I am not being unfair. OK I am but who cares?

Um, possibly due to the fact that I never check my ancillary email addresses, the ones to which I have all my music-based, politics-based, and porn-based mailings directed, I managed to miss the fact that the FUCKING WEDDING PRESENT have a NEW ALBUM OUT.

Has anyone heard it yet? Please tell me it's good.

It's been 11 days...where is the media?

A great little rant over at Daily Kos:

Hey, I've got a little quiz for you:If five prominent United States Senators sending a letter to the President about a male prostitute with no journalism background getting into the elite White House press corps every day post 9/11 for more than two years to lob softballs at the president were to fall in a forest with nobody around to hear it,would it make a sound?

All Gay Republican Whores, All the Time

For those of you who are still interested (and honestly, you really should be), the Metafilter thread about Jeff Gannon is still goin' strong. Put it in your bookmarks, click early and often.

Oh, and Maximus has a good idea: Send an email to Letterman, Leno, et al and tell them to talk about Jeff Gannon.

In 27 years, I've drunk 50,000 beers

I am in the process of moving offices and trying to remember how to do actual work. In the meantime, go visit Punk Turns 30, a nifty new blog by photographer Teresa Kereakes. [Via Kingblind.]

You had yellow hair, did you see me?

From the article in the Times today by party animal Jennifer 8 Lee about Craigslist Missed Connections:

Five months later, it has become a ritual for the couple to wake up on Saturday mornings and read Missed Connections together. "Because we think it's hilarious," Mr. Baker said.

More Gannon

This just in: Gannongate: It's Worse Than You Think.

P.S. I leave you my collection of moths

Did you know that it's some kind of How to Kick People anniversary tonight? Now, maybe you consider Bob Powers and Todd Levin old friends, in which case why not come and celebrate this momentous occasion? Perhaps you're new to H2KP. Why not take this opportunity to get in on the $50 level?*

Anyhow, tonight's show is pretty goddamned exiting, and as you can see from the illustration on the flyer, it has a "very, very gay, very very Semitic comic" theme. And David "My Future Husband (Seriously, Just Agree to Have Coffee With Me, Just Once, and I Promise the Threatening Packages to Your Wife Will Stop)" Rees will be there.

So, really, you should come. It's the best thing going on in NYC tonight!**

*Yes, it's the second joke in as many weeks that makes reference to PBS fundraising. Yes, it's a hoary chestnut. And it's not $50 to get "in on" Todd Levin's "level," if you know what I mean.
**OK, slight exaggeration. It's the best thing going on south of 14th Street and East of 3rd Ave. Satisfied?

All RIIIIGHT!

Happy Birthday to the Great Leader!

Runnin' with the Devil

Even being mentioned in the same sentence as Jesus or God ... I mean,
those guys are awesome. -- Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon, on
his famously throwback look, in the February issue of Boston magazine.[Excerpted here.]

Incidentally, what is the Johnny Damon diet? Outside of my fantasy world, I mean.

[via max]

Hipsters get ready

Regardless of what subway line I (or any of the other 8 million inhabitants of NYC) choose to take, there is inevitably some delay. There's a lot of work going on. I get that. I'm not the only girl with a pebble in her shoe, to paraphrase my mom.

But why does it seem as though the MTA gets a sadistic pleasure out of the L train delays and detours? I ask this because last night, well before 11 pm (the standard point in the evening when the L becomes a pumpkin), while there were a good 40 people standing on the Brooklyn-bound track, a Brooklyn-bound train rolled into the station on the Manhattan-bound side. We stood there in varying states of disbelief and inebriation. I was torpid and gassy from too much sake. Yet you can't imagine how fast I sprinted up the platform stairs when the motorman slid down his window and shouted at us: "No trains on that side! Got to catch this one!"

Imagine, if you will, 50 or more people with the muscle tone and coordination of your average spastic darting across 14th Street against traffic. People who wouldn't run even if their shoes caught on fire. As N put it, while we were gasping for air once we finally got on the train, we looked like a bunch of streakers. (Only uglier.)

