Saturday at Work

Listening to "Sunday Morning Coming Down" by Johnny Cash (written by Kris Kristofferson), the best song about a hangover ever. Fuck, it's nice outside. Looks like the real first day of Spring and I'm stuck inside. I call bullshit on that.

What Is Good Right Now Is:

The new Wilco record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
The upcoming Los Lobos record, Good Morning Aztlán,
And Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's eponymous debut.

Blood 2: Even More Blood

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning, I woke up at 5:30 to an interesting situation: I was facedown in a pool of blood. In my bed. Menstruation jokes aside, this was disconcerting. My face was sticky. I looked at my bed; my pillows were covered in blood. My t-shirt was covered in blood. The library book that I had been reading as a fell asleep was covered in blood. Stunned, I walked to the bathroom and looked at my vampire-esque visage in the mirror, and I realized that my visit to the dentist the previous day had opened the floodgates. My long-neglected gums were having their revenge on me by reacting to their recent scrubbing quite violently. I washed myself, spat out a few blood clots, and tried to go back to sleep. I slept fitfully, as I'm a drooler and whenever I'd open my mouth, a new splash of blood would drip out. So I stayed home all day yesterday, stuffing gauze into the space between my upper-left wisdom tooth and my cheek to absorb the flow, trying hard not to rinse so as to allow the blood to continue clotting, and wondering if the situation was going to require another trip to my dentist (who's actually a nice guy). As of this morning, the bleeding seems to have lessened, although my spit still gets red occasionally. Time will tell.

My Teeth Explode With Gushers of Gushing Blood

At the dentist this morning for the first time in ten years. After a cleaning that left my mouth swimming in blood, I found out that I had NO CAVITIES. But that I'd have to have the wisdom teeth on the right side of my mouth extracted. Huh. How do you like that?

Today, I am in love with the sounds of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and the films of Wong Kar-Wai. It's just like that some of these days.

Mo' Nick Cave

In the latest (and 100th) issue of the great British music magazine MOJO, the editors compiled 100 short interviews with pop music luminaries, asking them about their heroes. Nick Cave cites Bob Dylan for this reason:

"I was in a bar in New York City. I walked across to the jukebox and saw the song 'You Gotta Save Somebody'. I liked the title. I fed it some money, bent down my head and listened. The predatory crawl of that opening, the twisted lyric, the ragged seductive vocal, the immense lack of clarity in its message, the agony of it all, ran through me like a sword."

I realized that the "immense lack of clarity" is something I try to achieve constantly with my work, but it's one of those things I never been able to articulate. Thanks, Nick Cave! You're the best.

Nick Cave's Sartorial Style

Hmm. Don't know if I should cop to actually thinking about the way I clothe myself, but the more I think about it, the more I want to dress like Nick Cave. I mean, the motherfucker just looks too cool. I wonder how I can do it on the cheap? Methinks I need a woman's input on this one.

Space Invaders Graffiti

I admire the folks that started doing Space Invaders graffiti with all of my heart. Truly a beautiful idea. Other links to quasi-surrealist public art can be found at Killer Mice.

The Words of the Prophets are Written in the Bathroom Stalls

Marc Calvary (aka The Carbon Based Mistake and publisher of the awesome indie-rock chick zine Cherrypepper) pointed out that there were no examples of other writing I've done on the site. Well, I'm about to change that:

Article about Kevin Smith's record collection that appeared in Blender.

A report about the Detroit music scene that appeared in Vice magazine months before everybody else caught on. I'm sorry, but I feel proud about that.

A retarded article about Metal records, also originally in Vice.

You can find plenty of graphic novel reviews that I've written at Popcultureshock.com.

I've written a handful of book reviews for Maximonline. Check out my lowbrow critiques of the books Pass the Mic, Loaded, 52 McGs, Our Band Could Be Your Life and the Motley Crue autobiography The Dirt, as well as a piece I wrote for them about comic books.

And if you did a Google search on my name, you might find some other stuff out there. This, of course, is the tip of a suprisingly big iceberg. I write a lot of shit (emphasis on shit).

