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