument on stage (two guitars, bass, drums, cello, keyboard) was pushed way up - not to mention the whole band was so intense it looked like they were playing to hurt their instruments - to create a wall of sound the blurry vocals (maybe she was too close to the mic?) just couldn't climb. which is ok for some music, where the vocals are supposed to be minimal, but for a female alt.country singer, you kind of want to hear the words clearly, you know? high notes and all? imagine neko case fronting gsybe, through a bullhorn - she's got the pipes to do it, but all mixed up like that she just becomes another layer of noise... anyway, i'm exagerrating a bit, and i really did enjoy the show anyway... Saturday, September 15, 2001
i don't know. lots of people out there are falling into depression, or aggression, or seclusion. i think i'm going for illusion - just trying to stay busy, which means that on these weekend nights when none of my friends is really around, i'm keeping myself entertained by going to see bands, just to pretend that everything is normal and ok and everything is right with the world. consequently, i'm off to the mermaid again, this time to see edith frost.
i went to the mermaid tonight to see american analog set, with girl distraction opening. it was a good show. girl distraction is a local turducken thing, and they're a good, tuneful yet unpolished indie rawk band, sort of post-rock with a little 808 kicking in now and then - and they played in front of a video montage of cheesy dance scenes from 60's beach movies, and from a movie called "villiage of the giants" where a bunch of teens are go-go dancing with a pair of giant ducks. i swear. very mst3k. american analog set are textbook post-rock, heavy on the xylophone - slow, quiet and monotone, melodic wall-of-sound guitar... exactly what i expected, and pleasant enough. nothing too compelling - not too much emotional impact - but pleasant enough, and resonant to a degree. i enjoyed it. i mean, post-rock is meant to be sort of passive-aggressive like that, it gets to you on a low level, and you can't help but stand there and sway gently... and when you leave, you're still thinking and moving to that methodical, plodding bass rhythm... sad fool that i am, 26 and i'm still apparently struck dumb by pretty girls - and i was so surrounded at the mermaid, i don't think i said a word all night. Thursday, September 13, 2001
oh my. how to return to life as usual? hell if i know. i still can't turn off the news... i guess we won't be hearing much more about chandra or aaliyah for a while... Wednesday, September 12, 2001
even if you don't understand spanish, yesterday's events couldn't be more clearly deliniated than this. (courtesy kottke via highindustrial)
no, it's no nightmare. it's worse. it's still here. and it does feel like a different world. palpably. two words: red cross.
one day, and the world has changed. for ever, for everyone. never be the same. and then, what happens next? there's no telling if it's going to get any better soon - liklihood is it'll get worse. war? chemical weapons? nukes? even if we somehow find whoever's responsible, it won't solve the problem. bin laden, or whoever did this, is just a symptom, a product of a hatred so deep and ingrained in the culture of so many people, that this danger will never go away. and now, we can't ignore it anymore, we can't hide behind innocence or inexperience because today, we got learned. we will never be safe again, not even in our own homes and offices. and there's nothing we can do. oh god, what now? pray that we're stronger than we think we are. pray that our leaders are stronger than we think they are. we'll never forget today, never never never ever. even after we're all gone, in a hundred years, the world will remember today. thankfully, so far, all my friends in NYC and DC are present and accounted for, which is as good as i can ask for today. i hope i wake up tomorrow, and this has all been a horrible nightmare. i hope i wake up tomorrow. the things we take for granted. god help us all. Tuesday, September 11, 2001
"i felt a disturbance in the force, as though a million souls were all screaming at once." ~ obi wan kenobi on the destruction of alderaan. oh... this is real. real real real real real real real, horribly vividly real. ten thousand dead, at least? i can't even begin to imagine. this isn't a movie, it's not independence day, it's not godzilla. it's fucking real. every few minutes it hits me all over again, and i have to stop myself from crying all over again. can you even begin to think, the horror, the loss, the pain... my heart goes out to all those victims, just think, all those human souls, all the families ruined, all the stories and songs and thoughts and ideas and desires and aspirations and careers and loves and lives, lives, real human lives. my heart breaks.
terrorism. world trade center. pentagon.... this is the most Horrible Amazing Terrible Sad Fucked Thing, the biggest thing to happen in our lives, in our parents lives?? nothing will ever be the same for us. and oh god, the victims, the people, the life... pray... invent a god, if you need to, and pray. and be nice to people. for god's sake we all have to be nice to people and not let this make us cruel. blogger has a search page up for news. oh, and has anyone noticed that the date is 9-11? as in emergency? on top of the anniversary of the camp david accords?
holy fuck. holy fuck holyfuckholyfuck... wonder if afghanistan will be there tomorrow.