Lisa Loeb's Rear End

A friend worked on a Lisa Loeb video recently and caught a glimpse of her butt while she was taking off her coat. It lifted up her skirt and exposed her ass and panties. He said it was good. I wish I could have been there.

I Want To Steal a Bicycle, I Want To Steal a Bike!

A long weekend spent drinking, looking for cheap shirts, watching The Bicycle Thief (a stunning movie, by the by), playing cards, smoking cigarettes and having straaaaange dreams which I can't remember. I'm tired, but pleasantly so. Might go see the great Les Paul tonight, but in the meantime I'm going to take advantage of the relative slowness at work today to listen to a lot of Laura Cantrell's Radio Thrift Shop and write goofy scripts for one-minute movies. Yee ha.

Zombies, By Definition, Are the Acme of Cool

I like shit with zombies in it, no lie. Earlier today I was thinking about posting a poem I wrote up here, but then I got sane again.

Zombie link.

Will My God Forgive Me?

I'm not the most religious guy in the world, but I know that I like old gospel music. This radio show is a good place to listen to old gospel music if you've got the sort of internet connection that can handle that sort of thing.

Majestic Space Rawk

On a gray NYC day such as today, a little bit of the above is in order, so go to Steve Burns's homepage (he's the former host of the kids' TV show Blues Clues, shown on Nick Jr.) and hear samples of his upcoming record, recorded with Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd and producer/Mercury Rev member Dave Fridmann. Oh, nice.

I miss New Orleans, though.

Post-Weekend and Pre-Week Blues

Cashed in my spaghetti sauce jar full of change yesterday and made thirty bucks, lightening my cold-befogged mood. The evening before I had gone to my buddy Andy Bizer's birthday shindig. He was having it at an art gallery on 6th Avenue where a bunch of hipsters (including Tim Haley from New Orleans) were participating in a very messy reenactment of the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac. There was free beer, a host of cute chicks and white guys rapping none-too shabbily backed by a damn good drummer. Afterwards, I went ass over elbows on the floor of the art gallery as I tried to do a James Brown-move on the lard-greased floor (I am not kidding). Andy described it as "one of the most hilarious things I've seen," and called me the next day to laugh about it. I thought it was fairly funny from my end as well. Apparently I did a really cartoon-esque stall on the fall where, for a couple of seconds, it looked like I was/was not gonna eat it. I ate it. The rest of the evening was spent smoking and drinking and running around like a fool.



Today, I'm feeling kinda lonely. I bought things at lunch, and I normally don't buy much of anything besides beer, comics and food. I purchased my first ever DVDs, Mystery Train and George Washington, and as I walked back to work, bag in hand, I grew depressed as I realized that buying really good movies doesn't make you a good filmmaker. Being a good filmmaker makes you a good filmmaker. I then lightened the fuck up and took that thought as a challenge, so we'll see where that goes.



Weird thing: Yesterday while in line at the supermarket, I took note of the items the old woman in front of me was buying: two boxes of mothballs and a padlock. Eh? Who buys mothballs anymore? I thought moths only ate clothes in old Our Gang shorts. And a padlock? Something was up with that old woman, I wager. Something strange.

"Oh Sweet Susanna" is Killing Me

It's the third track off of The Mooney Suzuki's upcoming record Electric Sweat, and it sounds like some weird combo of "Emma" by Hot Chocolate and some late-60s rave-up by a badass unknown garage band from West Memphis. Brilliant. And it's a wonderful Spring-like day here in NYC, which makes a body feeeeeeel goooood. Got lots of freelance work to do, which is good, because I could use the dough, and bad, 'cuz I feel like drinking. Ah, the sacrifices we must make to keep on livin'.

Is a Woman...

...Is the latest record by the band Lambchop. I received an advance copy of it today, and it's brittle and bitter pastoral beautiful ballads are destroying me. The perfect record to return to NYC to. Photos have been processed and will be in the mail soon, tales have been told with incriminating details left out and life continues apace.

In Other News: One good turn deserves another. My friend Ralph McGinnis gave me uber-props on his blog, now y'all motherfuckers best go read his bitchings ovah heah.

