| This stain on the carpet, this drink in my hand. |
[entries|friends|calendar] |
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| Platypus vs. Cat |
[29 Jun 2009|01:53am] |
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mood |
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 monday don't let me down |
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music |
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Louis Armstrong- "I'm Not Rough" |
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| I promise to have a substantial update soon. |
[23 Jun 2009|07:55pm] |
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mood |
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i should be stressed! |
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music |
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Fiona Apple- "Shabby Doll" |
] |
Can I just add my voice to the seemingly unending wave of praise and adulation that Pixar's "Up" has gotten? Jesus Christ what a beautiful movie. I wept like a little girl with a skinned knee. I turned around and looked at La Cosa and she was weeping too. We agreed never to discuss this ever again.
In other news. Does Chinese take-out count as "fast food"? I mean, it's pretty fast.
I had some last night and now I feel like there are two dragons battling in my stomach. Perhaps for the affections of a third dragon, a lady dragon, who is not at all impressed and thus making her way through my intestines.
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| Naive melody. |
[19 Jun 2009|11:05am] |
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music |
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Talking Heads- "This Must be the Place" |
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When I'm having romantic problems, I listen to Morrissey.
When I'm in a happy place, I listen to Frank Sinatra.
This morning I listened to Morrissey singing a Frank Sinatra song.
I wonder what that means.
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| 3 Items. |
[09 Jun 2009|01:11pm] |
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mood |
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 ck866 |
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music |
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NoFX- "Olympia Wa" |
] |
- Yesterday I remembered out of the blue that I had purchased the Lady Gaga album in a sudden fit of randomness last month. I put it on last night on my way back home and realized with horror that I had made a terrible mistake.
- I have a lunch scheduled tomorrow at the Pink House with La Cosa and her mother who works there. The Pink House is the Argentinean White House, where the President lives and operates. It's pink.
- Note to self: Upon consuming "happy brownies", do not think it is somehow a good idea to watch VH1 countdowns of mid-90s rap videos, do live-action recreations of them in the taxi ride on the way back home (berate the poor, confused taxi driver who has to drive your obnoxious ass home for not recognizing you were obviously imitating Master P) and spend the next day disconcerted and out of it and calling people on the phone for absolutely no reason. God damn.
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| Never underestimate the power of new gear. |
[02 Jun 2009|04:48pm] |
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mood |
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 new toy |
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music |
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Fucked Up- "Crooked Head" |
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My new ergonomic HD Panasonic headphones make listening to music an immensely pleasurable experience. It's like eating a delicious cake. Of music. Through my ears.
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| And the week starts. |
[01 Jun 2009|11:25am] |
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mood |
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 well played, monday. |
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music |
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Velvet Underground- "There She Goes" |
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I had a training scheduled this morning with a client of ours in London at 8AM EST-- 9AM Argentina time.
There are a few things that are important to understand. In order for me to be lucid and prepared enough to give a WebEx training session at 9 in the morning, I need to wake up at around 6:30. This is because I'm an incredibly slow person in the mornings-- even the simplest tasks take me forever. It's strange because I remember being such a morning person when I was a little kid. No longer the case.
So I wake up at 6:30-- my Super Mario theme song alarm rings out. I grab the cell phone with the intention to wake up and start my day, but instead I cradle it in my arms like a lover and fall back to sleep. I have a bizarre dream in which I suddenly decide I want to become a firefighter, so I go to firefighting school. But before that I have a going-away party at my school where my classmates rip off their arms and give them to me as a send-off, which I found sweet and horrifying at the same time in the dream.
I wake up and realize with horror that it's now 7:55. I take the quickest shower I've ever taken, get all my stuff ready and leave my apartment building. Instead of doing what would be the sensible thing and grabbing a taxi, I jump in the 152 bus with my music on (Diana Krall's rendition of "Departure Bay", not a good choice for somebody who wants to get somewhere fast). In the bus, I think about how I'm going to approach this-- I'm going to just set up a quick WebEx session and wing it. I'm not going to do any preparation for this. This client is pretty tech-savvy anyway. She's been using the system for a while. It's just going to be her asking me some questions and that's it. I can handle this.