All my prophets are dead and gone

Yesterday found me and N in Windsor Terrace celebrating my aunt's 75th birthday with 19 of my closest relatives whose names I can barely remember.

I generally prefer to live in an alternate universe in which my extended family does not exist. This is not because they're terrible people--no, they're decent, and they know how to party.

All my second cousins are dark and bodacious and full-lipped, and in comparison I am thin-lipped and wan. I am old enough to be boring to them, and young enough to be boring to their parents, my first cousins. We sat crowded around a table with four leaves in my aunt's mirrored dining room, with my father on one side of me, yelling at my Aunt Linda not to put ice cubes in the Chianti he brought, and N on the other side, politely eating each of the courses: a light meal consisting of antipasti, macaroni pie, ziti with sauce, braised ribs, bracchiole, hot and sweet sausage, and meatballs. Dessert included rice pudding, cheesecake, and a pink frosted bundt cake. I rolled out of there what seemed like ten hours later, indolent and stuffed full of carbs, entreaties to visit more often, and that immense dis-ease of being part of yet not part of this family of strangers. As the Greenwood Cemetary disappeared behind the merging traffic on the Prospect Park Expressway, I realized that to become intimate with them, to even remember all their names and affiliations, would require years of effort, and it's doubtful that any of us relished the thought.

Fast Cheap and Out of Control

Cripes, I almost forgot. This Sunday night! Crimson Sweet and the freakin' New Bomb Turks at Union Pool! Be there be there be there!

Excuse the lull

But I've been too busy obsessing over the fact that the White House has been fielding questions for over two years from a hooker.

Here are some of my favorite (mainstream media) pieces (so far) about the whole Jeff Gannon affair.

If you're as fascinated by all this as I am, visit this Mefi thread for the an array of continually updating links on the entire ordeal.

After Laughter Comes Tears

A coworker's brother bought his girlfriend a $25,000 engagement ring.

"Are you fuckin' serious?" I said.

"I know, can ya fuckin' believe it?" she replied.

We curse a lot around each other.

"That's what we fuckin' take home after taxes!"

"I know! No shit!"

"Christ. What's it look like?" I was envisioning something roughly the size and shape of a sattelite dish.

"I don't fuckin' know. But she better not take the subway home anymore."

"Yeah, no shit. Where's she live, anyhow? We could roll her."

"Right?"

I thought about the implications of a 25K ring, and what it says to your betrothed. It's essentially saying "You better give it up any time I want it," no? It's like, "You mines, bitch."

Hell, if I bought someone a ring that expensive I'd be demanding anal every goddamned day.

My heart is an open book

...and I haven't used it in years, so I'm going to donate it to Book Thing, an exceptionally forthright and noble organization that takes the books you don't want and gives them to the people who do. It was The Old Hag who informed me of this...oh, last week...and I sort of forgot to mention it until now. Whoopsie.

But don't mistake my week-long bender forgetfulness for a lack of enthusiasm. Book Thing is a Good Thing, and deserves your support.

Please choose one: Married or Buried

I'm only just now reading about this bizarre Covenant Marriage thingy they instituted down in Arkansas in a feeble attempt to curb the state's really, really high rate of divorce. It's like a regular marriage, except to the XTREME! Yes, that's certain to help.

[Via Frank.]

As a wise man once said, "It's all the same; only the names have changed."

The other night I was at a bar Ma'am, you'll have to be more specific and I heard a song that filled me with such immense joy that I smiled for the first time in a week and knew I needed to get a copy of it.

The tune in question is Wagon Wheel, by Old Crow Medicine Show. What was it about this song? I wondered as I listened to it ad infinitum all weekend. Couldn't put my finger on its je ne sais quoi.

In terms of craftsmanship, it's a bit common.* Was it the fiddle? I like me some fiddle. I thought about the chords. G D Em C. Pretty mundane. Hm.

