Bite bite bite!

This week's Shouts and Murmurs cracks me up:
Talking Chimp Gives His First Press Conference:

Yes—you, Ms. Female-Human-Copulation-Candidate, right here on the left. Your question?

Mm-hmm? That’s an excellent question. But, before I answer, may I ask you something? When was the last time you copulated?

I can tell by the way you cover your bared teeth with your hand while your cheeks fill with color that my question intrigues you. I like that. Your copulation partner must be gigantic and have a virtually bottomless supply of orange wedges to have snared a mate like you. But I tell you this: one hour with me and my long stick, and you’d be—

I will be released

OK, false alarm.

So N and I spent the long weekend in St. Augustine, where his folks live. A nice time was had by all, even though it was essentially a replay of last year. So much so that we didn't really bother taking photos.

We saw the toad.

We went to the beach.

We spent time at Murph's Bar and Grill [but Mostly "Bar"]: more on that later.

Oh, and we went to a church carnival, replete with White Elephant sale, rickety rides, and Infectious Diseases Petting Zoo. There was a large, hay-filled corral housing llamas, donkeys, emus, baby goats and whatnot. Then there was a small playpen alongside:

I have been back an hour

And now I must watch focus group videotapes.

Pray for Mojo.

Five things I hate that everyone else likes

The taxi is arriving in ten minutes to take me to the airport so this is a bit rushed. In theory, there is an unlimited number of things I hate that everyone else likes, but I'll try and pinpoint it.

1) I'm sticking with my original choice of Desperate Housewives: I don't get it. Skinny old slags on TV. Woooo.

2) Dave Barry: Sorry.

3) Uma Thurman: Horseface.

4) The Gorillaz: ANNOYING.

5) Anything directed by Todd Solondz, Neal LaBute, and/or Harmony Korine: I want to punch all of them in the cock.

Thank you Brittney for the opportunity to vent my spleen so early on a Friday morning. I'm off to Flor-i-day: C U Next Tuesday! (Really, see you then.)

Your mother was a hamster.

I am acknowledging that I've been challenged, and as soon as I meet my work deadline, I'll be right on it. A few list items that crossed my mind: kiwifruit, Desperate Housewives, and Mexicans. But then I realized, Hey, scratch that, no one really likes Mexicans, so now I have to come up with three more things.

Dude(k)!

Seeing as the Great Leader is absent, I'll have to carry this torch:
Liverpool!!!!

This is Bob Dylan to Me

OK, so last night I saw one of the two NYC screenings of We Jam Econo. N noticed that I'd been quiet at dinner and almost catatonic while waiting in line at the theater. "Are you excited about the movie?" he asked. I nodded. I've been waiting for pert near two years for this documentary to come out, and much, much longer than that to see actual footage of D. Boon. (I mean, I've seen some grainy, short clips of the Minutemen performing, but never anything lengthy. And I was eager to witness Boon's legendary stage presence.)

Some could argue that this unequaled fanaticism bias probably makes me one of the least-qualified people to write an objective review, though I'd like to counter that I am very. easily. disappointed. and thus I AM AN EXCELLENT REVIEWER.

Dream Told by Dana, Part II

OK, so We Jam Econo was fantastic and I have a full report for this afternoon. Actual work beckons.

Worth sitting through the day pass

Now imagine giving your daughter a camcorder! Imagine that your filthy slut daughter spends a year traveling the world, and gets married to a trashy young fellow along the way. Now imagine that she returns home and, in typical self-involved fashion, forces you to watch several hours of her self-recorded aimless banter, bad jokes and sexually suggestive idiocy.

Dream Told by Dana

I'm so freakin' excited to see We Jam Econo tonight. You have no idea.

In celebration, here's I Felt Like a Gringo, off the album Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat.

AND: Here's Tom Troccoli's tribute to the Minutemen. (Via Corndogs.)

This Just In: Broccoli Gives You AIDS

So it turns out that sunshine may actually be good for you.

That's great. But it doesn't lessen the fear that this mole developing on my right cheek isn't going to become terribly cancerous, necessitating that I have surgery that makes me look like that poor fucker who tried committing suicide after listening to "Stained Class" but only managed to blow off half his face.

