Distance

At the far end of the playground a woman perches on a bench, visibly upset. She clutches a bag of pretzel shards in a frail hand. Scattered about the bench in several directions and distances lay a litter of lifeless squirrels. She eyes them mournfully, her shoulders sagging in a posture of defeat. Her body is wrapped in a dusty overcoat to shut out the autumn wind, the belt drawn tightly across her midriff. She instantly brightens as an animate squirrel bounds out of the underbrush and scurries towards her, balances on the metal rim of a trashbin, watching her with blank eyes. Her skeletal fingers dig through the bag and emerge with a fragment of pretzel, and crescents of pretzeldust buried under her nails. She offers this to the squirrel, who twitches a whisker, then hungrily accepts. It downs the pretzel in a frenzy of teeth and claws, then hops off the bin, staggers a few brief steps, nose raised as if sniffing danger. The squirrel gets barely a foot from the bench before collapsing on its side, breathing heavily until the breathing stops entirely. The look of anguish returns to the paper skin of the woman's face, her eyes yellow with moisture. "Why are you playing tricks on me?" she utters to the inert creature. She prods it with the tip of her shoe. Not harshly, just a gentle poke. "Wake up. Why are you pretending to sleep? Wake up!"

The Return of the Bride of the Ghost of...

So David Berkowitz, notorious Son of Sam, has renounced serial murder in favor of Christianity (as if the two were mutually exclusive) & offers his own Official Home Page to spread the Word of the Lord. Maybe this is common knowledge to the masses, but I stumbled onto it by mistake & was somewhat amused, in a dismal sort of way.

Zaireeka!

I need to arrange a Zaireeka listening party. Set up four stereos in each compass direction facing inwards, provide some wine & some voodoo candles, recline in the center on a rug, then cue up the CDs & listen. Problem is, all the people I would want to invite to such a thing are inconveniently scattered across the country.

Yesterday I dumped the four CDs onto my computer & cakewalked the tracks together, just to get a sense of what it would sound like. But that's cheating - definitely not the aural equivalent. You can't stack up the tracks like cartoon gels - you need to build a hologramic temple of sound.

More Songs About Seaweed & Twine

Recently I've been mulling over the possibility that, as online music purchasing grows more prevalent, consumers will lean towards buying individual songs, no longer fettered by the physical limitation of the CD itself. They'll simply go online & download that last particular song that was lodged in their head when they heard it over the loudspeaker while buying wallpaper earlier in the day. Thus, with the consumer's ability to pick & choose exactly what they want to hear, the artist will inevitably lose control over the context of the music. The decades-old concept of the album as a deliberate artistic structure will be abandoned & we'll return to the pre-Sgt Pepper milieu of songs existing of themselves. The concept album will become an artifact. Not to mention cover art.

The only thing I lament about this likelihood is that instant gratification could rob us of hidden treasures. I can't imagine how many times I've bought an album, picked out a few songs as my favorites & concentrated mainly on those, only to later discover one of those supposedly "weaker" tracks contained some subtle piece of magic that I never would have recognized had I left them off my shopping list just because they didn't grab me first time around.

Humans, being creatures of arrogance, most of the time act too hastily for our own wellbeing - flailing around & knocking things over. Sometimes it's better to let an impulse stew for awhile before we act on it. We don't always recognize a good thing first time it rears its head. That's all I'm saying.

"The only public conveyance was the streetcar. A lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would halt at once, and wait for her ... too slow for us nowadays, because the faster we're carried, the less time we have to spare." ~ The Magnificent Ambersons

The Night is Young & We Have Umbrellas In Our Drinks

It's a drag coming back to Boston after a stay in NYC. I may be outgrowing the proverbial city of beans in favor of the proverbial city of apples. It's like going on one of those kiddie rides at a theme park after tackling the big kahuna of roller coasters. Walking home through Somerville at two in the morning - the streets are deserted, except for the occasional taxi driver nodding off & plowing into a hedge. Everything shuts down at night. Windows are dark, sidewalks are barren. Bars in Somerville close at one & there's nowhere to go but home to bed. Store 24 closes at midnight. Never figured out what the "24" is supposed to signify. The quantity of chewing gum brands, perhaps? If this was NYC, I'd be having a tasty grilled cheese sandwich in a sadluck diner right now, & watching a wino chew on his toenail in the next booth.