So it turns out that the chords to Wagon Wheel are identical to Son Volt's Windfall, another song that, when I first heard it, rocked my world. It was all rather Pavlovian.

I am disappointed by how predictable (and easily triggered) the nostalgia button in my subconscious is. Since my discovery, I've been going through my favorite songs trying to determine how many of them are also composed of the magic G-D-Em-C progression. It turns out that number is 379.

*Interesting sidenote: It was originally written by Dylan, but never finished.

I call this, What the Fuck, Aunt Linda?

Hey, you know what would be funny?

You are too much sometimes, Cheryl.

The Bag-Person's Dave Barry Speaks Out

If you haven't already, you should go read AJ Jacobs' essay in this weekend's Times book review defending himself against the rather cruel review that Joe Queenan wrote of his book, The Know-It-All:

I explained the flaws of the review to my wife about 842 times. She pleaded with me to talk about something else, anything else -- the history of wicker furniture, for instance. I preferred to repeat the same points: Queenan believed that I actually thought I was going to become the smartest person in the world, whereas I kind of thought the ridiculously hyperbolic subtitle might have been a tip-off. He bashed Entertainment Weekly, while he was, not so long ago, writing regularly for the highbrow Proustian journal TV Guide.

Let's Get it Started in Here!

or, Why Buy the .750 L Bottle of Cheap-Ass Australian Table Wine When There's a 1.5 L Size?

Yeah, so, we watched some of the Grammys last night, but only after getting "it started" on a big bottle of wine. I'm fairly certain that, in music critic circles, the Grammys stopped meaning anything a quarter-century ago, but it was only last night that I realized just how culturally irrelevant they really are. There were three things that put the nail in the coffin for me:

• The medley. I'm guessing that the medley was some musical visionary's attempt at creating a live "mash-up," but really? It sounded like a medley. And unless you're Ann-Margaret, you probably shouldn't be doing medleys. Especially when the medley in question only serves to drive home the fact that Gwen Stefani, Eve, the Black-Eyed Peas, Franz Ferdinand, Maroon 5, and those Mexican Guys I Didn't Recognize are all singing the same goddamned song when it comes right down to it. Also, something else along these lines I'd like to know: Where is the pre-Colombian ritual pot that I need to find and smash in order to send the Black-Eyed Peas back through the Hellmouth they came out of?


• Green Day as introduced by Quentin Tarantino. Hello. It's not sad enough that they won best rock album--"Rock and roll can be dangerous and fun at the same time," Billy Joe? This from the guy who self-censored his performance? Dangerous and fun!?!--but apparently the only person more clueless than the lead singer was QT, who said, and I quote: "In the '90s, three punks from the Bay area popped into our lives in a big, loud way. Instead of fading away, they've grown up, releasing a concept album with a very novel concept: All the songs are good. They're making punk rock history with a real sense of purpose." To paraphrase Ben Kingsley's character in Sexy Beast, NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! Hey, I've taken the post-mortem temperature of punk's liver, and I can tell you for certain: Punk rock didn't die until he said that. So yes, officially: Punk is dead.


• Finally, Maroon 5. Best new artist?!? Didn't anyone on the Grammy panel notice that they're actually the Spin Doctors?

Hey you guys!

Tomorrow night, at CBGB, why don't you all come out and give it up for The Live Ones. They're not going on until late, but that's no reason to stay home, unless you really *enjoy* SNL or something.

Waitstaff look "sharp" in their "brown uniforms" and "send you off" at the "end of the Kristallnacht" with a "cordial" "Auslander Raus!"*

I hate to laugh at the generally well-meaning Southern Poverty Law Center, but is this an article disclosing the Washington Times' secret crypto-Nazi connections or a Zagat's review?