Like a line of coke sniffing itself

[Ed note: For some reason I'm getting a bunch of visitors who are oddly attracted to a post I made over a year and a half ago about Amy Sohn marrying a Bennington alum. Welcome Maud readers! You people like Bennington, huh? I'll give you Bennington, fuckers.]

About a week ago, Gawker ran an interview with a Bennington alum who is so obsessed with Bret Easton Ellis that he's writing a novel about him. (Apparently he managed to alienate his idol a couple years ago--I'm guessing they've made up. How one could alienate an established media whore is beyond me, so kudos to you, Jamie, and kudos again.)

Anyhow, this Gawker post serendipitously appeared the same day as my Alumni magazine, which they faithfully send to me every quarter even though I never graduated and haven't given them a cent. This issue included a huge, congratulatory spread about the extensive renovations and "rebirths" of the buildings on campus, including the common rooms of all the original houses and the entire alumni house.

I wish I could find these photo spreads online, because my words can't possibly capture the honey-hewed wood, the sun streaming in through gossamer curtains, the Ethan Allen-style sofas and cub chairs. It's a stark contrast to how I remember the common rooms, what with cigarette butts, used condoms, and dried blood being noticeably absent, and especially to how I remember the drafty, creaky alumni house, the perfect (well, cheap) place to spend a post-college weekend when you want to do a bunch of mushrooms and are afraid you'll jump off the roof of your Williamsburg tenement if you stay in the city.

I, of course, emailed D, a fellow alum, about it immediately, as we delight in scrutinizing both the alumni magazine and the Pottery Barn catalog alike. He replied:

Yes I did get the Alumni Magazine, which is apparently now called "Country Curtains."

Gazing in disbelief at the picture of the living room made me wonder "Is this the place we used to love? Is this the place we used to burn furniture and crucify raccoons?"

And please don't even bring up the Alumni House, site of so many disasters, including [redacted]'s car wreck in the Mercedes station wagon and subsequent hiding from the police. I particularly remember [redacted] breaking a glow stick over his head and then rubbing the mess all over the curtains and upholstery. This after pissing on the stage at Martha Hill. It now resembles a Pottery Barn catalog. The only thing missing is one of those noxious chalk boards with the sick-making "reminders" like "buy merlot" "Hannah's violin lesson- 4PM" and "Take Jake and Sam to Soccer." Only it should read, "Buy Xanax" "Pick up kegs for Fels" and "Fetch Cardamom from the abortionist."

My conclusion? Bennington's raucous days as detailed in "Rules" "history" and others and lived by thee and thou were an aberration that became thought of as the norm, much as the 1950's are held up as an era America has devolved from, when in fact they too are an aberration. The living rooms will last. And did you see the rock-climbing room? In my day it would have been turned into a meth lab.

WE JAM ECONO

Hey hey hey, don't forget kids: tomorrow night, at the Walter Reade, is the NYC premiere of We Jam Econo, the story of the Minutemen. I've got my tix. Look for me--I'll be the one with the vagina.

Todessüßigkeiten!!!

Everyone--or at least the Post--is all up in arms about the Death Candy.

Whatever. I don't know how many children have choked to death, but clearly their parents didn't love them enough.

At a bodega last week, as I waited for my coffee, a little boy--probably 8 or so--came in and slapped a handful of pennies on the clear plastic countertop by the register. Underneath the plastic were little partitions, offering all sorts of third-world confections: Chicletas, Chupa Chups, Lead-Flavored Asbestos Taffy Twisters.

The boy pointed at one of the partitions. "That's the killer candy," he informed me.

And it was. Goddamn, those are some big candies--roughly the size of your standard Spalding Hi-Bounce. "That's the candy that the little girls choked on, right?" I asked him.

He nodded enthusiastically.

"You're not buying it for yourself, are you?"

He nodded enthusiastically again, then giggled.

I paid for my coffee and the man behind the counter set to counting the little boy's pennies, many of which had rolled to the other end of the countertop. "Have fun," I said.

Here to dispel the myth that women only excel at hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing

11-y-o girl pitches perfect Little League game:

The shy 11-year-old pitched a perfect game Saturday for her Dodgers team. In two games on the mound, she’s struck out 32 of 33 batters in the Oakfield-Alabama Little League program.