The Last Full Day in Town

Bittersweet waking up this morning (afternoon, technically), as it was my last full day in New Orleans. Nothing good about that, nothing at all. My only concrete plans for the day were to meet my friend Rob Tsarov at six in the P.M. and take the ferry across the Mississppi with him to the quaint and beautiful quasi-suburb of Algiers, where he lives with his wife Max and their daughter Annabella. On my way to meet him, I did some errands in the French Quarter, ran into some friends ("Sneaky" Pete Orr, Karen Conway, etc.) and saw a woman walking her minature pet llama. No lie.

Eating and being with Rob’s family was a great experience. Both he and Max are incredibly smart and creative people (he’s a playwright and Max is an artist) who really bring out the best in me. They’re simply great folk, and they’re raising a fine daughter who reflects the best qualities of both of her parents. I find the Tsarov family to be a comforting inspiration, and as I left them (after a kick-ass enchilada dinner prepared by Rob, followed by Indian ginger tea; these folks are true down-home gourmands) I felt… simply goddamned good.

The rest of the evening was spent saying goodbye to folks. Jo at the R Bar, everybody at the Shim Sham, and so on. The evening ended with me and my friend Danielle watching the three-hour "Untitled" cut of Almost Famous, making a great movie even better. Sleep came at six in the morning.

Black Mountain Fell On Me

Witnessed the rock majesty of my friends Jon, Brooke and Steve's new double-bass/drums/Appalachia-buckdancing/sludge groove band Black Mountain last night at the fabulous Mermaid Lounge, and I gotta say that it's nice not to have to lie to a friend in a band when you tell them that you that you thought they played a badass set. In other words, they played a badass set.

Then I proceeded to stay out until eight in the morning and continued running into old friends like Lorelei Sharkey and Patty Meagher and so on. Drinking beer at 7:30 in the morning while a rheumy-eyed old drunk next to you mumbling and occasionally busting into a James Brown/karate dance move is probably bad for my health, but if I'm going to be the Charles Bukowski of the sci-fi world, I guess I have to take a few bullets for the team.

Tattoos and Foxholes

Kinda big day yesterday. Didn't leave the house until six, completley hungover and ravenously hungry, and headed over to Juan's Flying Burrito on Magazine Street for what my friend Brent Rollins calls brunner (breakfast+lunch+dinner). Chris and I had an appointment to keep with Robert Starnes, Steve Hesse and Sue Bennet--we were all to get a tattoo of the symbol of our organization, the Deliverators, somewhere 'pon our bodies. I chose my right wrist, and dammit if the ink didn't turn out swell, thanks to the artistry of Ed from Electric Ladyland, located on Frenchmen in the Marigny. After tats, Chris. my friend Suzanne and I rambled on over to the Shim Sham to see stoner rock mandarins Fu Manchu. The show was great, and I got to see even more old friends whom I've been missing. The evening ended, once again, at the Saint, where I almost, but not quite, jumped on the bar to sing while the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody" blared on the jukebox. The usual cast of characters was there, and the mood was drunken and freewheelin'. Are we going to be doing these things when we're all 40?

At this very moment I am listening to: the self-titled debut album of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and their somewhat gloomy yet rocking music perfectly complements the grayness of a rainy New Orleans Saturday afternoon. Ah, it's good to be alive.

And oh yeah, foxholes. "Foxhole" is my new slang term for, uh, a woman's very special private part. It just hit me, and I like the way it sounds. Don't you?

Makin' Like a Monkey in the A.M.

I've been not drinking as much as I usually would during my trip down here to New Orleans, and details of last night will have to follow, but just to give y'all a point of reference, at seven o' clock this morning I was running up and down Decatur Street doing the hunched-over close-to-the-ground monkey running thing, in the rain, much to the amusement of the always awesome Susie Black. We had left her boyfriend Matt Vaughn and my friend Chris Cummings in a bar for a few moments to "look for chicks." We were waiting on a host of plesantly plump Goth girls to arrive at the bar we were at, but they weren't showing and we were getting impatient and anxious. Ah, life...