My New Year's Wish.

I don't know what my plans are yet for New Year's Eve, and I don't really care since it is so often filled with the pressure to have fun due to some weird collective magical thinking about the night's implications for the coming year. My happiest New Year's Eves (was that the right way to say it? It looks funny) were spent in my own damn house. There is one thing that I really want though, and it's GOING TO HAPPEN next year — if not after midnight on 1/1/11 then on some other night. Its something that's been a dream of mine for so many years, gone unfulfilled. And here it is:

Can someone pleeease toast with me so hard that our glasses shatter? In my long-running fantasy it's been two glass steins. But I realize that between the heft, the mess, and my lack of upper body strength it's just not realistic. It can be two flutes. Two delicate flutes, you guys! How satisfying would it be just put all of the mixed bag that's been 2010 into the force of your toast and just SHATTER that bitch. Here's to us!

My ex-boyfriend was willing to do this once a few years ago, but then he started talking about protective eyewear, and tarps, and I got so overwhelmed with logistics I took the whole thing off the table. But I'm older and more mature now, and I know that there's nothing uncool about safety. Does anyone have those steel wool gloves they use at delis to clean the blade?

There is nothing more tragic than an attainable goal, unfulfilled. Don't make me post a Craigslist ad like that one guy who wanted people to come to his garage and pose on his homemade crucifix, which I didn't want to do but wanted to watch someone do or at least ask the guy some questions? ANYWAY, 2011. Toast smash. Let's do this.

I just downloaded A Very Special Christmas because it reminds me of baking cookies with my mother as a little kid. For a caustic, chain-smoking recovering alcoholic who considered her unwillingness to cook a form of feminism, Mom could get pretty domestic around the holidays. Halloween too — for a few years she'd even sew a costume for me and a matching one for my Cabbage Patch Kid.


When I was growing up I spent every Christmas eve at my great aunt Eileen's house in Philadelphia, helping her decorate her giant tree. She had those great giant multicolored bulb lights that they only make in LED now because they were probably enviro-murder, and I had a favorite ornament that I have in my apartment now because I asked for it after she died. It's a beaded velvet faux-Victorian monstrosity of a thing, so heavy it strained even the thickest branches up top. Deep purple in color and covered in pearl pushpins, it's basically Prince in Christmas ornament form, and in my few years on earth I had never seen anything more glamorous in my life.


I'm not sure when I found out that my Mom had made it for Aunt Eileen --from a kit--when she was in her twenties. This added a whole new layer of meaning to My Purple Precious. I'd heard enough from Mom speaking at AA meetings, half listening as I colored in the back of the church multipurpose room, to know that her life before she got married and had me was very different (how strange was it when you first realized your parents had an entire life before you came along?). She'd had a convertible, and an Airedale named Martini that rode shotgun, and her "rock bottom" was when her head nursing teacher at Bellevue found her wandering in traffic blackout drunk. It all sounded as dangerous and as unpredictable as her moods still were. Maybe that's why it blew my tiny mind picturing it: My mother driving to a craft store and buying the materials for the ornament, and then sitting down to push the pearl pins in one at a time. I imagined her furrowed brow, her cursing as she glued on the gold curlicue trim. I have a hard time reconciling the hurricane person with the calm, crafts-inclined person. Both lived in there obviously, just like earlier versions lived inside the woman that raised me.

I don't have a Christmas tree this year but the ornament is hung up in my window. It hangs in tribute as I bake today, listening to our old favorites.

Eurythmics - Winter Wonderland

I'm probably the 800th person to make an 'I'll Tumblr 4 Ya' joke.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

I have a Tumblr now because even grandmas are sexting these days and it's time I stepped into the Now. I'm not abandoning this site (any more than I already have), but for pithy statements and random Internet detritus --

http://ghostproofblanket.tumblr.com/

styrofoam sandwich

Tselanie: and another thing.... what's the deal with macaroons?! its like they were just invented yesterday or something!

me: hahaha

they are a trend-food for sure.They're like a wedding thing now, the macaroon tree has replaced the cupcake towerTselanie: dude! it's out of control. my co-worker brought some in a few weeks ago. they are all over blogs. i like the "classicism" of them, but geez louise! they are NOT tasty!

me: I think I have had the thought "I wish I was enjoying this macaroon more," which is stupid because why do I wish that? because they're so pretty and cool to like? You're right they're not that good.