... and the pentagon... something very bad is happening...
oh my god. the world trade center... planes...
yesterday at this time - 7:30am-ish - i found myself, post-dropping jen off at the airport, driving down airline highway in heavy traffic. it occurred to me that there was something i have wanted to do for some time out that way - and that i had the time and opportunity to do so just then - and get out of the morning drive traffic for a while. so i turned into the garden of memories cemetary, pulled out my trusty 'bizarre new orleans' guide, which i keep in my car, because it's the one book that actually gives addresses for all the former residences of the big names in nola literary and musical history, and stuff like that. and so i found my way to the final resting place of gram parsons - byrd, flying burrito brother, original country-rock troubador. progenitor of alt-country. discoverer of emmylou. wearer of nudie suits. a wonderful singer, an incredibly gifted songwriter ("a song for you" is one of my favorite songs, ever.) a man responsible, directly or indirectly, for a great deal of the music i listen to today. i just wanted to say thanks, so i did. he overdosed in 1973, at the age of 27. two years before i was born. (his bandmates stole his body from the airport in california, and tried to burn it in the joshua tree desert, as he would've probably wanted to be, but were caught, and his remains were sent to his family in new orleans.) and now it all comes down to a small, saucer sized disk in a marble plate in the ground in metairie, louisiana, which reads, "gram parsons, god's own singer." Monday, September 10, 2001
saw waiting for guffmantonight with jen, which is a movie people have been recommending to me since it came out in '96. it was funny, but i've seen better - including the same-cast, same-director, same-style follow-up, best in show... aside from another opportunity to see parker posey, i just don't see what the big deal was, necessarily. also, tonight, i'm contemplating taking on a pretty major, lifestyle changing committment type thing. it's a big step - it's called, "getting a dog." i'm thinking about it pretty seriously. i know what it takes, and i can handle it... i've been listening to three of the best new cds i've heard in a long time for the past couple of days - robbie fulks' couples in trouble, gillian welch's time - the revelator, and neko case's candadian amp. All three push envelopes for those artists... i think i'll have some reviews posted soon, but i've got a few ideas on that, so they may have to wait a few days... anyway. i have to take jen to the airport tomorrow, early, so i need to get some sleep... i wish she didn't have to leave. life seems to move more easily, when she's around. Sunday, September 09, 2001
sometimes, through no one's fault and by pure accident of circumstance, you get to spend an evening alone, on a quest, and have adventures. which makes you realize how infrequently you have adventures these days, and that you should have more, and someone to share them with. Saturday, September 08, 2001
i have good friends. i've been blessed by whoever does the blessing with lots of things, but maybe most of all in that i am, and have been, surrounded by some really wonderful, intelligent, caring, fascinating people. even several of the new friends i've made recently seem, at least potentially, to be that true kind. and every now and then i'm standing in a bar, surrounded by some my friends, and i can't help but think how fortunate i am, and it makes me very happy despite whatever else might be going on in my life. on this fine, humid summer night, i was at just such a bar, having just such a moment, when i realized that being as i was driving half of said wonderful friends home in the near future, i probably should put down the maker's mark + rocks i was sipping. and so i did, and soon drove holly, joe, ashley and mo all back to their three respective beds safely. then i went to the grocery - something i do most often after midnight, because there's never a line, and the place is empty - and here the maker's mark must have kicked in, because amidst my shopping for the basic necessities (which for me include almost exclusively milk, oj, egg beaters, lightlife 'smart deli jumbos' veggie hot dogs and diet cokes)i was suddenly possessed of the desire to purchase, on sight, a bottle of electric blue squeezable butter substitute. called, get this - "fun squeeze". why? you might ask - and the cashier did - out of sheer morbid curiosity and the fact that, well, it's blue. name another blue food... food just isn't supposed to be blue. even blueberrys are really purple... so of course i get home and tear off the protective seal and squeeze a little blue butter substitute out, and confirm that yes, it's blue, and that yes, edible items should not be blue. and so the "fun squeeze" has been relegated to the back of the fridge to chill until the sad day dawns that i'm out of normal, yellow butter substitute and am forced to scramble my egg beaters with the blue stuff. can't wait. Wednesday, September 05, 2001
ii was just looking for some cheap tickets online for my dad to go to some convention in indiana this week - i didn't find them, but i found this site, which is just one of those things that makes the internet so neat. it's not particularly useful, but it's pretty cool. wanna see exactly where that flight is? it's more fun if you use real flights that are in the air - so check here to see what's arriving in new orleans today...
