hung out with emily bloodmilk this weekend, we went in to providence for that as220 crafts fair. i made some special quilted t-shirts and two stuffed animals (actually they were people, beefy dudes with beards… you know, “bears”). the as220 crafts fair is weird, in that i don’t understand why more (any) of my providence friends don’t do it. i’m always there, usually with mike leslie, sometimes with my mom, and we’re always the ones having the most fun and making the most money. it’s usually the first sunday of the month, it costs $15 to get a table, it’s from 11am to 5pm. there’s not a ton of foot traffic, but it’s not hard (for fun, talkative goofs like us) to make the $15 back. the next one is on the 3rd. come hang out.

so i got a scanner (thanks aunt minoute!) and i’m trying to decide if i want to take down the flyers from my walls and scan them in. it’s been a couple of rainy days and i’ve been doing a lot of carpentry with the table saw. matt coe has been doing a lot of sewing with the treadle machine and we’re both in the same obsessive-tailoring-now-that-we-have-mastery-of-the-neccessary-tools-(which-used-to-frighten-us) boat. i built a tabletop stage for the laptop, raised a chair to the proper height (i’m a tall fellow), raised the table so i could fit my legs under while i’m sitting on the new chair, and finally lowered the laptop stage. coe’s been tightening all his shirts to the point where once it gets cold he’ll be unable to layer, which predicament he’s aware of and descirbes as “his sort of predicament”. matt coe- it’s his bed, he’ll sleep in it.

sad news everyone, but maybe you’ve already heard, as it happened november of last year.

anton maiden is dead. also known as anton gustafsson, he gained fame as the first mp3 superstar, by releasing versions of iron maiden songs with midi instrumentation and his own very enthusiastic singing. after going missing for two few weeks, he was found in his apartment dead of an apparent suicide. anton, more than any “outsider” artist before him, was admired not because his was a fractured view on reality, but because he had a genuine, palpable love for the music he performed, and if you think i’m making overly kind sweeping statements, take a listen and see how you yourself feel. anton’s motto was “hellre än bra”, a swedish expression which means “rather than good…”, meaning, “i’d rather be singing that singing good”. or to quote the famous epitaph of that grande dame florence foster jenkins, “there are those that said i could not sing, but no one can say i did not sing”.

anton maiden, you sang. hallowed be thy name.

last night we went to see yoni gordon, bread and roses, and this bike is a pipe bomb, at the harvard radio station. the show was great. yoni gordon wowed everyone, despite being nervous that no one would be into his band (because it sounds like the jam, as led by elvis costello (according to matt smith)). bread and roses was full sing along and this bike is a pipe bomb was full-on country mosh (with some pass-the-guy, which i don’t really approve of but whatever). there was a lot of dancing, and full smiles. this is going to sound weird, but i feel like i didn’t have as great a time as everyone else because i’m not really into back-slapping camaraderie, drunken or otherwise. but i still had a lot of fun. me and dad smith and sourpuss mark and matt coe made a somewhat dour and imposing back row, and i think as a consequence (or maybe because they were both decked out in bike regalia) some girl pinched matt coe in the butt, after which he left the room. yoni and i were discussing this, and yoni said that if that happened to him he’d stick around, see what happens. not a minute later and yoni was similarly assaulted by a hovering eavesdropping crush, and he blushed, flustered. so that’s what happens.

i don’t have anywhere to fit this in but this bike is a pipe bomb is a really great band, and well over 30 so there.

rug selling went pretty good. not as good as last year, but good. lots of crazy talk, hucksterism, hassling… you know, the stuff of life. we stayed at bigfoot paul’s and mike t’s house, which is so close to the bakery that they don’t have a bread box. if you want to make toast you walk three doors down and get bread from the dumpster and bring it back. and if you want bullshit you stand in front of the house for two minutes and the neighbor across the street comes out and starts spinning it out of thin air.

while we were selling rugs this girl came up to us and asked us for musical suggestions. i told her i was really into this band the terribles and mike said he was really into jacob berendes. i told the girl they were both on the fujichia label and i think they have a website and you know what? not a lie from my mouth.

tomorrow and the day after i’ll be in providence selling rugs with bigfoot paul to incoming freshmen. lee never picks up his phone and i don’t know where anyone lives anymore, so you hidden friends, look for me at brown university, or in the brown bookstore reading art books, or in that plastic sunglass place pricing joy buzzers.