Tselanie: yes! we want to like them because every acts like they like them all the time. actually the artificial coloring freaks me the fuck out

all in all, macaroons make me pretty angry

me: Finally, someone is brave enough to say it

Tselanie: i just put up two facebook posts. i'm going to wait a few hours and rant this one out on there

me: hahahaha

I may blog it!

it's time to admit this emperor has NO clothes

Tselanie: he is literally nude

Mischief Nights

I wasn't sure if I was sold on Diamond Rings, because it's the sort of Gay Boy Electronic Posture Music I will listen to for awhile and then never really listen to again (see: Tiga, Baby Dayliner, and Patrick Wolf). But there's nothing wrong with that really. I'm super into this song right now and the video is DELIGHTFUL.

I looove when an already great music video goes into a totally different song at the end, like Fabolous' Holla Back and Missy's Get Ur Freak On.

Soon there will be Five Leaves Left

Joel Sternfeld is probably my favorite photographer after Weegee. Oh, and Helen Levitt too.

The days are getting shorter and then it will be November, aka 'Nick Drake and mild seasonal effective order o'clock.'

I've been getting back into sweaters and spookiness, that kind of thing. What are you being for Halloween?

Sufjan Stevens - From the Mouth of Gabriel

(from the All Delighted People EP not the new album)

Perfume Genius - Mr. Peterson

"Tragic" only looks good on Anna Magnani

I heard back from the social worker at my mother's nursing home today. I had left messages, wanting to know why they never called to tell me she'd gone into hospice and died. "I guess it was all a miscommunication" was pretty much the answer I got. "Someone (she refused to specify who) tried to call you, but they couldn't get an answer." It seems that a nameless someone had called the cell phone number I've had since 2002 and claimed that they didn't even get a voicemail message. Since this is the first time I have ever heard of this happening with my phone service, I asked the social worker how many times one tries a dying person's Power of Attorney/child before giving up. Her response was "Uh...well when's the last time YOU called the doctors to see how she was?" This is the same woman who told me two years ago that I was doing the right thing by leaving New York, that my mom was vegetative and it was time for me to start my non-caregiving life. "Look," she said towards the end of the call, "I wish it had happened differently but this is what happened and now it's over."

What is over: My mom's life is over, the course of her awful disease is over and my trips to Yonkers are almost over. When I get a better and more truthful explanation from St. Joseph's (and I file a complaint with the Department of Health) my dealings with the nursing home will finally be over too. What I'd like to be over the soonest though is this one feeling that comes and goes when I get sad about her being dead. It's kind of like being alone in a dark bar in the middle of the day, with no music on so the only noises are glasses being washed or a stool scooting across the floor. Like this weird and very specific kind of loneliness which probably everyone gets when their parent dies, or some variation of it anyway.

Also: A few of my mom's cousins have offered up memories of what she was like before she had me, which I can't get enough of. But they've also said things like "Your Mom was a survivor and so are you" — the word "survivor" was used by more than one person when talking about her, or saying the two of us had been through a lot. It reminded me of a quote I read from Donatella Versace right after her brother Gianni was murdered. She said something like 'so many people are telling me how all of this made me so strong, well I'm strong enough now and I don't want to be any stronger.' That was the first time I wondered if calling someone a "survivor" isn't just kind of polishing a turd. Isn't it really just saying you're the kind of person that crappy things happen to a lot, and you handle it with the natural human response that is survival? Where is the honor in that? I don't want to be lumped into this Survivors Club they speak of. I'm totally good with running the Getting Good and Bad in Equal Measure and Dealing with it Okay crowd.

I promise this is like my next to last post about my mother dying and the next one will be a playlist! I found this Warpaint cover of one of Mom's favorite Bowie songs while I was compiling it.