Tonight was the sixth incarnation of Ukulele Noir, a monthly event I try not to miss - where ukuleles & porkpie hats collide. Craig Robertson accompanied by 2/3rds of the Sob Sisters (swoon), the falsetto croonings of Rick Russo, the dynamic duo of Tim Mann & Greg Hawkes (yep, the guy responsible for all those chirps & grunts in The Cars), the tuneful Melvem Taylor & the Fabulous Meltones, & straight outta Ohio, Tom Harker & his Prodigal Sons. Now, first, I find it mildly surprising that there are this many ukulele enthusiasts in the Boston area. And second, I find it odd that they all choose to assemble at the Skybar, which is a "beer in plastic cups"-style dive sandwiched between an auto body shop & a baseball field. Then again, they host a goth night as well, so let's hear it for juxtaposition.

I'm going to seek out the identity of the stenchridden lugnut who drove the 12:05 am number 87 bus out of Lechmere roaring past me without stopping & shall cause grievous injury to his person. Yet because of him I stopped into Toad & heard a smokin' jazzfunk band called The Freelance Bishops - one of the tightest combos I've heard in eons. Sort of like an atomic clock with sex appeal. The horn player blew into a device called an EWI that sounded like an elongated electronic kiwi. Due to that & the keyboardist's vintage Rhodes, they often reminded me of something midway between Jan Hammer-era Jeff Beck & incidental music from an episode of Barney Miller. Good merchandise.

Sleep tight, Somerville - you despicable early risers.

Foreign Devices

Pamela Martinez - Self-Titled EP
CD Review from Sonic Heart, June 2005 issue

Okay, sure. First impression is that Pamela Martinez is doing butterfly strokes through Bjork's end of the pool. This is due to a certain vocal weightlessness and melodic riskiness. A minute and a half into the first song on her new EP one quickly remembers that you can only get so much mileage out of comparisons before a work honestly must be dealt with on its own terms. The sonic palette stretches across a wide span of temperatures, from warm resin-caked strings to frosty electronics. Meanwhile Pamela's voice glistens down the resulting corridors of ice and earth like some sort of disembodied sorceress. The album contains four songs in total. The first three could be tone poems told from the p.o.v. of a kite wafting across a bed of refrigerated circuit boards as synapses spark through the troposphere. Gravity is toyed with and time is perverted. The epic-length final song, "Foreign Devices (Remix Balanc3d)," is a desperate pursuit across an existential terrain of broken Atari 2600 video games embedded in ice. Sort of an arctic nod to that prototypal chase sequence, Pink Floyd's "On the Run." The vocals are used more as a smear of background shadow than as a central narration. Ms Martinez and crew are talented weavers of sound. I recommend listening to this album in a dim, candlelit room, preferably with a strong aroma of wood.

Release the Hounds

Alright, folks. I contributed a CD review to the latest episode of Sonic Heart magazine. Reportedly it can be found in all sorts of Boston area independent music stores, most notably Newbury Comics. The purpose of said magazine is to spotlight the local electronic music scene, & so they do. Pick up a copy today & help pay for the kindly editor's excessive parking tickets.

By the way, the album I reviewed belongs to one Pamela Martinez. Give her a spin. She helms some diabolically good tunes. And her live show is nothing to sneeze at either.

