No, you don't get it, I'M the blanket.

Sent, at 4:01 am, to my Ghostproof Blanket email address.

[This seems like as good a time as any to say that I'm permanently abandoning this site for my Tumblr. It was a good 4+ year run, this place as a repository for my ADD-addled thoughts and the songs I was obsessed with. But I'm on Tumblr way more often in general, and I'm trying to simplify my life. It's why I wear this same burlap jumpsuit every day now.]

Follow me on Tumblr here.

W.O.W

Words to live by.  Wendy O. Williams was legitimately famous in the mid 1980s and I'm hard pressed to think of anyone like her that exists these days. Lady Gaga is the closest thing we've got to a female musician who isn't afraid to be unpretty once in a while. Which makes total sense, given the current climate in pop culture, where anything less than cute virtually guarantees a woman's invisibility (and yes, Wendy was totally hot in her own way, but in today's world she'd be ripped to shreds by Internet trolls who probably need to get drunk to even dance in public). 

"There's a lot of women out there with good heavy metal bands, but they persist to sing like pop singers."

Tonight I'm seeing two bands I've wanted to see for a long time now: Metronomy and Class Actress. "Slightly melancholy dance music made by smart people" is pretty much my favorite.

Metronomy - We Broke Free from the new album The English Riviera

Metronomy - Heartbreaker (Kris Menace rmx)

Metronomy - Radio Ladio (Mac 3000 rmx)

Has anybody seen my tambourine?

Tim Curry had an enormous impact on my tiny mind. I still watch this every Halloween, because it is perfection and has STATE OF THE ART video effects. So futuristic.

Most children's programming bored me when I was a kid (the rest of "TWW" included, sorry Fairuza Balk! Better luck next The Craft!). This might be because I had parents who thought that sitting me down and introducing me to Rocky Horror Picture Show was an important rite of passage at age 11. If it didn't have either Muppets or 'adult themes' I basically wasn't interested. I still feel this way.

According to the Internet, some people don't like Lana Del Rey. After her first album flopped she changed her name, her sound, and sexed herself up — and it kind of worked, since everyone's talking about her now. I wouldn't call that story uplifting, but again it DID work, so I'm not sure she's the one we should be mad at here. Plus, reinventing one's self is pretty standard stuff in the music world.

I could do without some of her baby-waby cooing but I'm super into this song. And if we're all weighing in on her appearance, I do love that she looks like a lost member of the Carrie Nations, or the "in her heyday" picture of a ravaged old Hollywood starlet.

I'm Mortified

If you're in Chicago this Friday at 7:30, you should come see me at the Mortified show at Schubas. I'm reading a piece centered around my 8th-to-12th grade diary entries (lots of LSD-addled poetry, my dilettantish attempts at being wiccan, and sundry 'nobody understands me'isms). The awesome and supportive producers of the show helped me put it together and it might be the hardest I've worked on anything all year. Well, the hardest I've worked on something that's actually finished. This weekend I got to hear a couple of the other readers and their stuff is funny-awkard-adorable. Come out!



Mortified Chicago Promo from Shay DeGrandis on Vimeo.

I tried to watch the "New Girl" pilot without prejudice, but I just can't relate to Zooey D at all. I think it's because she strictly plays two kinds of characters: either girls that must have strawberry-scented farts, or girls that make NO farts. "I'm offbeat and wacky but never, ever in a way that makes me look remotely unattractive!" Zzzzz.

I'm practically STAR MATERIAL.

Take the Narcissistic Personality Inventory

Remy Ma - Conceited (There's Something About Remy)*

*Currently serving time for shooting a member of her entourage