Warpaint - Ashes to Ashes

It Gets Better

I love all things Dan Savage and this video made my day. It's the first post from the It Gets Better project, started by Dan to encourage LGBT teens to stick it out until they get out of high school and realize that the provincial half-wits that bullied them can't affect their lives anymore. Dan and his partner tell their "how we met" story, talk about their son and generally talk about the awesome lives they carved out for themselves.

This message is great not just for LGBT kids but for anyone who's bullied in high school and might be losing sight of the big picture. As a teenager I was harassed constantly for dying my hair purple and dressing funny ─ things were thrown at me, I was spat on and called a freak and a dyke, barely a day went by where I wasn't called ugly or repulsively weird. My mom would tell me the exact same thing that Terry says toward the end of this video: "Living well is the best revenge." The brilliance of clinging to this advice was that it helped me ignore the bullies (most of the time) and by the time I started living the life I wanted to, I didn't care about the revenge part because I was happier. Thanks Dan and Terry. Thanks Mom.

My mom died a week ago and no one told me.

The nursing home told my uncle that they didn't have my contact information (I've had the same phone number for almost 10 years and they've called it many times). I had no idea she was in hospice, that she got better for a minute, that she had a respiratory infection, that she died and was cremated and there was a death certificate and an empty hospital bed. I don't even know what day she left.

I walked around for days and my mother was dead. I rode trains, and two planes, I hugged old friends, I abused my body in several different ways, I drank a margarita with fresh watermelon juice, I woke up on Sunday in an apartment I'd never been to with people I'd mostly just met, I watched Seth play the ukelele, I had terrible meetings at my terrible job, and my mother was ashes the whole time.

on the wangs of my dreams

Perfectly Strange from Dan Meth on Vimeo.

My friend Dan visited Chicago this weekend and it was so fun! We went to lots of good-kind-of-touristy places, like Kuma's and that fountain that spits up on children. He made this video featuring our (fa-lawlessly staged) reenactment of five seconds of the "Perfect Strangers" credits.

Spoon - Chicago at Night

Just Act a Fool, It's Okay If You Drool Cuz Everybody's Gonna Strip and Jump in the Pool

The first album I ever bought that had a Parental Advisory was Digital Underground's Sex Packets. I was in seventh grade, the year Mom and I moved to Philly. On my first day the three class Mean Girls—Brandy, Brandi, and Latisha—asked me what my favorite music was. "Red Hot Chili Peppers," I mumbled. Their laughter instantly shamed me into liking what everyone else liked, instead of just tapes my dad indoctrinated me with. Lucky for me, 1991 was obviously an amaaazing time to start getting into hip hop. Little did I know that 20 years later (FUCK!) I would still find myself drunkenly rapping along to the exact same songs I taped off Power99 and Q102 in junior high.

My mom wanted to go to the mall in the suburbs and she would sometimes buy me a tape as a reward for the hours logged at Macy's or wherever. I handed Sex Packets to her and she gave it to the cashier, a twentysomething South Philly-looking chick. "Ma'am I have to let you know that this has a Parental Advisory sticker on it." My heart sank into my stomach. "I'll listen to it before I let her get anywhere near it," my mom replied as she handed Tipper Gore Jr a twenty. When we got back to the car she tossed the bag with the tape in it into my lap without even looking at me. I still know every word of every song by heart! Yes, "The Humpty Dance" is on it but it's so much more—so extremely goofy and creative and weird. I mean, there's a song about riding a hoopty down into the ocean and chilling with mermaids and an octopus cutting nine records at a time.

Digital Underground - Freaks of the Industry

Digital Underground - DoWatchaLike

Shock G is kind of underrated - he also produced my two favorite Tupac songs ("I Get Around" and "So Many Tears"), but most people only know him as his alter ego Humpty Hump. There's something really noble about achieving the height of your public recognition while wearing Groucho-type glasses.

