today, october 29 2002 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the strange
arrival of charlie chaplin in france. the circumstances of his arrival
were his expulsion from the united states (for anti-american activities,
tied in with tax issues and a sham paternity / morality trial). what makes
his arrival especially notable (rather than his departure) is the greeting
he got from the lettrists, who “intervened” at a press conference held (by
chaplin) for the movie “limelight”, and distributed an inflammatory tract
entitled “ href="http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rkeehan/presitu/flatfeet.html">no
more flat feet“, which engendered an attack from within, which
engendered a clarifying href="http://members.optusnet.com.au/~rkeehan/presitu/position.html">defense
/ fuck you. i’ve always liked chaplin, and was confused when i first
discovered this. but it was a productive confusion.

more: href="http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/4">society
of the spectacle.

my cat has been missing for four days now and i am afraid she has been eaten by coyotes. last night i heard hellish barking and woofing and yelping and was unable to characterize it as “sweet music”. there’s been other cats at my house, and more or less, they all got it by the road, the fox, or the coyotes. ana has survived the longest, i believe, by extreme fraidy cat-edness combined with an unwillingness to leave a warm spot. i’m afraid that i’ve been driving her to hunt her own food (i’m the only one to reward her for doing so), and be more active, and be more used to things that move around, and that these things led to her downfall. boy i hope i’m wrong. i hope she comes back.

yeesh. lucky i have a backup (don’t worry nick, it was the house comp. that got f-ed up).

the terribles show was great, despite the high school talent-contest level of the previous bands. no one knows why they were on that show (the kind of show where the font on the flyer is comic sans) but it was fun anyway. new terribles songs are great, and will be on a seven inch they are set to record soon. even though the show was near halloween, it was not a halloween show, but even though it wasn’t a halloween show, bucky dressed up as abe lincoln. hmm– that’s a rather convoluted sentance. anyway a good time was had by all. the weirdest part was after the show– emily and kyle’s friend (and atrocious kid) fletcher talking to matt smith, thinking he was me. fletcher was really dumbfounded. i guess he’s thought that matt smith was me for months (maybe years). he made us both produce ID, and then secondary forms of ID. i like the idea of fletcher telling emily and kyle that he ran into me at matt smith-style events like oath shows and start after-parties (where he really ran into matt smith). to be honest, i kind of wish that matt and i had let him believe the lie. oh well, hindsight is always 20-20 i guess.

after that [free] show we went to a [free] hip hop show (also at mass art), which had it’s ups and downs. the headliner, lex (or maybe it was lexx) was pretty alright. he had a “everything’s fucked up” type song, which was cool, but it sucks that he’s unable (or unwilling) to connect the dots between the things in that song and the additudes in his other “must get paid” type songs. well, he was trying to please everyone i guess. i cheered extra loud for the ladies on the mic (including at one point kasey rainbow, who busted one acapella). i also cheered extra loud for the only guy dancing– a large man to be sure, who didn’t give a fuck. how much did he not give a fuck? he knee-slid into flash-dance head shake sweat spray not-giving-a-fuckness with a quickness. i don’t know– the rest of the show was ok i guess.

oh yeah, me and cool breeze and kasey hand-colored a bunch of pins in psychedelic colors and they sold like gold-pressed hotcakes. took the money i made at the show and parlayed it into sandwich cookies and moxie. will have some colorful designs uploaded soon. they look fucking awesome.

o_-ma_,-water-_ot-spilled-o_-t_is-key_oard-a_d-_ow-some-of-t_e-letters-do_’t-work-a_d-t_e-space_ar-do_’t-work-_eit_er.-ma_,-fuck-t_is.

last night after being finicky all day about what i was gonna do, i wrote and shot my five minute movie for kevin driscoll’s five minute movie marathon. the idea behind said marathon is that kevin ebayed a old camcorder and gave 14 people one day over the course of a fortnight to make a five minute movie. mine still has to be edited, so maybe i’m breaking the rules by not completing, nuts to nose, the movie in a day, but anyway it’s gonna be pretty good. it’s called “the wolfman that took a anti-wolfman drug” and stars cøøl breeze as the reluctant wolfman and matt hallas as the profit-oriented chemist and me, jacob berendes, as the god-like voice of god. you know, the “glen or glenda” bela lugosi role.

tonight there’s a terribles show but i don’t really want to do the distro
(as the terribles only have three (3) cds to sell). i shouldn’t be mad at the idea “boston” all the time– it really gets in the way (the idea “mad”).

me and secretly jess were listening to slanted and enchanted on the way to the mirah show last night. my initial liking of pavement was rooted in an appreciation for funny words, but i must say i was apprehensive– i always thought there were a couple, well, lazy parts. la la las, love -> doves, &c. in recent days my newfound respect for pavement has come about as a respect for a group of fellow scrabble players– people who know when to bust out the seven-letter words, and know when the best move is an “ad” “am” double play. thus i came to realize that the so-called lazy parts are not just strategic fallbacks, but, upon inspection, just what the doctor ordered. jess is asking for the new pavement dvd for hannukah, and i for one, am pumped.

