prelude: plugs / sox / mini review: black postcards

[photo: this is what's called "ice out." it's when the lack thaws and the ice pulls away from the shore, not what ice says at the end of american idol.]

[more on nh next entry.]

*plug tunin'
i swore to myself i'd never add to the internet's utter bullshit content, so excuse my silence/lack of posts about getting sick of my own cooking and joining the sad, sweaty masses that joggingly circle the silver lake reservoir/concrete pit. but! while i was treading water, friends were ever so busy! observe:

-cat tyc and i used to work together in the soft skull bookstore that was located in tonic; the store was formerly run by incommunicado press, and after soft skull got booted/had a board coop/temporarily imploded, the store and its famed book cave moved to brooklyn and i think the old space became a coat check, and not so long ago tonic was shut down by the dreaded LES condo cancer...either way, not so long ago, cat moved to portland and went to film school and now she's up for this rad award for a video she made. so vote for her, won't you? cat's video is your new bicycle!

VOTE!

-rebecca woolf's book is now out and available! and her new baby'll be available this winter, i think, which is insane, but whatever, oh the miracle of life and the wheel in the sky keeps on turning etc etc. rebecca's one of the only people i've met in LA who i'm not afraid of offending because when i first met her in nyc years ago she showed me the scars from her breast reduction. she also took a maternity-like thrift coat off my hands that i never wore. quel foreshadowing! go buy her book so her baby tk won't have to go barefoot!

BUY!

-amanda got a story published in a literary journal! she and i went to college together especially for the purpose of learning writery, but unlike other writers (me! me!), she's always driven to improve, and never skips other people's readings or events, and loves all god's creatures (DOGS), and is not afraid to live in harlem above columbia where the murders used to take place. anyway, here's her story, which was so good i felt like i'd been there, and given the number of bk parties i've been to (the last one = a few weeks ago), i might have been, cept for the fact i don't drink or agree to be in the same room with anyone i used to date.

READ!

-also, diana's selling janome sewing machines now at make workshop! amy baker had a baby boy! my old old friend billy designed lighting fixtures that will be sold exclusively at abc carpet and home! some guy cursed the yankees with a t-shirt! amy acker was cast on dollhouse! teeter's got a man who's never seen the golden girls! my mom's car, ha malkah latifa (that's hebrew for queen, fyi) is soon to have over 175k miles on it! my dad still has a mustache!

REJOICE!

*event! dodgers/sox exhibition game, 3/29
[photo: my people!]

long story short, we lost. long story long, i went to a dodgers/red sox exhibition game at dodger's stadium with my friend lizzy and her two friends who were sisters and asian and when i said i couldn't tell dice-k from the other japanese pitcher because i'm racist they thank god thought it was funny. even tho lizzy is from LA, she is just crazy amazing genuine, and her love of the dodgers is 100% dedicated and true, and we all know how much i love and respect superfans the world over. after all, a sports fan is a really just trekker for a certain team. just with less of a stigma and a smaller chance of wearing glasses.

[btw, remember, the stereotype of LA people is that they are fake, but i don't think it's fakeness so much as an inability to relate to other people after spending 99% of their lives hermetically sealed in cars, offices, homes, etc, ie, they aren't being disingenuous, they just go blank when forced to share air with another human being and wonder when tv became so lifelike.]

i am coming to terms with the fact that the sox game i went to 15 years ago will probably be my last at fenway park (i don't know who you have to blow to get tickets these days, but i bet even the act of felating this someone has a long line and will cost you $200). still, dodger's stadium was crazy nice, and they offer dodger dogs in turkey meat (i am such a protein lesbian, because i do love any animal with a breast), and i got to sit next to the bullpen, even if it just meant watching all the young pitchers warm up before going out onto the mound to suck.

[photo: somewhere in there is dice-k NOT PITCHING.]

the night before was the big exhibition event at the coliseum to honor the 50th year the dodgers have been in LA since leaving bk (a day my mother still mourns), and at that game, the sox kicked their ass. but the game we went to was just a bullshit exhibition that commemorated nothing except a chance for the sox to try out their youngest arms with no risk to their standing. but ya know, whatever, i love going to baseball games, the food was delicious (and astronomically fucking expensive!), and lizzy's nephew was conned into cheering for the sox, so all was not lost.