just a few minutes ago, i was suddenly seized with an insatiable craving for cookies. not oreos, not chips-ahoy (what a weird name for cookies, chips-ahoy is - ever stop to think about it? arrr, matey!) no store bought crap. home made cookies. unfortunately, being as i'm currently playing the role of unattached bachelor in financial straits, my kitchen is missing a few things. like eggs for example. and butter. so i went and made cookie dough with whatever i could find, which ended up being lots of flour, lots of sugar, some milk, some vanilla extract, some baking powder (though i've never really understood the stuff, or what it does, but i figured i was baking so i should put some in. likewise the 'pinch of salt'.) and instead of butter and eggs, i threw in a few dollops of mayonaisse, which i figure has oil and eggs in it, right? except that it's the low fat kind, so it probably has neither. we'll see how that works. right now they seem to be looking more like biscuits than cookies. or else really tall, puffy cookies. i think maybe it's self rising flour. oh, well... like i was saying, i had this killer jones for some home made biscuits... Monday, September 03, 2001
happy labor day, or whatever. it's been a nice weekend, and a good one for conversations with friends. bear with me if this post is random, or goes a bit longer than usual - i'm feeling talkative tonight, and there's lots to say. like, for example, i got the new bjork cd, vespertine. first cd in over a month. wow. it's certainly beautiful, but not as experimental as homogenic was - which is actually a good thing, in my opinion. if you like bjork, you won't be disappointed, nor will you be awed. anyway.
on saturday afternoon, i found myself in the quarter, with mo, because she'd never been to the french market, and wanted to do research on her so-crazy-it-just-might-work business venture there. labor day weekend in the french quarter = southern decadence - and it was something to see. the whole quarter was packed with gay men, of every description - not just your stereotypical queens and whatnot. one interesting thing i did notice was that though there seemed to be a good cross section of social types, it was a pretty homogenic (ha! no pun intended) white male crowd - there wasn't much ethnic diversity. i don't know enough about gay society to draw any conclusions from that, but it did strike me as odd. (as does the fact that in the above two paragraphs, i've typed the rather rare word 'homogenic' twice, in completely unrelated contexts...) jen came in on saturday, which is always great, and we got to hang out and talk quite a bit. we had drinks with the supahstahs, and met ashley's family, who had come to visit, and seemed very nice... her neice and nephew were cute, they ran around and wrote down everyone's names and birthdays and what we all wanted for dinner, but you had to tell them how to spell all the words and how to write the numbers... and they terrorized ashley's cat zoe. i think that the innate tendency of human children to expect cats to want to play with them, like dogs do, is just another brick in the wall of evidence that dogs make better pets, and that 'cat people' are just deluding themselves... anyway, jen was tired from her flight, so we went home to rest, and passed on dinner with the 'stahs. we eventually did get hungry, and had dinner with charles, christine and barbara at dick & jenny's, which is a great restaurant not far from my house, on tchoupitoulas. the wait would have been over an hour, and we were hungry, so we decided to eat at the bar. which was ok, but limited dinner conversation with everyone except the bartender (who was nice) ... i'll wait next time. you eat at the counter at a diner - not a nice restaurant, 'cause dinner with friends really isn't about the food, is it? on sunday, after jen left, i went with my grandmother and aunt to pass christian, (pronounced "pass christy-ann"), mississippi, which is about an hour west of new orleans, on the gulf coast. we went to find and explore some family property which i hadn't seen in years, and really didn't remember where it was... it's just an acre or so of woods, about a half mile off the beach - but my grandfather's family used to have a summer home there, which was destroyed in hurricane camille in 1969. camille was the worst hurricane to hit the coast in recent memory. one of the scariest stories of gulf coast hurricane lore happened not a mile away, during that storm - the hurricane party at the richelieu apartments - where only one of 24 people who stayed to ride out the storm survived. anyway, there's nothing left on our property there but thick pine woods, some cinderblock ruins, a toilet bowl, and some rusty window frames. i brought my digital camera, and stood in the middle of what used to be the house and took pictures. this is what it looked like. later sunday night, charles had a small gathering at his place for labor day. he made some fried catfish, and i made some remoulade sauce to go with it. about nine of us stayed up chatting until the sun came up - and i unwisely disregarded my personal ban on sangria - a mistake for which i paid dearly this morning, when i woke up with a killer headache... so it's been a hell of a weekend. i washed it all down with thai food at the dragon's den with charles and christine, while listening to the blues-grass swing of jeremy lyons and the deltabilly boys... nothing like some thai green curry with shrimp (my favorite) and good live local music... - and now, back to your regularly scheduled week, already in progress... |