White men should "run, not walk" to wed "racially conscious" white women and avoid being out-bred by non-whites. Latinos are "rising to take this country away from those who made it," the "Euroamericans." Muslims are "human hyenas" who "smell blood" and are "closing in" on their "weakened prey," meaning "the white race." Blacks, Coombs sneers, are "saintly victims who can do no wrong." Black solidarity and non-white immigration are imposing "racial revolution and decomposition" in America.

Really, I could keep going. (No, I'm not proud.)

*AKA humor at its lowest form.

"Shut up, you guys! My baby is summoning his muse!"

Last night I went to the Cupcake Series reading at Lolita Bar featuring Samantha Hunt and Maxine Swann. I think two readers is an ideal number, because if there're three, I end up deciding that there's one I didn't like. Because I have to not like someone, you know. Two is just enough, and I went home jazzed to have heard them.

"I really, really need to start writing again," I told myself during the trainride home. It's been too long. It's been so long, in fact, that I don't have a single piece of fiction on my harddrive that has a "Last Modified" date of 2004. Whither 2004? I think I tried to find it at the bottom of a mai tai glass.

I went through some of my old notebooks last week and found things I didn't remember writing, though ostensibly I had--it was certainly my handwriting. I also found a number of undated journal entries, scattered throughout one 3-subject notebook, that read so crazy-like they had the patina of myth. "This is an infuriating, nervewracking week," one read. "B is back in town and I don't know what I should do about this."

First of all, what am I, 16? But more important, who is B? I know only one person whose name begins with B and I can't remember where B would've gone to or come back from and why this would've been a conundrum for me. I felt highly dissociative while I read the entry. I began to feel a little nervous that I'd turn the page and see, again in my handwriting, "Well, I've done it! I took care of B. The Newtown Creek tells no tales! Aye aye, Cap'n!"

But I'm getting away from the point. Anyhow, I enjoyed the reading, and afterward I thought, Yeah, I really gotta get back on that fiction tip. [Edit: Me talk pretty one day!]

And I came home, ate three pieces of pepperoni pizza, and passed out on the couch.

A Thank You to Our Sponsors

Hey, thanks to everyone who put TTBBBE back on the first page of results when you google Caitlin Flanagan. Your totebag and umbrella are in the mail.

Cruel Shoes

You look at the woman, she is full of pain. Who is guilty? Shoes!

There's a hilarious and fascinating article in this week's The New Yorker by Burkhard Bilger. It's about one man's lifelong quest to create the best shoes ever. I wish the article were online; it's delightful.

It turns out that I have Egyptian Feet. I always suspected that my feet were less evolved than others', because my smaller toes weren't longer than my big toe, the result of my ancestors' not having worn shoes for very long. I was told this by a boyfriend in college, who--it must be said--had long, tapered second, third, and fourth toes. He declared his feet were the result of centuries of properly-clad ancestral feel. I countered that it was obvious his toes were longer because his ancestors had, up until very recently, been swinging from tree limbs and vines.

It was only at age 20 that I began wearing "grown-up" shoes. Until then, I'd been content with Converse All-Stars, Doc Martens, and (horrible, I know) Timberland all-terrain waterproof sandals. (Not because I was particularly sporty. I was just planning ahead for a punker Trail of Tears scenario.)

At age 20 I was at Macy's returning some terrible gift and ended up saddled with a credit slip. I found myself in the shoe department looking at a pair of faux-crocodile stack-heel loafers. Something inchoate, my lizard-brain Jacqueline Susann, told me to buy them. I was dubious, seeing as they were the least-comfortable thing I'd ever worn. But Jesus appeared to me on a flaming pie in the reflection in the little foot-mirror and told me that I really needed them.

I wore them the following week to a friend's graduation. I'd paired them with a pair of blue and white gingham capri pants and a white blouse. I ran into a contentious, heartbreaking exboyfriend who sized up my outfit and said, approvingly, "You've been doing your homework."

It was about that same time that I began shaving my legs and painting my toenails with Chanel Vamp. Funny how things come into your life like that. Up until that point, the priciest things I owned were UK import records.