Flim Flam

Hate to come across as backwards thinking, but does anyone else find it rather odd when a band takes the stage, the keyboard presses start on his sequencer, & the musicians all stand there motionless while the pre-recorded music plays? Especially when it turns out that every song in their repertoire is sequencer-dependant. A large percentage of the music is not created in front of you, but rather replayed from computer disk. I've seen a number of such performances lately & it makes me wonder what the point of focus here is. The barrier between performance & karaoke is narrowing.

I remember watching a DJ open for The Eels. He took the stage with pipe in mouth & proceeded to play a series of records for us. The audience, myself included, stood there watching him do this, as though he were the act itself & not just the sound operator. We watched him smoke his pipe & flip through his crate of albums looking for suitable followups.

This opens the door for a whole slew of performance art. Imagine next time David Bowie comes to town, his opening act could be the carpenters & electricians actually building his set. During the show the lighting booth could be backlit so that should we grow bored with the onstage events, we could turn & watch the lighting engineer pulling levers. Between acts we could turn & focus on the bartenders. And we could hoot when one of them delivers a particularly stunning head of beer.

I sense potential here.

Revelry to Nowhere

A quick summing up:

The Can Kickers. A threepiece backwoods jug band featuring banjo, fiddle, & a maniacal drummer who plays the washboard while pogoing crazily off his kickdrum pedal. The crowd burst into a flaying hoedown during the opening song & never relented until it was over. Even joined in on the sea chanty singalong "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?" Occurred to me you can fuse punk energy with ANYTHING & have noteworthy results.

Bread & Roses. Can't find a website for these guys. That's probably intentional. They played with no electricity, just gathered the crowd around them in a circle & roared. They had a distinct dusty 1930's Great Depression leftie Guthrie Steinbeck Wobblies IWW vibe. Filtered through the sensibilities of The Pogues, of course. Instruments of choice included standup bass, fiddle, & Irish whistle. The singer looked a little like Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald. Very impassioned. I think they even snuck a Johnny Cash tune in there.

Black Cat Burlesque. Deliciously subversive strip teases. One woman serenaded another dressed in male clothes with a seductive torch song. As soon as the clothes were sufficiently removed, she proceeded to strangle her with the microphone cord. Another artist satirized jingoism with American flag pasties, faux cheerleader enthusiasm, lewd gestures, & finally smearing ghoulish makeup on herself. At least I think it was makeup. Could have been hummus for all I know.

La Gata Negra. The finest in masked lady wrestling. The evening's bouts featured Mistress Cheetah vs. La Hornita, The Irish Twins ("I'm gonna cut you!") vs. the Bad Habits (yes, nun wrestlers), & the tag teams El Gecko/Agent Orange vs. Missy America/G.I. Jane Doe. Has to be seen to be believed.

The whole shindig was organized by Black Ocean.

The Illustrations of Mister Reusch

www.misterreusch.com

La Gata Negra

Cinema of Sleep #2

Making their way on creaky bicycles through the gloomy shrouded caligarian streets, our elderly heroes pedal for freedom. The triangular walls of the streets, narrow at the top, wide at the base, feature long dark stripes running lengthwise along them. The city seems to be sleeping & the escapees keep as silent as possible so as to not rouse notice. But just as they reach the gate leading out of this godforsaken city, a bark of authority in French (with subtitles, mind you) orders them to STOP! Closeup of bicycle tire grinding to a sudden halt. Burly guards approach with threatening scowls. There is a brief interrogation which we can't hear but can easily follow the body language, resulting in a fluid swing of a guard's sword. As a whimsical circus waltz kicks in, we see from the point of view of the decapitated head as it arcs gracefully in the air, then back down again towards a squat old housekeeper in an apron, arms poised to catch it. But the head lands back on the torso of its owner because our heroes cannot be disposed of so easily. We see a dazed look on his face, a nick on his wizened forehead as a reminder of the sword. The youngest of our trio of Don Quixotes — the newcomer — speaks out of turn in outrage. Next it is his bewildered head's turn to sail through the air, again to the tune of that evercheery circus waltz. A craggy darkclad figure comes up the street & passes through the gate, perhaps a doctor headed with medicine bag to an urgent call, or a lawyer on his way to trial, or more likely an undertaker on his way to the grave. Our heroes, the guards, & the housekeeper all turn silently to watch him pass. The moviegoers (for this is all a movie) recognise this figure as Bob Dylan, & his tale will follow shortly. A few whispers of reverence are heard throughout the audience. One of the guards turns partially to face us with a furrowed brow. This is Dylan as well, perhaps a younger version, & his expression is to be interpreted as "where have I seen that man before?" & we all understand that, in an error of dreamlogic, the man passing through the gate is supposed to be his mentor in real life & his puzzled expression is an inside joke — two actors stepping outside the story momentarily to recognise each other.