The client is gorgeous. Granted, all I have to go by is a 100pixels wide Facebook profile picture, but she's stunning. She's got two of my favorite things in a girl: an English accent and green eyes. Of course this means I've always been a nervous dork whenever I've interacted with her. I want to impress her with my awesomeness today.
The bus drops me off and I still have four blocks to go on foot. I look at my cell phone clock. It's 8:55. But really that means it's about 8:48 'cause my cell phone's time is a little off. That's fine. I speed down Fitz-Roy street and take a left on Guatemala. I can see the office. There are people outside. I'm gonna make it. It's onl-- wait, why are there people outside? Are they waiting for me? What's up?
My coworker Galo who looks like a hobbit and has cats who wrestle tells me that the guy who usually opens the office up in the morning hasn't arrived. FUCK. FUCK FUCK SHIT FUCK.
I tell myself to simmer down. Sure, this sucks. I'm going to be late for our training session. But this isn't my fault. Even if I had gotten up at 6:30 as originally planned and didn't have to race through Buenos Aires but instead gone at my usual, lethargic pace, this would've happened. In fact, it makes for a great way to open the conversation. "Sorry I'm a little late but you wouldn't believe what happened!". And I'd tell my beautiful green-eyed UK client the story of how we were locked outside of the office. Ha, ha, ha, she'd say. What a charming anecdote. What a hilarious turn of events! She'd laugh and say oh Jorge, you're so charming. And hey, I'm going to Buenos Aires next week, maybe we can meet up in some restaurant in Puerto Madero and have dinner and laugh and walk together in the moonlight, arm in arm, discussing the meaning of life and then staring into each other's eyes and saying how weird and wonderful it is that two strangers from such different places met up in this wonderful city and hey, remember that day when you were locked outside of the office and was late to our training session?-- and then share a passionate kiss.
Or! She could say "No, Jorge. This is shameful. I was here waiting all morning. This is fucking ridiculous. You call youself a professional? You are an ugly idiot. Not only am I canceling my use of the service, I am calling the company's CEO and telling him what a pathetic piece of shit he has working for him. You are a disgrace, Jorge. I would never kiss you. Never!"
9:20 AM now. The guy arrives. He apologizes for being late. Opens the door for us. I rush upstairs, turn my computer on, open my lovely client's e-mail where she asks me if I'm available at 9 AM on monday June 8th for a training session. I click "reply" and tell her I'M SO SORRY FOR BEING LATE I'VE HAD A CRAZY MORNING-- CAN I CALL YOU? And then just as I'm about to hit "Send", I see it.
Monday June 8th
Monday June 8th
Monday June 8th
Monday June 8th
Monday June 8th
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| Weakness was his talent. |
[29 May 2009|02:00pm] |
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mood |
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 satellite |
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music |
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Elvis Costello- "Red Cotton" |
] |
The new Elvis Costello record is absolutely gorgeous. It's streaming for free on his website-- http://www.elviscostello.com. It's a decidedly bluegrass and country-flavored affair, no real percussion to speak of. It's twangy and it's southern and it's graceful in a way I never thought I'd hear in a record made up of ragtime, chunky slide-guitar ballads. It's strange how someone from the skinny-tie new-wave English scene from the late 70s recorded what is, from what I've heard, the most authentically "American"-sounding record of the year. It's also remarkable to me how someone with 30 years of making music is still releasing consistently strong albums so prolifically-- 10 full-length records in this decade.
Next Sunday I'm going to go see the Jonas Brothers: The 3D Experience movie with a group of stoned film students too numbed-down from school to really take themselves too seriously anymore. It's funny-- they say most schools make you loathe your career of choice. I find it a small victory that these Italian Neo-realism kids aren't so up their own asses anymore that they can take a couple hours to get stoned and watch the pelvic gyrations of the Jonas Brothers in 3D. I mean, I'm as much a Cahiers du Cinema wannabe as they are (and probably even more so), but even Truffaut didn't take himself so fucking seriously. I also reckon Truffaut would've probably been a JB fan.