White Lightning and Wine

When people ask me that 'If you could travel back in time to see any band live?' stoner-y question, this is pretty much my answer. I hope the Wilson sisters got crazy laid because they were untouchable back then, as far as I'm concerned. And check out Luke Skywalker shredding at the 1:45 mark! Everyone's outfits are banaynayz in the best way. I fucking love this song. I used to have the Dreamboat Annie cover framed in my bedroom!

nostalgia songs

How good was The Adventures of Pete and Pete? I'm rewatching it right now and it's still completely brilliant. Even Iggy Pop was delightful in it and not at all like a terrifying meth skeletor with latex for flesh. I saw older Pete in San Francisco about 10 years ago and he looked like a bike messenger, a super cute ginger bike messenger. Oh, and the theme song makes me so happy that I put it on my iPod. And now I'm posting it strictly for da 90s heads.

Polaris - Hey Sandy ("The Adventures of Pete and Pete" theme)



Speaking of songs from movies/TV that make me really happy: This summer mix from the singer for the Morning Benders is cool because it has a Joanna Newsom-sort-of-cover over a J Dilla beat. But the genius of is how it starts off with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters' duet from "The Jerk"! Cutest song ever.

The Morning Benders Summer Mix via Say Mayday

Summer Anthemz 2010, So Far

I'm having a great summer so far, which is part of the reason I haven't been posting. Remember to drink lots of water and protect your face from the harsh aging effects of the sun. Sunscreen, people! For real, there's a reason I still get carded.

A few songs from my June playlist. Some classics, some Classixx:

Brazilian Girls - A Good Time

Seu Jorge and Almaz -Everybody Loves the Sunshine

I've never met a cover of that song that I didn't like [like this D'Angelo one, see?]

Deee Lite - Picnic in the Summertime

In the mid-nineties Lady Miss Kier represented everything I aspired to be, style and life-wise.

Related:

DJ Cam - Dieu Reconnaitra les Siens

Yacht - Psychic City (Classixx Remix)

Dancing On My Own by robyn

Robyn's whole album is so good and you can stream it all on her SoundCloud.

Kid Cudi - Make Her Say ft. Kanye West & Common (Sammy Bananas Remix) by Sammybananas

CSI MyFreddy

I just made the GIF that I'll get on my body as soon as scientists FINALLY figure out how to make animated GIF tattoos. Where are we with this? It seems like Japan should have something by now.

Dramarama - Anything Anything (I'll Give You) [ysi]

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Grownup Child Actors

Q: What do you have against Gary Coleman?

A: We have nothing against Gary Coleman[...]we have the utmost respect and admiration for Gary. We love how he knows who he is and knows that people are taking pleasure in his downfall ("Schadenfreude"), and we love that he appears all over the place poking fun at himself and the pitiful downward slide of his acting career. Have you seen him on "The Simpsons"? On "Star Dates"? We love him.

We sort of idolize him too, in a way, because one of the most important themes in Avenue Q is that life isn't as easy as we've been led to believe. Our parents told us we were special; Mr. Rogers wanted to be our friend and neighbor; we thought we could grow up to be anything we wanted to be, from a fireman to President of the United States. Even in college, we thought we were pretty hot shit, ready to set the world on fire. But when we got out of college, we were faced with rent bills and temping and entry level jobs, if we were even lucky enough to get those. It wasn't nearly as easy or nice as we expected it was going to be. We found to our horror that we weren't all that special after all. And who better to symbolize the oh-so-special-as-a-kid/but-not-so-special-as-an-adult thing we all were faced with than Gary Coleman? He's practically the poster child -- we prefer to think of him as the patron saint -- of grown-up reality sucking. We looked around and found it really sucked to be us, and we knew that if our lives sucked, it must really suck to be Gary Coleman.

The Bass Drum Jungle Music

This archive of jungle mixes from 1995-1998 is taking me back to the days of Konkrete Jungle parties at Coney Island High and buying tapes from vendors at the flea market next to Tower Records on Broadway. One of my favorites opened with a jungle version of "Born to Roll" that I wish I had on mp3.