Over the years I managed to acquire a number of pairs of truly painful shoes. This all came to a (literally) crushing end when I broke my left foot while running, in platform sandals, to catch a train. I confessed my act of hubris to my podiatrist, who replied, "Don't worry. When I'm finished with you, you'll be able to wear any shoes you want."

This was not the reply I wanted. I wanted to be told not to wear foolish footwear ever again.

I continued with my sartorial folly for another seven years until one day I broke my left foot again...and this time I was merely *walking* in heels. I went to a new podiatrist who offered appropriate amounts of opprobrium and said, "We need to fit you for orthotics."

Is that all?

I decided that I would not consign myself to a life of wearing shoes that look like wet teabags. No more high heels for my plebeian feet, but no orthotics. You know how much orthotics cost? More than my most expensive pair of shoes. More than my most expensive UK import. For the price of a pair of orthotics, I could pay any of the bands in my record collection to come sing to me in my apartment. Almost.

So now I'm reduced to wearing shoes that seem vaguely "arty" (in a lesbian way) or sneakers that seem lesbian-y (in a lesbian way). I did buy a pair of needle-toed stilettos that I've worn exactly twice but that's because they sang "Darling Nikki" to me from their perch on the clearance rack and I had to, I just had to. I've worn them twice. I might be able to summon the werewithal for a third outing.

I found myself reading the New Yorker article and thinking, How can I get my hands on a pair of those Stone-Age Ice Man shoes?

On "Knowing Karate" VS "Knowing Ka-razy"

You know what sucks about reading two years back in your archives? (Well, what sucks if *you* are *me*...) You realize how much funnier you were two years ago. Anyhow, here's a guest-post from my pal Stv, whom I've known for two years and who's clearly stolen my funny from me.

I witnessed this dude ambling amicably around penn station, trying out his new oh so money headline on the public.

I yelled "NINJA!" and he actually played along, whipping his head around and dropping into a kung-fu crouch as if he were ready for an attack!

Then we both laughed and I didn't give him any money, which made me laugh even harder. If there's anything i hate more than a homeless, it's a friggin homeless poseur.

you know, these guys who run their shtick with the big plastic change jugs, or the crackhead newsletters, or the crusty punks who blow it all on facial tattooes until they have a bad week and go crying home to westchester.

the only homeless i respect are the really completely bugfuck swatting at imaginary demons ramblinatin' shamblinators, like all those reagan-era nuthouse dischargees who i'm almost starting to feel nostalgic for. At least they didn't punch off the clock at 5 and take off the crazy suit before their commute.

you can't see it in the pic, but this guy had some pretty nice sneakers on. i guess he needs them in order to run from ninjas - occupational hazard.

although, now that i think about it, when i saw him, the smilies weren't there on the bottom of the sign. he must have added them in order to disabuse passersby of his literality. wink wink, nudge nudge.

i really need to get into this racket -i'm a good sign writer!
I know i could do it!

"I HATE MYSELF ALMOST MORE THAN I HATE YOU. PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY."

"NEED SPARE CHANGE TO FIX TIME MACHINE SO I CAN
GO BACK AND KILL MY PARENTS BEFORE I AM BORN."

"NEED $$$ TO BUY NICE NEW SUIT TO SMOKE CRACK IN"

"CAN I HELP YOU CARRY ANYTHING? I LIKE TO HELP."

The typewriter's on, but my head is empty

Holy crap. After an entirely too long (but unavoidable) wait, We Jam Econo is premiering February 25 at the Warner Grand Theater, presented by Rocket Fuel Fims and the San Pedro Film Society.

I'm very tempted to go. Anyone out there got room for some Kato Kaelin action?

Though I'm sure you don't really care, I hasten to add: This ain't what the kids are calling linkola. First of all, well, duh. Second of all, even if it were linkola, at least my taste in music, unlike some people's, doesn't suck.