I went to a Gay party called La Fiesta Plop last weekend. And while I had an incredible amount of fun, the first few minutes were the most out of place I've ever felt anywhere-- ever, and that's saying something considering I feel out of place 80% of the time. I felt like I was violating some sort of code by being there-- walking through the crowd I'd feel like everybody was staring at me. It only took a few minutes, some drinks, a "Pokerface" remix and reaffirmations of my sexuality by means of my partner being shamelessly salacious to really get into it. The evening ended with a 7:30 AM subway ride with one of the transvestites who was with our group and kept talking to me about "Lost". All in all, one of the strangest and most wonderful nights I've ever had.
This was followed by a visit to Buenos Aires Chinatown-- which isn't really a chinatown per se, just a bunch of Asian-owned and Asian-themed (sort of) business strewn across a few blocks in uptown Buenos Airess-- and then a Korean-operated karaoke bar with La Cosa and her friends (hear us perform the Smiths classic "How Soon is Now" here). And it's been lovely and wonderful and nice. But then something happens-- a small, insignificant thing-- and everything comes crashing down because I think this is some SIGN that everything's doomed. I mean, nothing this good can last, right?
And that's what I meant in my last entry when I said my life has been an emotional rollercoaster. It's been extremes all month long. It's pretty ridiculous. Things are okay but I feel my neuroses taking over from time to time and I think I'm so guarded but really it takes very little to completely disarm me. Fact of the matter is, I'm doing okay-- things are fine, my romantic life is picking back up-- reluctantly, but still picking up! But I find enough negative feelings and dread in me to weigh it all down. And I come here and I whine. And you think of these things as teenage histrionics, or teen angst-- the word "teen" always preceding it, as to diminish it. But then you're past twenty and all of the things you were supposed to grow out of-- all that fear and insecurities and neuroses and paranoias-- they're still there. And you're fucking 22! Fuck, I mean, does it ever end?
I don't know. I'm taking it easy for now. This weekend promises to be nice and relaxing. And really, that's the best I can hope for for now.
Happy friday, everybody!
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| And continuing my recent thread of happy, uplifting entries. |
[28 May 2009|02:49am] |
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mood |
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 it's bound to happen again |
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music |
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Elvis Costello- "She Handed Me a Mirror" |
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Finding out all your paranoia is completely justified is the most awful feeling in the world. Because it's this creeping horror that just rushes up from underneath like a sickness and takes full hold of you and strangles and shakes you. And it squeezes every other feeling out of you so all you have left is this fright. And it leaves you shivering. And it eventually subsides but the high-water mark is still there. You're changed, whether you want it or not. A little more embittered, a little more jaded. Here's where I let myself believe things might work out. Here's where I thought for a second I'd hit the jackpot. Here's where.
My life is one ridiculous fucking emotional rollercoaster these days.
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| R.I.P. Jay Bennett |
[27 May 2009|04:43pm] |
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mood |
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 wow. |
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music |
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Wilco- "Handshake Drugs" |
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How foreboding is titling an album "A Ghost is Born" after the departure of a band member that years later may or not have been driven to his death by the wheels set in motion by kicking him out of the band and releasing that album?
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| Well, duh. |
[22 May 2009|01:19am] |
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mood |
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 siiigh. |
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music |
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Elliott Smith- "Punch and Judy" |
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How'd that Weezer song go? "Every time I pin down one I think I want, it slips away"?
Yeah.
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| "Yeah!" is what we had |
[19 May 2009|10:17am] |
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mood |
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off on your merry way |
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music |
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Grandaddy- "The Group that Couldn't Say" |
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I really hate Tuesdays. They're the day of the week farthest from fridays without having the excuse of being Monday. Mondays are a necessary evil-- Tuesdays are just cruel and ruthless. It's also worth noting that every single horrible thing that has ever happened to me has happened on a Tuesday (I actually have no real evidence to back this up-- I'm talking out my ass, as I am prone to doing).