Fun With Your New Head

Coming to a piano factory near you... the Messiah!

Okay, I exaggerate somewhat. In fact it's a sparkling new play by the indefatigably bewildered Sean Michael Welch. Reluctantly based in New York City, land of crumpled yogurt containers, Welch whiles away the hours fighting mail fraud & selling subversive literature to nuns, biding his time until he becomes the next brilliant playwright you've never heard of because you don't leave the house much these days & they don't feature him on Masterpiece Theatre because he's not dead yet. Regardless, he's got a body of quality work behind him more vast than many playwrights twice as dead as him.

Welch's first big success was Earl the Vampire, which won big bucks at ACTF & was subsequently published by Samuel French. Manufacturers of plastic vampire teeth reported record high sales that year. Coincidence? Could very well be. Success number two was Boise, Idaho (the play, not the city) which was published by Francis Ford Coppola's swanky Zoetrope Magazine & has been performed in all sorts of weird countries which I can't spell. To this day the citizens of Boise, land of unbreakable shoelaces, proclaim their adoration of Welch for putting their town on the map. Aside from his achievements in playwrighting & cartography, Welch has also been churning out film scripts & novels at an alarming rate. Recently he's been negotiating to have his quasi-Pythonesque screenplay Well Done, Pear Danube! turned into a film of Pantagruelian proportions. And that's far from all.

His style is eerily similar to Harold Pinter forced at gunpoint to write episodes for Three's Company. In fact, Welch claims he learned everything he knows about comedy from John Ritter. Of course he's also been known to say that about Robespierre & Manfred von Richthofen, so we tend to take such remarks with a slug of salt.

The new play is called The Trojan Whore & we feel you'll agree when you see it. Whore is being staged by the Mill 6 theatre troupe, who also claim moral responsibility for previous performances of Welch's Boise, Try Not To Step on the Naked Man, & The Last Adventure of Lance Adventure in Boston, land of belligerent fire hydrants. It promises to be funnier than anything you can possibly fathom. I recommend you go see it immediately, or risk having your kneecaps bitten off by anthrax-infected raccoons. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Here's the bird's-eye lowdown.

Guerrilla Artwork with Ron English

Mullets Against Hunger

I recently watched the DVD compilation of Live Aid, twenty years after the fact. Hadn't paid attention to it the first time around. (My favorite band as a kid was the Beatles, & since they weren't performing, I wasn't interested.) A few thoughts:

• Quick summary - "Hairspray, eyeshadow, DX7s, & lots of prancing."
• Rik Ocasek has the world's most prominent gullet.
• Who's Nik Kershaw?
• Tom Petty's muttonchops blatantly overstep regulation standards. Was he issued a fine backstage?
• At least we can be thankful John Lennon was mercifully spared the sight & sounds of "Revolution" publicly castrated by Carrot Top.
• What on earth prompted Bowie to go evangelical in the eighties?
• U2 kicked some serious rump in those days. Wow. Hands-down the strongest performance.
• For all his crimes against humanity, Phil Collins is still a pretty rockin' drummer when he shuts up long enough. Remember those early Genesis records?
• Was this Roger Daltry's final musical appearance before hanging up his microphone & going into politics under the pseudonym of John Kerry?
• George Michael is so gay it's painful.
• Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon kinda looks like Ewan McGregor. Is it the chin?
• Wasn't anyone heterosexual in the eighties?
• Other than U2, the scant few performers that came off with some degree of dignity include The Pretenders, Elvis Costello, & Judas Priest.
• Peter Gabriel is suspiciously missing.
• Imagine the same concert, only with the principle players recast as REM, The Replacements, Kate Bush, Tom Waits, The Cure, XTC, Husker Du, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, The Pogues, Talking Heads, Cocteau Twins, Stevie Ray Vaughan. There was good music going on somewhere back then. Honest.
• Twenty years ago, Mick Jagger was lookin' pretty old. Man, he's one floppy sockpuppet.
• Mmm... Tina Turner's legs.
• That end bit with Dylan, Richards, & Wood was spectacularly horrible. As in, "Bob, quick, get outta bed, zip up your trousers, & get on stage!" "Whu-?" Kinda charming though.
• "We Are the World" is a dreadful tune. Sorry folks. I hope we're not going to get pummeled with it on its twentieth anniversary.
• Run-DMC was at Live Aid? Everyone watches with blank looks. "What is this stuff these crazy negros are pumping out? They're not even singing."
• "Dancing in the Street"?
• I hope this thing ultimately fed a lot of people. It was a high price in cultural damage to pay.

Man, I hated the eighties.

Ophelia Drowns

The Greatest Show in Hell

Getcher genuine packaged sawdust right here, folks. Ringleader's Revolt by the fabled Beat Circus. One whiff & the damn thing won't come out of your stereo for weeks. It's one big trapeze act of banjo, accordion, trumpet, & tuba mayhem. As an evil ringmaster twirls his mustache in the corner, plotting the demise of your sanity. It's glorious. You can smell the salted popcorn & elephant dung from your living room. And it's not one of those scratch-n-sniff CDs either.

This outfit of crazed windjammers is masterminded by Brian Carpenter in his caulked Belgian hat, who leads them through song titles like "The Contortionist Tango," "Requiem For John Merrick," & "Daredevil Chicken Trapeze." Two-thirds of the Sob Sisters even put in a glamorous appearance, bedecked in peacock feathers (bad luck, y'know). More fun than a rubber ladder. More thrilling than a runaway lion with mange. More tasty than gobstoppers & fried dough.

Grinning clowns prowl the midway with daggers, among the hypnotised ballerinas with lost eyes, psychopathic swordswallowers, roguish roustabouts, angst-ridden acrobats. Somewhere in the depths of Clown Alley a snooping towny gets a pie in the face. And JP Sousa has risen from the grave, seeking revenge. And this is the soundtrack to it all. These maverick carnies were probably cosmically intended to be the backing band for Tom Waits circa Frank's Wild Years, but things didn't pan out. Accidents happen in threes.

Yes indeed. These are the songs I want playing on the gramophone when I take that final boxcar ride into Hell. Hey Rube!

Mah Spoon Is Too Big

Cinema of Sleep #1

On top of a tall building under a windy grey sky, someone is scheduled to jump off the roof at four o'clock. I lurk around the edge pensively, wondering if it's me who is to jump. All those ants below, none of them are concerned on just another workday. I even start crawling over the edge, clinging to the underside of a stony outcrop, feet dangling in space, fascinated by the thought of impact.

Aboard a bus, grainy archival footage of the Rolling Stones playing "Under My Thumb" is shown on an overhead monitor. But something's wrong with the bus - mechanical failure? All very vague. The twerp in charge of the excursion goes up front & turns off the video before the song ends, then announces that the bus will be pulling over soon for repair. And warns us not to use the bathroom. A haughty middleaged woman in jewelry & strategic makeup, clearly used to getting her way, comes back to use the bathroom anyhow, goes past the twerp dismissively. Through the bathroom door we hear her complain, "hey, the water is coming over the sides of the bowl." The twerp snickers. I notice a puddle forming at my feet too, oozing up from beneath the carpet. And the water is a very artificial red. Tainted by some chemical. Maybe this situation is serious after all. I'm still sore about him shutting off the music midsong though.