Which reminds me: I know I'm 5 years late to the table on this, but I finally heard Death Cab for Cutie this weekend, and wow. I am shocked and amazed that Vivian Stanshall hasn't jumped up from the grave to snatch Ben Gibbard bald-headed.

I need a beer and it's titty-squeezin' time

Holy crap, is it really Mardi Gras already? It came early this year.

Happy Mardi Gras. I have one good* Mardi Gras story. Somewhere out there--well, specifically, it's at the Great Leader's house, I think--is a photo of us, from the vantage point of the projection TV, sitting on the couch and crying.

[UPDATE: The Great Leader has come through. Here it is. I really *am* crying, though it's partly from exhaustion, and partly from laughing really hard at the absurd "Huis Clos" vibe of the evening. The guy to my right was my aimless-but-well-meaning boyfriend. Shortly after this trip he got on a bus to Colorado. I wonder how he's doing. Wow, you can almost see his nutsack. What *is* that behind us? Jesus.]

*Void in MN, WA, RI, and OH.

I know where Syd Barrett Lives

This weekend I read Breaking Open the Head, "a psychedelic journey into the heart of contemporary shamanism" by Open City founder Daniel Pinchbeck. It's about his search for greater spiritual meaning &c and contains enjoyable anecdotes about traveling to exotic climes to partake of the entire Erowid catalog.

There are also a number of chapters devoted to his examination of the occult and mysticism and philosophy, which aren't as much fun to read, because while Pinchbeck decries those who hand-pick selected bits of tribal wisdom and folklore in order to justify their own spiritual travels/travails, it seems that this is exactly what he's doing, often referencing the same Benjamin or Gurdjieff quotes in different chapters. This could be due to the fact that some of the chapters appeared in magazines and newspapers as stand-alone pieces, but this could've been remedied by some astute copyediting.

Anyhow, I was generally appreciating much of his rumination until I hit page 106, where he wrote

I returned to New York City. Ten days after the spectacular burning of the "Temple of Tears" [at Burning Man], Laura and I were caring for our three-week-old baby when we heard the loud thrust of a low-flying airplane and then a sickening thud.

It was past 11 am. Up in the blue sky, between two towers, a two-thirds wedge of lunar opal was clearly visible, beaming over the city....Suddenly, I realized what was happening, if Gurdjieff was right: The moon was feeding.

Let there be no road too narrow

OK, I'm leaving for the Catskills. (I'm HUGE in the Borscht Belt, you know.) Sorry I've been stewing silently these past few days.

Anyhow, in the meantime, check this dude's car out. Imagine, if you will, the car you fantasized about at age 12. Then imagine, say, 15 years down the road, that you have the time, money, and wherewithal to create this car. Oh, and also imagine that you're still mentally 12. [Thx, Stv.]

This might explain why my apartment on the northside of Williamsburg was always infested

Fortunately, fruitflies can't tell you about how their novel has reached an interesting stage:

The scientists discovered a mutation in the Drosophila LIM-only, or Lmo, gene that is highly sensitive to cocaine - a breakthrough that may provide a base for the possible development of drugs able to combat cocaine addiction, according to a paper published by the research team. Blau discovered that the Lmo gene is located in the flies' internal biological clock.

It would be even funnier if this were a podcast

Please go see The Great Leader's latest political button.

It's not unusual

When I left my house this morning I was all set to compose some vituperative, meaningless post about Groundhog Day and the State of the Union and will it just fucking warm up so I can get my car out of the snowbank? Jeez! But then I unexpectedly ran into a close friend on the train this morning--one whom I hadn't seen in weeks--and things seemed much better.

Then I got to work and realized that I have to go to midtown and interview someone about real estate management. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

That Jesus on the church near your house may well be the original

This is just to say that I'm enjoying Meateating Leftist a great deal. It suits the vituperative mood I'm in after a commute that involved 4 trains and a stark raving mad drag queen.