This weekend was fun. Rease and Rachel, these two girls from St Louis, MO I met in a hostel three years ago (holy shit) came down to Buenos Aires and hung out for a few days. I of course played the role of the convivial host and paraded them through the city for laughs and general awesomeness. That's actually not true-- they were here for four days, two of which I was unavailable. But still! It was awesome seeing them again after so long. I have found that I am an excellent tourist guide because I just make up lies about everything we see. "You see this cave here? This is where the few surviving homeless people fled after the Great Homeless Person Slaughter of 1989. They would feast on rats and each other's feces and pray to their made-up goddess, Indigencia".
The excruciatingly slow process of finalizing my legal status in Argentina has taken another slow dinosaur step into completion. Of course, only after spending hours upon hours in the immigration offices and running frantically through the city gathering paperwork and getting things stamped and approved and handing in background records like school assignments to jaded bureaucrats.
Other than that, things have been surprisingly pleasant in my life. Everything seems to look like it's about to fall apart but then unexpectedly rise to the challenge at the very last minute. I'm not sure if this is directly related to the sudden turns in my romantic life, but it certainly feels that way. Work and school have grown gradually more intense and draining, and I'm knee-deep in movies and reading material, but I'm strangely content. I'm moving around. I'm seeing people. I dunno, it's exciting. I feel like I've shaken off the ennui and realized that I am surrounded by possibilities. It's brilliant.
And in the absence of more words,
( Pictures! )
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| Internets and real world collide. |
[13 May 2009|08:41am] |
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mood |
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stumble'd |
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music |
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Alejandro Escovedo- "Always a Friend" |
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One of my new clients is StumbleUpon a website Maggie introduced me to a long time ago that has served as a fantastic way to waste my afternoons away at work and/or home, finding some of the weirdest and most interesting sites on the web. I was, of course, giddy with excitement upon learning that I had the chance to work with the people responsible for it, but I wanted to keep my composure.
But, while introducing myself as their Account Manager, any hope I ever had of coming off as a level-headed and relentlessly cool professional went down the drain as soon as they mentioned that my work e-mail was linked to my StumbleUpon account. This means they could see all my settings and preferences as well as list of Favorite Sites, including an inordinate amount of pictures of dogs water skiing and bears dressed as firemen.
Oyy.
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| How I feel today--> 05/07/09 |
[07 May 2009|06:11pm] |
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mood |
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 fucked. |
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music |
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Leonard Cohen- "I'm Your Man" |
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I feel like someone fucked me up the eye sockets.
That is all.
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| More bullshit posturing. |
[03 May 2009|04:10am] |
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mood |
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muted sax |
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music |
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Paul Gonsalves- "Over the Rainbow" |
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The problem is that Truffaut and Godard not only had something to say, they had something to prove-- the fundamental right of an artist to make art theirs. That this wasn't some crazy, outdated idea in cinema. That films could still be visceral, that you as an artist could pour yourself into your work and effectively become part of it-- to have your vision reflected upon the silver screen. La politique des Auteurs was a rousing call to arms and Les cuatre cents coups was the victorious coup d'etat. There's more there than a bright-eyed well-read kid with a story to tell. This is the problem with my recycled generation-- we have learned from the masters but haven't really added anything of value of our own. The search for a voice as a filmmaker, of an artistic identity, is as stifling as it has ever been because everybody believes they have something new and original to say when really, everybody just wants to be a 21st century Cassavettes. We're world-weary and post-modern and smart-alecky. Everybody is eternally stuck in these moments of doubt and uncertainty and the things we say all sound the same. I'm certain we have stories to tell. I don't quite know if we have anything left to prove.