*mini review: black postcards, by dean wareham
i have a friend who is a record nerd who refuses to even listen to bands with members who have wronged his friends. he is friends with damon and naomi, ergo, he hates luna and all dean wareham forever. for those who don't know, dean, damon and naomi made up a band called galaxie 500 that put out 2 very good albums and 1 good album in the late-'80s early-'90s. but also for those who don't know, if you didn't know that, you probably won't want to read this book in the first place.

liz phair reviewed "black postcards" in the times, and she loved it, but she also once wrote a letter to the same publication in response to a bad review of her s/t sell/out album that compared the author to chicken little, so her cred is now shot on the songwriting and times writing fronts. anyway, she said the book is rock n'roll, and in a way it is, because mr. dean is sort of an unabashed asshole, as are more lead singers, except they're usually more abashed than he, or at least less self-aware of their assholery. they are tortured or ignorant assholes, and dean is a placid asshole. such is the life of a harvard graduate.

[huge tangent: speaking of tortured assholes, i cannot stop reading ryan adams' blog. it's like strapping on a virtual reality helmet and experiencing pure mental illness. all mania, all the time. i have a weird stockholm syndrome thing going on with ryan adams; i know he's a crazy dickfaced asscunt, ok ok every rock journalist in america, i get it, but while stuck in my car or my office or the city of los angeles as a whole, i find that his songs have this comforting aspect to them, a warm nostalgic frequency that brings you back to a safer, simpler, funner, broker time that you've never actually probably lived, like watching "roseanne" at its prime or most of the movie "bull durham."
{photo: i want to assert my presence with authority!}

a place where there are screen doors, pants are high-wasted, the cereal is generic, it's always summer, everybody drives a piece of shit car, there are several emotional moments in parking lots, and everyone's drinking beer from the can. have you ever heard the old whiskeytown song "empty baseball park"? fuck it, dude. it's like a portal to that place, but when you take the portal through a whiskeytown song or a ryan adams song or a cardinals song or a pinkhearts song or any of his 403301 bands, the price is, ryan rides shotgun.

{photo: one day, this might not seem so funny.}

and the thing is, on his blog, he's trying so hard to be liked or even just acknowledged while at the same time making fun of himself and talking about how lonely he is and how nobody should like him...whatever, it makes sense in crazyese. in nostalgia town, he and i are drinking cans of beer in a parking lot wearing light rinse denims at night while sitting on the hood of his shitty car. but in this world, he is a sad pretentious guy who shits out great songs sometimes and i have no choice but to refresh, refresh, refresh.]

dean wareham, on the other hand, unrepentant asshole he is, is also a humorless asshole, and that's where the problem lies. it's not that the book is totally dull and jokeless (if you like your humor drier than a stale biscuit covered in hot sand), it's that he is so fucking serious about everything, so when he says he never wanted to be a rock star, you wonder why he's so dedicated to all things being in a band. i mean, the diaries he must of kept over the years to remember half of this shit have to be incredibly thorough, whereas most dudes i know who've been in bands and toured, aside from whining about how lonely it is, can only really remember that one time they had a contest in the van to see who would take a shit in a plastic bag.

[photo, l-r: dean wareham (casual asshole) and britta phillips (a perfectly nice woman i'm sure who mr wareham left his wife for). missing: a shirt.]

so on the one hand, when he talks about leaving galaxie 500 because damon and naomi patronized him and formed a voting block that made band democracy impossible (the two were a couple since high school, and are now married and in their own, eponymous band), you sort of believe that it wasn't just because he wanted the spotlight and more money. on the other hand, you sort of don't. and again, if you don't like galaxie 500 or luna, you probably don't care. if you do though, "black postcards" isn't totally not worth reading, but it's not very juicy. dry things usually aren't. nor are assholes.*

*-sane ones, anyway.

soon, i swear, i'll detail my trips to boston, nyc, and nh, and back to boston again, but for now,

***SPECIAL BONUS! REMORSEFUL MUXTAPE FOR YOU!***

(of random, mostly mopey songs from my own mixes of the past year! )
(yeah, the fine print is always a bummer.)

and happy passover! exodus have never been so delicious!