False Nostalgia Fridays!!!

I have work deadlines up the yin yang--that's not what's kept me from posting. In fact, I have several unfinished posts. I can't believe I am procrastinating doing the very thing that began as a practice of procrastination in the first place. It's very meta.

On a rainy, bleary day such as this one, here's something that cheered me up:
You Are My Sunshine, sung by Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

Only darkness has the power

I spent an hour at the DMV yesterday morning, which, as these things go, isn't an inordinate amount of time to be trapped there, nor was it particularly hellish. I'm not quite sure when the New York City Department of Motor Vehicles first got its rep as the Empire of Obfuscation and Sadism in Triplicate Form*, but I do know that it's been somewhat reformed.

I arrived at the DMV five minutes after it opened and was greeted by a line of about 60 people just outside the elevator doors. Soft hits of the 70s and 80s were piped in from the speakers. Periodically, the more incredulous among us would ask the person standing in front of them, "Am I really supposed to be standing in this line? I only need to..." and the person standing in front of them would nod and shoot them a "Who the fuck do you think YOU are?" look.

The entrance to the DMV is a standard glass door. The exit, inexplicably, is one of those floor-to-ceiling turnstiles that implies that you're not merely leaving, you're being furloughed. Yesterday it was in need of some WD-40. Everytime someone left, it made a grinding-creaking-KACHUNKing noise that put me in mind of an industrial guillotine.

I had already prepared for my trip to the DMV by downloading and completing every conceivable form they might ask me to fill out (hmmm...."Registering Farm Equipment"....better do it just in case) so by the time my number (C529) started blinking on the LCD bingo screen, I was confident that I'd be done in a matter of minutes.

(I was also begging God that I'd be done in a matter of minutes, because I had a desperate need to take a dump. Maybe it's the bureaucracy, or having to write my full name 117 times, or perhaps it's the promise of using the most horribly defiled restrooms in the five boroughs, but whenever I get called for jury duty, or visit the police station**, or have business with the DMV, I find myself seized by the need to defacate.)

For the first time in my life, divine providence smiled upon me: five minutes later I was done, and as Stevie Nicks' seminal "Edge of Seventeen" blared from the loudspeakers, I KACHUNKed my way out of there, hopped on the express, and managed to get to work at 9:55.

Riding up in the elevator, eagerly fecund, I noticed a sign: "Notice to Tenants: On Tuesday we will be doing work on the water supply. From 10 am to 3 pm you may experience an absence of water pressure. We apologize for the inconvenience."

By the time the doors of the elevator opened, I had already begun unbuttoning my trousers.

I'll spare you the rest of the story, but suffice it to say that I beat the clock by just under :30.

*When I was a kid, my parents' city friends--the ones who didn't run to the hills (like my folks) during the early 70s--used to come up to visit us just to go to our DMV. It was a kinder, gentler DMV than what they were accustomed to: There was never a line, the office was not a cavernous multipart drop-ceilinged nightmare with meandering lines of cretins (it was a small anteroom in the lovely neoclassical courthouse building on the town square), and the lady behind the counter was actually nice. "Hold on a sec, hon," she'd say when you'd go to register your vehicle. "Lemme see if I can find some license plates with your initials on them."
**On Very Special Occiasions.

Dance with what brung ya

JPo's written an excellent letter to the School Board of the State of Kansas. It reads, in part:

If the State of Kansas should accept the anti-scientific proposals before it now, we hereby declare that we will never hire or contract professionally anyone educated in the Kansas public school system during the times such resolutions are in effect. The intellectual, economic and physical health of our nation depends on a clear understanding of scientific principles.

If you go to the city then you will find me there

There are some fantastic portraits to be found in Honky Tonk: Portraits of Country Music, 1972-1981 So good I liked to have died. Go poke around. (Via krimur.)

Bilious and phlegmatic

This morning, while performing my beauty regimen (this involves close examination of face to chart gin blossom/Italian Ladybeard growth, picking at blemishes like a tweaker, and actually very littlle beauty at all), I noticed what appears to be a new mole near my right eye.

Oh, it's cancer. It's definitely cancer.