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| You don't have to |
[02 May 2009|10:31pm] |
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 unusual |
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Animal Collective- "College" |
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It's so weird. It's every time we say hello. We give each other these hugs that feel super strong and heartfelt and there's always that look in her eyes-- that concerned "I'm here for you, friend, I love you" look. And it's always when we say hello. She'll then retreat somewhere inside herself and be dismissive and forgetful and so ridiculously frustrating and out of it. And I chalk it up to whatever personal melodrama she might be going through at the moment, and one day she'll snap out of it and be the girl I knew-- a pillar of strength and wisdom, a little ray of sunshine cutting through the drab greyness of the day. But the days pass and it's always the same. And I try to reach out-- to call her attention to it. "HEY. Hey, listen. Hey, I'm here. Don't forget me. I'm your friend. I'm still here. I want to help you. Please realize what's going on." But she says she'll write me a letter and the days pass and she never does. And she retreats to that spot inside her head, and I'm left out again. She doesn't understand that it kills me.
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| "Welcome to JORGE'S OFFICIAL PERSONAL WEBSITE THING" |
[26 Apr 2009|03:22am] |
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mood |
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late greats of the internet |
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music |
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Feist- "So Sorry" |
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Geocities, the web-hosting giants of the late-nineties responsible for a ridiculous amount of Hanson fan pages, is shutting down soon, effectively wiping a big chunk of internet history (and horrible animated gifs and oversized, multi-colored font) off the world wide web. I have to admit, I felt a tinge of nostalgia as I read the news. The very first few pages I frequented were hosted on Geocities. Sketchy-looking personal websites with enormous, blocky text and frames-- Frames! What a controversial concept. And they'd let you choose-- you can see this website with frames or without. I would always choose without-- the "standard-to-widescreen" fallacy.
I had a Geocities website. Shit, who didn't? And like everybody's, mine was sloppy and ridiculously colorful and had an enormously long and complicated URL. I remember the hours it took me to put together the most basic HTML code to get my Dragon Ball Z fansite up and running and gather the record-shattering 48 visits it eventually got (45 of which were probably my own). My super-high-speed 28k dial-up modem hard at work.
This all got me thinking about those days-- the dawn of my internet usage. The crazy innocence and wide-eyed sugarshot sense of wonder and astonishment of it all. I very distinctly remember my neighborhood friend showing me his new computer with internet connection. I remember him showing me a website where you could chat with people. Chat with people! Strangers from other countries! And they were all so interesting and had so many stories and were so interested in what I had to say! I remember thinking, "if I had one of these things, I'd be chatting with friendly strangers all day!".
When I finally did get my own internet access, I spent hours upon hours on those chat rooms. I made some good friends there on the topical rooms-- mostly anime-related. Dragon Ball was, of course, an obsession of mine at the time, so I sought out all I could find. I joined my first few mailing lists-- this girl, Sarah, from my hometown, had a Dragon Ball fanfiction website and introduced me to all her friends from places like the United States and Belgium, and they'd just exchange crazy e-mail messages about Dragon Ball every day. One day I actually met Sarah, effectively making her my first net-to-real-life contact.
It wasn't long after that I started losing interest in Dragon Ball and had an epiphany-- this internet thing is pretty anonymous, right? I could just lie about who I am. And so I started creating online personas and joining message boards and mailing lists as all these different people. Johnny, a 22 year old punk rocker from Syracuse, New York. Mike, a wealthy businessman in search for true love. Sue, a female asian-american weight-lifter. And I made many friends with many of those different personas. To this day, I still talk to some of them if I log onto my old AIM account-- small talk. "Yeah, man, I got married", "Yeah, dude, still jamming with the guys". I don't have it in me to let them know I've been lying to them for over ten years.
All these people I've accumulated and talked to and been over ten years. This blog will turn five years old in a couple of months. If it were to be wiped off the map like Geocities is about to be, I'd be pretty devastated. And sure, their Google caches may live on-- but that's a mere photograph of what once was, filled with unclickable links and broken pictures. It's sort of scary, in a way.
Now I want to find my old Geocities website, but for the life of me I can't remember the URL. Why the fuck did they have to make them so long and elaborate?