as for the mirah show, it was
really good. it was a house show at my friend rascal’s place in amherst. i
ran into a mess of friends and friends-of-friends (e.g. eli, who’s on tour
with the new u.s.a.sexual band (which band i missed by a single night) and
stayed with emily bloodmilk in mapplous minnesota). mirah was awesome and
followed what jess says is the k records formula of having records with
phenominal, creative production, and sparse, intimate performances with audience singalong parts.

previous to the show me and my mom had a mitten design team meeting at the
da lat. pretty sweet. my mom asks: don’t the 30s (rice vermicelli
dishes) usually have bean sprouts? she says yes, the cook (or /a/ cook
anyway) says no. ben schecter appears and is unable to settle the
debate. i for one cannot recall definitely but i side with the cook.

fujichia: we’re your fact-checkin’ cuzz.

oh yeah, fujichia + mom mitten designs may very well drop at the terribles show this friday, but it will take no small amount of scrambling around on my part.

terribles at mass art this friday. me and eel milkies (that’s mike leslie) will be debuting the “distro all monsters” table so bring lots of money. that’s right, lots of money.

the picnic was fun even though i only brought chips and salsa and half the people that brought anything brought chips and salsa. we played a kickball game whose cohesion failed (and rightly so) when it became no fun. afterwards me and cool breeze and kasey (with secretly jess and nicky revs) went and saw ghostbusters on the big screen at clarku for the second time in three days. i was psyched to see it widescreen without the pan and scan. (pan and scan is when a movie gets cropped for video, but the movie contains scenes with characters at opposite ends of the widescreen so the video editors insert a pan from one character to the next, or make cuts back and forth between them (breaking the ten degree rule of cinematography). it always looks like crap and ghostbuster has some of the worst examples of this.). sadly, the version we saw was a film copy of the video copy (?) so it had the 3:4 tv ratio and the pan and scan so what the fuck.

after the movie we went to jess’s house and “partied” in that mike schank way (the way in which party = drink). it was, i must say, just what the dr. ordered. the call “good call” to nicholas reville for the idea “jam sesh” w/bass, guit., viol., tromb., glock.(enspiel), synth.(esizer) in the dark dark dark. also big ups to whoever for the idea “falling asleep listening to johnny cash”. toot-of-own-horn for this morning’s “huge apple pancakes w/banana-as-egg-replacer”. and lest i forget, big ups to nr once more for the idea “cutting hair while soused, convincing others to do same”.

today after pancakes me and my haircut walked around downtown in the beautiful fall weather. it was pretty sweet. HOWEVER on the not so sweet side i encountered the guy that scammed me out of thirty bucks some months ago (the “need a bus ticket home” line). last summer it was me, him, chandler street, hook, line, sinker, ride home to get change i was saving for records, rode back, paid out, hated myself. actually i guess it was a lot [more / less] complicated than that: i knew pretty much he was scamming me from the start and i was having a real miserable day so i just dove into miserableness and so forth. today i had my head above water so i just told him when he launched into it that he scammed me already, over the summer, for thirty bucks; then i walked away. i did not tell him that i don’t have a job, that i canceled big plans due to that lack of money, and that (to quote seth tobocman) you don’t have to fuck people over to survive. was this a failure on my part? i’m not going to dwell on it. well, i’m gonna try not to dwell on it. in any event that thirty bucks is gone and it’s never coming back.

fujichia: in an abusive relationship with the modern world …but sometimes it’s really great, sometimes…

too little too late i realize but melissa #1 organized a picnic for today at institute park at 2pm.

ok, this is creeping me out: while doing a routine vanity search i found myself listed as a “confirmed act” on a google-cached page for a one-man band festival that took place october 6 in chicago. it couldn’t have been the other jacob berendes because he is not a one-man band. i have two questions: 1.) what the fuck? 2.) does anyone have pictures of “my” performance?

brr. i’m bundled up. left my clothes on the line for the second consecutive day/night, having left them in the washer overnight three days prior (i rewashed once). i’t sok though because today is sunny and breezy. melissa #1 was going to drive to beverely (the town) today. maybe i’ll tag along– take in the foilage.

hot look for fall: arm warmers. still hot from summer: gingham. currently rocking: blue polo ked-type shoes (ramones-style says mice leklie, who found them on the street for me). hot fashion accesory: flashlight. point of fashion: sonic youth.

the less said about yesterday, perhaps the better. i got wet, i found a cavity, i read some books in the library– that’s it. whatever i said yesterday about how it’s ok if it rains, that was totally idiotic. i hate the rain, i hate the wind, i hate the cold, and frankly, i wish i had a job and a car and a girlfriend and a drug habit and i was for the war and i ate at mcdonald’s and i got cable television. _fuck_yesterday_.

on a brighter note, i’ve been chosen for some reason by this nice mp3.com station as the “star of the month”.