That this is surely a melanoma of the fast-spreading, brain infecting kind is compounded by the fact that I need to find a new dermatologist. My current one wears guyabara shirts and huarache sandals and apparently spends his vacation time in third world countries curing children of crippling skin diseases. Which is all well and good, y'know, admirable even, but at my last appointment with him (for some....heh heh...ass-ne, I guess you could say), we had a troubling exchange.

El Dermo: I can give you a topical solution for those pimples, but what you really need is to expose them to the air.

Me: ...

El Dermo: You need to go to the beach. Preferably a nude beach. That'll clear 'em right up.

Me: Okay. I like nude beaches, actually.

El Dermo: That so?

Me: Yeah, 'cos everyone looks better naked than in swimsuits.

El Dermo: Well, everyone except the fatties.

Hold Watcha Got

RIP, Jimmy Martin.

It's the saddest night out in the USA

It's not often that I find myself in a tony club on the Upper East Side at a black tie event hosted by an organization that promotes "protecting the freedom of all [but, really, we mean Christian] religious traditions," rubbing elbows with William F. Buckley, Jr.

It's even LESS often that I am armed with a cameraphone on such occasions.

This blows my mind.

An astounding number of folks--110!--won second place in the March 30 Powerball drawing. Where'd they get the winning numbers from? A fortune inside a cookie manufactured by LIC's own Wanton Wonton Food.

It's a heartwarming story, in some ways, but it speaks disturbing volumes about us, doesn't it: We are a culture of people who are willing to throw away our money on a one-in-three-million chance of winning something (and that's just the second-place odds) and our scientific method of selecting the best possible numbers is TRUSTING A FUCKING FORTUNE COOKIE.

It ain't where you from, it's where you at

These are (grainy, low-res cameraphone) photos of the hallway outside my old office. One of the myriad indignities of this particular office was that it had only two electrical outlets. (The others included the fact that it was constantly 82 degrees, it had no windows, it was directly across from the men's room, and the former occupant was a chainsmoking junkie who left behind a yellow residue on the hand-me-down desk plus a lot of spoons and cotton balls.) Anyhow, I endured--nay, PROSPERED--by employing a number of power strips.

The new occupant of this office is, I think, miffed to have been re-stationed. And rather than use my multiple-power-strip method, Occupant has chosen to go the ghetto fabulous route, illustrated above, of plugging an extension cord into the wall by the men's room, ferreting it up THROUGH the mouldering ceiling tiles, and then snaking it into the office.

Score another point for Office Morale!

I hate when that happens.

My sincerest condolences to the residents of the two existing behemoth apartment buildings in LIC whose views will be obstructed by the construction of yet another 20-story apartment complex.

Heh.

Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'til I get back in town

Rob Walker, he of the Consumed column, has a new book coming out this summer entitled Letters From New Orleans. It's a collection of his well-regarded email newsletters (which he heartlessly ceased to publish shortly after I signed up for them), plus some new stuff, bien sur.

[And now, back to my black helicopter nattering.]

Chances are

...that it won't take four years to solve the murder of these two little girls. Also: chances are, in this case, that it won't take the cops an entire year to follow up on a tip that leads to the arrest of the killers.

[Edited to add: Quelle fucking surprise, in less than 24 hours, they've arrested the father of one of the girls.]

Look fast, look left, look right

Of possible interest: A federal judge ordered the FBI to search more thoroughly for records about possible links between the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and a gang of white supremacist bank robbers. These records, if they haven't magically disappeared, could prove a connection between Timothy McVeigh, Elohim City and the Aryan Republican Army.

Well you gotcher guitar and yer practice amp

Last night I was pleased to see a flyer for the Willie Mae Rock Camp, a summer day camp, scheduled for this summer in NYC, based on the Girls Rock n Roll Camp model and named after the late, great Willie Mae Thornton.

(You may recall that Brittney did an article about the Southern Girls Rock n Roll Camp.)

I think this is a fucking fantastic idea and I encourage anyone who has instruments (or money, of course) that they're not using to donate.

I wish I'd had this opportunity as a kid. I imagine that if I had, my musical repertoire would be more extensive than "Iron Man," "Ziggy Stardust," "Talk About the Passion," and various generic folk songs.