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| I am one as you are out of your fucking mind. |
[23 Apr 2009|08:17pm] |
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silverfuck |
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music |
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The Smashing Pumpkins- "Geek USA" |
] |
Billy Corgan is starting a video blog and charging fans for access. Apparently five five-minute in-studio snippets of the "band" (which at this point I guess consists of Billy and whoever isn't on his shit-list at any particular moment) recording what is sure to be their next masterpiece will be posted to the SP site weekly.
From the official website,
"I am excited to make this offer to anyone who might be interested in what goes on behind the wizard's curtain. It is my goal to far exceed the normal documentary process and use the moment to create something that invokes synchronicity, electricity and faith into a moment that is ever unfolding."
Now, this is pretty hilarious, isn't it? Watching an over-the-hill egotistical prick writing and recording sub-standard songs with a couple mindless hired lemmings is supposed to invoke synchronicity, electricity and faith? Into a moment that is ever unfolding? What the hell does that even mean?
What's also hilarious is that the thing is so ridiculously expensive (seriously, a 40 dollar subscription fee to watch you be pretentious?) and he's saying that if demand for the video-blog isn't very high the project will be "put aside". If that were to happen, you just know that there will be a particularly bitter blog post about how much of a shame it is that people don't value art and the creative process enough these days.
Seriously, though. It wasn't bad enough that when the Smashing Pumpkins reformed they were basically the drummer, Billy and a couple of no-names. This means it was, essentially, just as much a Zwan reunion. On top of that, this incarnation of the Pumpkins play ridiculously onanistic sets consisting mostly of overlong jams, new songs no one in the audience knows and very few familiar songs-- and reworked versions at that. Then add to that his rants, antagonizing his fans for not buying his records and chastising them for being harebrained lemmings who, quite understandibly, wanted to rock out to their favorite SP tunes and not some drawn-out "art jam" session.
On top of that, Jimmy Chamberlain, the one good thing this band had going for it, decides to leave because he "cannot continue to put his effort into something he doesn't fully possess", essentially confirming everybody's suspicions that that Billy is a crazy control freak.
When observing pop culture there are often moments when somebody behaves in a way that's so completely idiotic, so over-the-top ridiculous you can't help think they're pulling an elaborate prank on the audience. A post-modern Andy Kaufman moment. And then the slow, creeping horror of realizing that they're 100% serious.
I'll be fair. I love the Smashing Pumpkins output from 1993 through 1998. Some songs in Machina were alright, too. But I don't think I've ever seen a rock star so out of touch with his audience, with such a misplaced sense of entitlement and with his head so deep up his own ass. I actually sort of liked the Zwan record and Zeitgeist (not TheFutureEmbrace, though, a thousand times no), but longwinded, self-important douchebag Billy needs to grow the fuck up if he doesn't want to end up alienating the few fans he has left.
For now, I'm listening to Siamese Dream-- by far the best thing that's ever been associated with the name "Billy Corgan". Oh, next to Paz Lenchantin, of course.
'Sup Paz? <3
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| A kick in the head |
[21 Apr 2009|11:40am] |
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mood |
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 white-collar |
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music |
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Regina Spektor- "The Flowers" |
] |
I am now at a position in the company where people actually depend on me for results. Where I'm working one-on-one with the company's CEO and dealing as a direct contact with our clients. I'll be glued to the cell phone a lot (well, a lot more than I am right now, anyway) and probably running out of class to take important calls. Film shoots will probably be the only times I'll be fully free from the clutches of the corporate world, since I will not allow a production to be stalled because of work. Other than that, I am to be there-- available-- at all times, obsequious, attentive, charming, witty. The fact that someone believed in me enough to put me in this position is as startling as it is flattering. With any luck, I won't fuck this up like I have every opportunity that's been placed in my lap as of late.
This seems fun. I can do this. This seems easy. I can do this. I am a professional.
