the snow ghost community show episode on which i’m on is now online with a variety of viewing resolution and streaming options right here. you can even watch it as a series of thumbnails. we pretty much just talk about dracula.

my room is such a mess that i can’t even really get to my records in such a way to locate whichever i really want to hear. subsequently, i have been listening to grace jones “nightclubbing” over and over again, which also is fine by me, it rules. it’s no secret that i favor amazons, and people who appear blue, but i put off listening to this record for a while, not because i was afraid it wouldn’t be awesome (though i wasn’t sure), but because i was approaching the record and the cover (or, grace jones and her image) as two distinct things. but you know what they say– he that loves the branch loves the tree. tomorrow i’m going out early to try and get “island life”, which has an even better cover. don’t worry, i already wrote the missed connection for myself.

oh, the aforementioned taping of the snow ghost show yesterday went well, although i didn’t stick to my guns and did, in fact, end up speaking. mike kept trying to get me to talk about dracula, because it’s interesting, but the show was best when we just goofed off, which is fun, and while cable access is not the first thing you think when you think “fun”, it is certainly not a medium for things that are “interesting”. mike says it’ll go on the internet when he’s done with it, and he’s already started, so a few days i guess? as promised i was wearing sunglasses the whole time, which altered my personality greatly and to great effect i think.

today i got to hang out with jbruce one last time before he flew back to boulder, which was awesome again/still. udupi was closed (closed tuesdays- who knew?) so we went to moe’s grille, the only place in worcester to get what melissa number one calls “the white boy burrito”- big and stupid, college style. moe’s is actually kind of awesome- all the employees shout “welcome to moes!” at (about) every third person, and while usually i hate this kind of forced jollity, this time i loved it because they didn’t shout at us and jeremy was actually, i think, a little hurt. but the main thing i liked about moe’s is the style, which is “90s revival”. total “funky brand”, with all the food items named after film and tv references (including lots of seinfeld). i only got soda, in part because i was too embarrassed to get anything else. NB: moe’s was established in 2001, and blew up only two years ago.

oh, and matt carroll made his own flyer for the movie tomorrow. fuck off, america! matt carroll- best rapper alive!

new yoni gordon album drops “soon”, with totally sweet mike leslie artwork. tour dates on the YG homepage.

mike was over yesterday to give me the ginger beer recipe, and i got to take a sneak at his sketchbook. he should get a micron sponsorship. and the new skateboard coming out soon on tasty? he always kills!

this wednesday may 30th-

• 9:30 magic lantern film series featuring matt carroll’s “secret life” movie (and live performance). also movies by arley rose and and early work by jim henson. it’s at the cable car cinema, 204 south main st, providence RI. it costs $8.50.
• that very same night in the same town, at summer camp (5 steeple st.), the “last show at summer camp- we are evicted” show, featuring the terribles (who are planning to play before the movie but i don’t know if that’s going to work), plus me (jacob), the body, and about a million other bands. mike said he asked 16 bands to play. after the show there’s a sleepover so bring a blanket.

it’s very possible to do both of these things. if you can only do one, see the movie, it’s going to rule. really, “not to be missed”.

so, i added a static front page- does this work for everyone? it should show four pictures of uniform height (but not uniform width) on the left, and a list of options on the right, and clicking on the pictures gets you to here, the “posts” view. i wanted to make it ok / easier for people to navigate through to the mp3 releases without fully interacting with the minutiae of my life– i realize that i’m asking people that are probably already invested in the minutiae, but is this a good way? also, should the pictures link back to the original posts from which they’re from or would that be too confusing?

i’ve been getting too many books at once from the library, but i’m just now learning how to have it work out. too often idle time is totally wasted on the internet, and obviously i like the internet and there are gems and wonders and snapshots and shadows and butt prints still warm, but sometimes time is too much logged at the keyboard checking to see if the world is magical in a specific way yet. so now i’m cutting off and reading actual things more, and thinking about them and writing about them (sure, sure). incidentally if you want to talk about krishna, popeye, or classy freddy blassie, now’s the time, while my thoughts are undifferentiated flesh.

filming the next episode of the snow ghost community show (on which i am a guest) this monday at the store. the topic will obviously be dracula. i plan on wearing sunglasses as an indication of attitude, possibly a beard. if you have an idea for a good stunt or gimmick, now’s the time.

also, sam, work proceeds apace on the comic book (not the one i showed you).

just a reminder that from now on, HBML is open on saturdays, from 2 – 5pm. i recommend visiting the worcester art museum beforehand- it’s free before noon every saturday, and right now there’s a raymond pettibon / ed ruscha exhibit that is WORTH IT.