Sitting in the passenger seat of an old jalopy, staked out overlooking a railroad track on an arid Texas road. I'm trying to explain to the driver why I disliked a particular scene in a movie which went on much too long. The driver shakes his head & defends the scene, saying it's an effective use of climax. "What climax?" I protest, "it takes place at the beginning of the film." The old bloated transvestite beside me sympathizes. She can't hear too well & I find myself talking into her ear, which is gnarled & misshapen, maybe even partially chewed off. "What? I can't hear you," she keeps saying.

Garter Belts & Bathtub Gin

In my continuing saga of fledgling musical journalism, I bring to your attention The Sob Sisters. These three feisty flappers play from a repertoire of jazz standards culled from the Roaring Twenties. I was fortunate to catch them recently at the nefarious Ukulele Noir.

Karen & Renée flank the stage on artful cellos. Haven't quite figured out their musical modus operandi, but I'm under the impression that Renée is mostly responsible for the grunts while Karen takes care of the swoons. Meanwhile, Kitty in the middle bows her singing saw, coaxing out warbles like a ghost on a wire. She's also adept on kazoo & a variety of tiny wooden instruments that go plonk. Karen doubles on ukulele & Renée blows a mean pennywhistle. All of the Sisters take a turn on vocals.

This night they took to the stage with fleurs in hair & pearls around necks, & launched into a mischievous version of "I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover." Karen sang "Paper Moon" in a husky voice full of aplomb. Renée treated us to a devastating rendition of "Am I Blue." Kitty sang a ditty about a magician making her inhibitions disappear. Ukulele maven Craig Robertson tilted his fedora & joined them for "My Blue Heaven," an original called "The Hypnotist," & several others. They capped the evening with a rousing "Mister Sandman."

It was a fabulous show. I spotted F Scott & Zelda at a table in the front tapping their feet along in merriment. Harry Houdini, that sly scoundrel, hovered near the side of the stage behind a potted plant, sneaking glances at Renée's pulse-quickening gams. Near the bar, Clara Bow couldn't help but break into the Charleston during Kitty's swinging kazoo solo. TS Eliot hunched over a table, scribbling a mellifluent ode to Karen on a cocktail napkin. I'm fairly certain that was Lady Brett Ashley I saw lurking near the door with a frumpy look on her face because all the male attention was devoted stagewards instead of on her. The RCA Victor dog even left his post at the victrola to waggle over & give a listen.

So again, that's The Sob Sisters - keeping the romance alive & now appearing at a speakeasy near you.

One From the Golden Era

An elderly couple had dinner at another couple's house and, after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen. The two elderly gentlemen were talking, and one says: "Last night we went out to a new restaurant, and it was really great. I would recommend it very highly." The other man says: "What's the name of the restaurant?"

The first man knits his brow in obvious concentration, and finally says to his companion: "Aahh, what is the name of that red flower you give to someone you love?" His friend replies: "A carnation?" "No, no. The other one," the man says. His friend offers another suggestion: "The poppy?" "Nahhhh," growls the man.

"You know - the one that is red and has thorns." His friend says: "Do you mean a rose?" "Yes! Thank you!" the first man says.

He then turns toward the kitchen and yells: "Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?"

Ods Bodkins

Ah bugger, I'm googable now. From now on I'm gonna have to watch my cussin'.