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| Questioningly |
[19 Apr 2009|09:12pm] |
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mood |
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sprinkled |
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music |
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The Ramones- "Life's a Gas" |
] |
I got my first Ramones record when I was 12. At the time I was just starting to get into punk rock, so of course my favorite bands at the time were Green Day and The Offspring. And through the wonders of the internet I found many an interview where their respective members would talk about how the band changed their life. The first Ramones song I ever heard was The Offspring's cover of "I Wanna Be Sedated". They recorded it for a movie soundtrack-- Idle Hands, this horrible late-nineties teen horror comedy with a pre-Dark Angel Jessica Alba. I remember listening to that song and thinking, "this sounds too bouncy for Offspring. This sounds like a Green Day song" and pausing the credit sequence at the end to find out who had written the track. "Originally performed by The Ramones". Now that I think of it, it's oddly appropriate that my first taste of the Ramones came at the same time as my first glimpse at the woman who would serve as masturbatory fodder throughout a big chunk of my teens.
Speaking of balls, shortly after my 12th birthday I noticed an unnatural swelling of my ballsack. It had been bothering me for a few days but I ignored it, mostly thinking it had to do with how I was wearing my underwear. One day after hanging out with a few friends from the neighborhood I came back home and realized my balls were enormous and red and extremely painful. My mom took me to the doctor who quickly told me that I had an extra-testicular cyst in my scrotum. This meant that I had a cyst in my scrotum, not in my balls. While this was a huge relief, the fact that they were going to have to cut me open to remove the benign tissue was a shock to me, and I cried for hours that night. The next morning I was sent in for surgery, where I had some sort of allergic reaction to the anesthetics and had complications related to facial swelling and fever dreams. It was a long, bizarre night. I survived.
The next few days were horrible. I couldn't move, obviously, since my ballsack was still healing. The pain was the worst I've ever felt, and the nights were spent crying in pain as I watched my Dragon Ball Z tapes over and over again. Of course, my dad helped me out in every single way he could, trying to keep me happy by getting me junk food and goodies. One of those goodies was the Ramones album Adios Amigos (my aunt gave me a trade paperback copy of the Batman: Knightfall storyline, which was my first Batman comic and the trigger for another decade-long obsession, but that's a whole other story).
I listened to that album on repeat for days. It was like a 35-minute rockn'roll history lesson. All my Offspring and Green Day albums were rendered obsolete as soon as the first few ripping chords blared through my headphones like the screaming, bloody birth of rockn'roll. They were fun, they were aggressive, they were passionate and they were soulful. This wasn't "When I Come Around". This wasn't "Pretty Fly For a White Guy". It wasn't on MTV all the time. None of my friends knew them. This was a whole other thing. This was my band. And they were my closest friends all through high school, along with other luminaries like Fat Mike, Elvis Costello, Robert Smith and Tom Waits.
(Interestingly enough, the first Tom Waits song I ever heard was in that Ramones album-- track 1, "I Don't Want to Grow Up". Of course, the punked-up Ramones version was a far cry from what I would be getting into a few years later when I found my all-time favorite artist, but I just find it poetic somehow. Offspring-> The Ramones-> Tom Waits.)
I remember what I did the night Joey Ramone died. I cried in my bed, feeling like a complete asshole for it. I read articles about him online. I scribbled his lyrics in my journal. I learned how to play "Cretin Hop" on the guitar. And I remember what I did the night Dee Dee died. I had just come home from a weekend trip to Cartagena with my family. I decided that night that I was never going to do heroin, and listened to "Poison Heart" on repeat for hours. When Johnny died, I played along with "Loco Live" and sat outside my record store alone at night, and then I came home and I blogged about it. My friends were dying. One by one.
I thank that cyst in my scrotum for opening my eyes and showing me some fantastic music that has stuck with me through the years. Who knows what my high school existence would've been without them? I'm listening to "Life's a Gas" now and remembering.
Gabba gabba hey, brothers.
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| And from the ceiling... |
[17 Apr 2009|11:53am] |
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Chet Baker- "Deep in a Dream" |
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Strange wonders.
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