I completely lost interest in drum and bass when it started taking the turn toward Roni Size and LTJ Bukem's whole jazz-inflected armchair jungle thing. Box of yawns, if I want "intelligent" I can read a book. The Mickey Finn/Navigator mix is my favorite because it captures the exact sound of what I heard the first time I ever came across jungle. One reason I know I need to do some serious traveling abroad is that I can't remember a time in the last 10 years where I've been as blindsided and enthralled by something completely new to me, not like the way I was when I wandered into a room at a rave in New Haven at 16 and saw people dancing to this super-fast music that I had absolutely zero prior context for. I still get fascinated, entertained, amused, etc. but that "mindhole: blown" feeling is something I still want and can't quite find now that I often feel like I've seen and done everything. This reminds me why I keep chasing it and that I probably just need to look in different places.

One in the Jungle Archive

gonna make ya sweat til ya BLEED

image: Date Farmers

It's fucking hot finally and I wish it was like this every day. It stretches time out longer and makes things smell stronger and better to me, even burning charcoal becomes a good smell. Summer 2010, let's get on this, more killer less filler. I'll even make an effort to enjoy the street festivals here that Chicago is so obsessed with, despite my failure to understand the appeal of drinking plastic cups of beer penned in with hundreds of people who can't handle their liquor? Summa madness.

Bananarama - Cruel Summer [ysi]

Natural Ingredients - Vilify [ysi]

Gyptian - Hold Yuh [ysi]

I had a dream about someone I knew a long time ago

I met C the first week of college, in that first semester that seemed like an endless game of cultural catch-up. My classmates all seemed to know each other from some summer dance/writing/theater program and would make offhanded references to people like Maya Deren that I now know were anything but offhanded. I'm told I seemed surly back then but underneath it I was just a sponge, hungry to become one of those people who "knew from stuff." C's style was impossibly perfect and our first conversation was about her trouble finding a good dry cleaner near campus. A dry cleaner! I was a raver whose jean bottoms were frayed from scissors and I was flattered that she'd even pretended I might have an opinion on the matter.

C would say the most jaw-dropping things with a wide eyed guilelessness that, it took me four years to realize, wasn’t an affect at all. One time as I was finishing up my lunch she shuffled up to my table and within five minutes she was telling me about her brief stint as a stripper, which ended when the management informed her that she couldn't actually turn down lap dances. "I mean, gross, you know? They can't expect me to do that to those guys, lap dances," she said matter-of-factly in between bites of frozen yogurt. I watched her like television. You didn't hang out with C, she just kind of happened to you from time to time.

She started dating the son of a TV director who was a year ahead of us. He was friendly in that chatty LA way but had the livewire energy of a snake set to strike. They were always together; she would make him give a ride to any student they saw walking down the main avenue lugging bags. Once my friend Laura described how earlier that day she'd seen C sneak up on him on the lawn and how gracefully she had leaped forward and wrapped her arms around him from behind. I remember watching her point a banana at him like a gun, squinting from behind her hand. They were sweet together, and also they were on drugs.

Our last conversation was one of those "we don't hang out enough but we've always been friends, you know?" talks that people have in the weeks before graduating. She died two years later and I still think of her at least once a year. When I do, I get just as sad as I was when I first learned that she’d overdosed — even just writing this makes my stomach feel like it’s full of ice. We were never even particularly close. Isn’t it funny who stays with you? In my half-baked theory about the afterlife, when you die your reward is returning to the primordial soup with absolutely no sense of who you were. You take the love with you, but all of life's slights and your earthly sense of self is totally forgotten. Freedom from the everyday idiocy of pride seems like the greatest gift you could get. I guess that would mean C. doesn't know she's still thought about by me or by anyone. But she is, and what I'm thinking right now is the world is less interesting without her in it and at a certain time in a certain place, she was leading by example.

The Cure - Catch (ysi)

Sonny and the Sunsets - Death Cream (ysi)

[buy Sonny and the Sunsets]

already assembling the summer playlist

Listening to Mos Dub - a Mos Def + dub mashup album - is helping me pretend that the weather is like it was just a few days ago. You can download it for free here.