Speaking of which, a friend & I were discussing the bizarreness of swear words. In our culture it's most often the word itself that is objected to, rather than the meaning of the word. (No surprise there, we're a shallow people.) So whereas "fuck" is outlawed from the public domain, "intercourse," "fornication," & "reproduction" are not. Further, you can often say "fuck" all you want as long as you bleep it. Which means everybody knows what you've just said & your intention still comes across. The only people who don't know it are those who don't know what the word means anyhow. And they'll learn soon enough, especially if you tempt them by withholding it. Point is, the information is still getting across. You've only tampered with the name the information is going under. To me this is like having a Red Scare where no one minds if you dabble in Marxism, so long as you avoid using the word "Marxism" while explaining your economic theories. Very backwards.

Creating a firestorm about swearing naturally fuels the potency of the words themselves. You'll notice "gadzooks" doesn't cause much of a rise in blood pressure these days, though at one point in history uttering something along the lines of "God's hooks" was pretty effin' vulgar. Seems as though as we've lost our interest in the word, it subsequently lost its teeth. We now regard the word as quaint. Imagine that.

On a related note, nipples are apparently illegal in North America. Correction: female nipples. Despite the fact that nearly everyone at one point drank from them. Cleavage is fine, it seems, but the areola itself is right out. Bras are okay, though they imply that breasts will be contained within. Everyone can see that the breast is there, but we must shield it from our vision or it might stir up unholy thoughts & turn us into slavering rapists. By the same logic, shouldn't we make food similarly hidden? When I'm hungry & I spot a juicy looking cheeseburger, it produces a form of lust. Then I scarf down a gluttonous amount of cheeseburgers, keel over from high cholesterol, & wind up in Heck. Far more virtuous it would be to avoid the temptations of the cheeseburger, faint from hunger, & end up in Heaven.

Oh... except that there ain't no Heaven or Heck. Them's fables from some old book. Instead you wind up six feet under with either a size-large casket or a size-small. With swear words graffitied on your tombstone.

Dressed in Yellow Yolk

The people who coordinate such things really should make Easter & April Fool's occur on the same day. That would make more Biblical sense, wouldn't it? That way when Jesus returns after the crucifixion, everyone would say "oh, we thought you were dead." He'd reply, "No, just an elaborate prank the Romans & I cooked up. April Fool's!"

And then they'd pelt him with eggs.

Travels in Nihilon

I saw this hardcore punk band play for a benefit show last night. They followed the punk template to the letter - loud, offensive, confrontational, heavily tattooed, sardonically ironic, with songs that mostly sounded alike (a high voltage buzz). And they successfully shocked a number of elderly women right out of the hall.

I must be getting older. Responsibility is setting it. I enjoy a good bout of nihilism as much as the next fellow, but it makes me very tired to watch all that energy being expelled on nothing. Just leaking into a puddle only to evaporate. Maybe that's fine when you're twenty, but a decade later you start thinking about leaving something in your place. Less wastefulness, please. Let's channel that energy into building something that wasn't here the day before. Let's bottle adolescent angst as a natural resource & use it to power hospitals.

"Fuck you" just isn't a very important message to me. I've heard it before. But I guess they're just discovering it for themselves, rolling their tongue over it experimentally, like a baby's first teeth.

The guitarist sported a really spiffy Gibson Les Paul. Looked expensive - wonder where he got it from. He'd better have stolen it or I'll be disillusioned.

Bonfire

Walking home, I heard a fire truck racing madly down the street, cars swerving to either side, pedestrians diving out of the way. What if it's my house that's on fire, I thought. Everything I own, gone. The material manifestations of my existence wiped out in one short afternoon. Freeing in a sense, but mostly tragic. Especially concerning that which I have produced from nothingness. The contents of notebooks, computer files, recordings, all returning to the nothingness from whence it came. I'm not prepared for that kind of purification right now, quite frankly.

I watched as the fire engine continued down the road without turning down my street. Wait, I protested, you're going the wrong way! I continued on, lamenting the fact that by the time they finally got their directions straight & their course reversed, my identity will have burned to cinders.