Public Service Announcement

If you have tried to call me in the past few days and haven't gotten through, it is because I am floating in a cellphone limbo that is certain to last for 3 to 8 business days. If you've left me a voicemail, I haven't gotten it, and I won't be able to retrieve it, ever.

I have never felt so free.

Metropolitan Diary

Setting: The sidewalk outside of Fabianne's Cafe, Williamsburg.
Dramatis personae: Me & M, walking down sidewalk; two men drinking coffee at outdoor table.

Man One: ...and Albert Schweitzer-

Man Two: Wait, who is Albert Schweitzer again?

Man One: ...

Man Two: Wait, is he the one with the moustache? [Puts fingers to mouth, makes "spindly moustache" gesture]

Man One: [Nods enthusiastically.]

Me, in my Fantasy World: [Bludgeons the two to death with 21-inch barbarian club.]

Me, in Reality: [To M] Well, they're gay, so at least they won't be breeding.

This ain't the Mudd Club

I think I broke something in my cerebrum last night. That's neither here nor there.

Everyone should have a doctor who just comes right out and says stuff like, "OK, I'm going to give you a prescription for either Xanax or Klonopin--which do you want?"

Or maybe everyone shouldn't.

I, of course, when faced with such a time-sensitive decision, immediately thought which one will fuck me up more?

"Don't they give Klonopin to schizophrenics? And, like, epileptics?"

I thought about these girls at school, the two Heathers, who wore matching Victorian hooker garb and fancy wigs and whose chins lolled on their chests at parties because they ate Xanax like M&Ms.

Then I thought about Margo Kidder in that Dumpster. "I'll take the Klonopin, please."

He wrote the scrip on a very official-looking prescription pad, with serial numbers and water marks and embossed frippery.

My doctor, who always sits as far as he can from me in the examining room, then extended his arm, the scrip in his hand. "Is this one of those meds that...ah....will go down on my permanent record?" I said.

He jerked the scrip away from me for a second, holding it aloft as though he were playing Monkey in the Middle. "Why, you running for President or something?"

"Well, no, but I might have to pass a co-op board's muster at some point in my life, sheesh."

"Nah, this won't be a problem."

"What if I want to adopt a dog or something?"

"Probably not an issue."

Thank you, Doctor Feelgood.

Speaking of doped-up retards in goofy outfits, over on Tale of Two Cities, there's been a sighting of these party dolls originally identified in this post.

I had no idea that anyone but me noticed these people (though--DUH--how could you NOT notice 'em?) but I see them EVERYWHERE. My earliest sighting was at the 2003 Tokion Creativity Now thingy, and later at the Greater New York show at PS1. I sort of assumed that they were Parsons undergrads. They wear matching costumes and hairdos--performance artists with false nostalgia for some period or scene that never existed. I knew Leigh Bowery, and YOU, SIR, are no Leigh Bowery!

(Jesus, here they are again.)

[Edited to add: And here are the costumes they wore to the Creativity Now conference.]

The Klonopin side of me says that they ain't hurting nobody (unless they send their poor mothers to their graves with those crazy hairdos of theirs), but the bitchy killjoy in me, the one who can slip out of any pharmaceutical rope-knot, wants to tell them to quit it with the maribou and the body glitter or else they'll never be promoted to shift manager at Oren's.

And I Want You To Stop Stealing My Vodka

Oh, my stars. I'm sure most of you remember Shut Up, Little Man, the audio odyssey of Peter and Raymond, the two drunken closet cases.

I've found an open directory of 36 SULM recordings. ENYOY.

No more I'll dig the praties

You know what this blog needs? More foodstuffs.

Jesus Walked Everywhere

Of possible interest: Fitted Sweats is featuring a weekly "Ask David Berman" category. So far, he's answered questions about sex and Jesus.

Quit it with the fucking softballs, people! How about, "How many songs, if any, is your wife singing on this next album?" and (following up) "Could you maybe not let your wife sing on this next album, if it's not too late, I mean?"

(Via Young Manhattanite.)

P.S. Anxiously awaiting Tanglewood Numbers.

P.P.S. Go check out Dust Congress' recording of David Berman the even-more-adorable Hackmuth reading "And That's How I Met Your Mother."