GT came through with that “trapped in the closet 1 – 12″ dvd tonight, and just our luck sheryl ann dropped by so we got to talk it up a ton before watching it and also see it through her eyes (she had only ever heard part of the first song and nothing else, which i find kind of amazing). if you haven’t seen TIC, you should really seek it out. i’ve expounded on TIC and the “pied piper of R&B” before, but here’s here goes for posterity, in the list item format:

• the format is astounding- a serialized pop operetta- i don’t know why more people don’t seize on this (well, i do- pop artists are rarely storytellers).

• the plot is great- a maddening webwork in which every character and element of the story comes back two or three times in unexpected ways.

• kellz is a truly great artist, with a great imagination and the confidence to make just about anything work (he claims that there will be 30 chapters before it’s all through).

• the performances of every character, telephone, and siren (all by r kelly himself) are perfectly nuanced, even when he’s grandstanding on a drawn-out high note or in a polyrhythmic bickering match.

• the videos are perfectly shot in a way that looks more like a play than a flashy video and evokes noir without looking cheap.

• the characters are likable and all possess an extremely affable “well, it sure is a crazy world” vibe coupled with genuine and fiery passion for life and all that it entails.

but most importantly

• the dialog is famously non-clever, choosing to have people talk in a very realistic way, which is to say, ineloquent. occasionally someone gets in a good line or dig on another character, but mostly it’s the kind of emotional sputtering you say when you’re running so hot you’re about to pass out. all the memorable lines are the ones that seem the stupidest, but they are all things, which, in this position, a person would really say, like “shit, think, shit, think.”.

and

• the motivations of the characters is similarly set in this “freaked out animal” mode. emotions turn on a dime from furious to desolate to laughing togetherness, heated arguments get temporarily derailed by pointless minutia, all real life shit that you’d otherwise never hear in a pop song.

in the commentary (yes, i watched the commentary and the behind the scenes featurette), r kelly talks about how huge his legacy is going to be for this, and i actually believe him. for the format alone, he could be huge. for his writing, he’s bigger than david mamet, bigger than any of those dudes. dudes: “i believe i can fly”. dudes: “ignition (remix)” IN WHICH: our protagonist is drunk and gets called on it, is at a party that is explicitly NOT catered (“food everywhere” is what- bags of tostitos?), and gets kicked out of a hotel lobby, not caring a whit, just living and loving and driving and beeping and doing it again. not a “bad boy” that we love, just a creature on the earth, which we are.

mtv.com reports a new DVD this july, chapters 13 – ?.

god bless robert sylvester kelly.

fujichia mp3 reissue
Puzzled Panther – Bugs On Bugs
only album from soda-inspired home-schooled supergroup

the single – Soda Day
download entire album zipped / uncompressed
stream in standalone player (flash)

(more…)

well, i didn’t get to do anything i had hoped to do- i stayed up all night working on the planetarium and up to the exact minute before we opened on friday. as it is in all endeavors lately, 80% of the things i tried to do for it didn’t pan out. the important part is that on saturday i missed my sister elsa’s graduation from library school.

living so close to a college has desensitized me to graduation, and more than any real accomplishment, the standard “graduation” has come to signify a certain type of coming of age into a world i don’t care about, or the end of a waste of time. at best, it’s the turning of a page in a book so vast that the selection of any page to celebrate seems arbitrary. my sister going to library school is different though- she’s wanted to be a librarian for as long as i can remember and the graduation is, not the culmination of a dream, but a recognition and sanctification of a dream. i really wish i could’ve been there.

to sum up, it’s been raining and i’ve been a complete ghost- no shadow, incapable of grasping objects or saying full words. on the lighter side of things, the planetarium did get finished (to a degree), indian food is still good, and the cat at forbes st can reportedly say “hello”. elsa, i’m very proud of you.

i should be readying the planetarium for tomorrow, but i stopped to check my email only to discover that the first snow ghost community show is now online! i haven’t watched all of it yet, and i have to get back to furious activity until ~9pm tomorrow, but i watched the first 5 minutes and it rules. opening animation from our pal sam gas can, several shouts out to HBML (official sponsor of the SGCS), and with special guest, famous pacifist and nuclear weapons protester scott shaeffer-duffy, talking about (what else?) the 3 stooges. EPIC!!!!!

UPDATE it seems the video might work better coming from archive.org.

this morning i finally got pictures up of the “top 40” paintings i made that were on disply at hbml for a while. they are all for sale at the shop for very reasonable prices. so reasonable it’s pretty damned unreasonable actually.

also, with all this griping as of late, i failed to mention that jaybird is in town and we got to hang out and talk about blessings (the act of blessing someone) and good phrases to know in the various languages he’s studying right now (incl. sanskrit). right now i’m liking “hey murga!” which means “you idiot!”, but also good is “kim bahuna” which means “but i digress” (and literally translates to “why with more?”). big up jer!