Mos Dub - 05 - Travellin' Underground by maxtannone[ysi]

When You're Feeling Good the Whole World Knows It

Hot Chip ft. Bonnie Prince Billy - I Feel Bonnie (Club Version) [ysi]

If you don't think Will Oldham is one of the more interesting musicians/people in the world, read this New Yorker article from last year. Or even just his IMDB page.

image via the tirelessly tit-tastic Lazertits

Margaret Moth, 1951-2010

Given her jet-black hair, thick black eyeliner, black clothes and combat boots (which she often slept in while on assignment), people didn't always know what to think upon meeting her. She was quirky, the sort who excused herself from a social gathering by saying she had to wash her socks. And she was fearless, the kind of woman who not only kept the camera rolling while under fire, but zoomed in on a soldier who was shooting at her.

I had never heard of war zone camerawoman Margaret Moth until I read her obituary online today, and it is well worth reading. Depending on your mood her story will either inspire you or make you feel like you have done little more with your life than glass-eyedly shovel Cool Ranch Doritos into your mouth while watching "Do You Think You Can Be Smarter than America's Dancing Marriage Ref?" She jumped out of planes barefoot, worked in war zones and even got shot in the face working in Sarajevo, and then WENT BACK as soon as she got better. She enjoyed cigars and playing "who would you rather?" and was kind of a cat lady, except her cats were strays in Istanbul. What an interesting life packed into a such a short time.

photo via CNN.com

The Her Wants What it Wants

My (crazy talented) friend Tom asked me for some hip hop recommendations last week so I made him a mix. For a 24-hour turnaround, I think it's a pretty good representation of what I've liked in the past eight months or so? I'm posting it here because partly I'm too lazy to generate any real content, the Mixtape Recovery Project posts are popular, and because part of me wants this blog to get shut down so I'll be forced to make good on my threats to take my randomness over to Tumblr.

1. Gucci Mane - Dangers Not a Stranger (Diplo Remix)

2. Snoop and Kid Cudi - That Tree

3. Lil Wayne and T Pain - Waist of a Wasp

4. U God - Lipton [ysi]

5. Kid Cudi Simple As

6. Shine Blockas - Big Boi ft Gucci Mane

7. D-Lo - NoHoe (Remix) f/ E-40, Jacka & Beeda Weeda [ysi]

8. Fat Joe - Slow Down (Ha Ha)

(I like this "ha ha" better though)

9. Freeway & Jake One - One Thing feat. Raekwon

10. Jams Dean - No Stopping [ysi]

PS: If you watch this Law and Order: Sexy Victims Unit clip with the CC "transcribe audio" on it's pretty funny.

PS PS: This Elle interview with Tracy Morgan is the best thing I read on the train this week. Only part of it is online, but if you're in line at the grocery store or something: back page.

previously on GPB:

The Mixtape Recovery Project, Part 1

The Mixtape Recovery Project, Part 2

RIP Corey Haim

In fifth grade my best friend Hanna and I plastered our walls with Bop magazine posters of Corey Haim. Did anyone ever prefer Other Corey? He had awesome style in "The Lost Boys" to be sure but he looked like a lesbian to me.

The Haim made this video "Me, Myself and I" in the 80s as part of a comeback attempt at the beginning of his lifelong downward trajectory as a drug addict. I hope in heaven he is listening to that Japanese funk and finally starring as the older brother, or the only brother.

Is This the Fulfillment of a Fantasy Hoped For?

Bongwater - Chicken Pussy [YSI]

Bongwater

Anne Magnuson at IMDB

In the Classic Style

It took awhile for me to decide if I liked Marina and the Diamonds — partly because her voice made me think of a cross between Regina Spektor and that chick from Evanescence, and partly because the album's sound is so chintzy to me. Like production-wise, if one of her songs was a dress, it would be from Forever 21 and made of flammable fabric and the sequins would fall off all the time and stay on the floor of your closet forever. Her material kind of doesn't need all the swishy layers? I wish all of her stuff sounded like this instead.

Marina and the Diamonds - Hollywood (Chilly Gonzales Version)

You should [download the Chilly Gonzales "Pianist Envy" mixtape]

Update: I like this remix too:

Mowgli's Road (Steve Wishes He Was A Man Cub Edit) by markfountain

Little Boots - Earthquake (Disco Death Threat rmx)

It would be super meta if British Knights remixed the (white hot) jingle from this 1990 BK commercial. But can you really improve on total perfection?

The Reeling (Kids Go All Ravey Remix) by BritishKnights

One in a millon (British Knights Juke it out Remix) by BritishKnights

Dream Date

Class Actress - Let Me Take You Out

Elizabeth Harper's voice is pure made-of-spun-glass magic.

Journal of Ardency comes out February 9 on Terrible Records [buy]

Download "Careful What You Say" at RCRDLBL

image: Lauren Weinstein

Feeling Blank Again

When I heard that Jay Reatard —a preternaturally talented and prolific songwriter that I regret never seeing live — had died last week, my immediate reaction was that it wasn’t surprising. In one regard that's fair enough: When his touring band quit last October it suggested behavior that was erratic at best, and with song titles like “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me” and “Death is Forming” — not to mention their lyrics — I had always assumed that he was as cripplingly depressed as he was talented. On its face the Elliot Smith Formula is pretty straightforward.

But then, Elliott Smith’s death was never officially ruled a suicide and there are rumors that Jay’s death is currently being investigated as a possible homicide. Experimentation with drugs may be sensation seeking as opposed to addiction and an artist’s tendency to explore dark subject matter doesn’t mean they need to be kept away from sharp objects; they may just be less afraid to think about certain things than most people are. Most people are afraid a lot of the time and it governs not only many of their actions but how they react to what the people around them do as well. Thinking about my initial response to Jay’s death brought me back to when I first fully absorbed that fact, which happens to also be the time in which I listened to Jay Reatard the most.

It's All Too Beautiful

Avatar: It's like living in a Lisa Frank sticker set!

Avatar: Wait, no I think I saw those tribespeople on a rave flyer in 1994.

Avatar: That army was NOT the way the National Guard trailer ad portrayed things.

Avatar: Ugh, don't you hate it when people become EXACTLY like the person they're dating? Like matching hairstyles and everything?

Avatar: Careful! If your life is super empty you might experience crushing depression about how non-Pandoralike everything is all the time.

Small Faces - Itchycoo Park

Mixed Bag, Twentyteen Edition

Haaay. Long time no post. I was on vacation, and then I got a new job, and I've been going through this weird phase where I only listen to the same 10 songs all the time. Would it be too oversharey to say I also listen to these songs under the covers with headphones on when I get early-morning insomnia, which is often? I find it oddly satisfying, like I'm stealing time (I am stealing time, from myself, valuable sleep time).

ANYWAY. Fellow Chi bloggers Boy Kings sent over their latest intallment of BKTV featuring a live performance from local dance-rock band Gemini Club. Do you think the girls in this —who are depicted as the inconsequential eye candy for the old boy's club— are their girlfriends or just incredibly amenable friends? "French each other! Now french that guy!" As a former AV nerd I appreciate how nicely done these videos are from a production standpoint. I also like what I've heard from Gemini Club and the lead singer looks like the petri dish child of one of my exes and Logan Huntzberger, which I'm pretty into.

Speaking of videos: I can't believe I had never seen the commercial for Booty Pop before this weekend. Apparently the people watching Saturday afternoon repeats of "The Outer Limits" are the target demographic for buttcheek inserts, i.e. me. You know, it's becoming increasingly clear that I should be an inventor. I bet this person is making thousands of hundreds of dollars and it probably all started with two shoulder pads + some really tight underwear + a dream.

Only slightly more gross than Booty Pop is my discovery via Videogum that someone in the world calls himself a "swagger coach" and may get paid actual money by Justin Bieber('s creepy stage parents, probably). From what I can gather he is like a combination of the two Jays from ATNM except for guys.

And finally — look how many different kinds of Kit Kats you can get in Japan! No seriously look how many, and this is just the tip of the iceberg apparently. I want a wasabi one so bad.