sunday (last night) i went to the borrrrrringest show! the band was blitzen trapper, and kevin’s friend who’s writing his thesis on toejam and earl (or something) took the train in from boston to see it, so i thought it would be both worthwhile and, extrapolating wildly from the vaguely teutonic name and the connection “video game student”, a kind of weird dancey band. well, i should’ve got the full information, because the other band was fleet foxes, so the theme was in fact “post-’wolf’ casual pastoral”. ohhhhhh they were borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrING. i stayed through all the first band to see if maybe the other second was a hilarious mismatch, but once at the second i could only last half a ssong before deciding that it wasn’t. halfway through fleet foxes a guy came up to me and we started talking about disclose (kawakami RIP), and i started thinking about things that were exciting and/or interesting, and i actually got mad at the bands for wasting everyone’s time. some people obviously liked the music, going so far as to yell “woo!” and so forth, but why? and how? “sons of lawyers in a boring band”, as jim once said, and while i don’t know the backgrounds of everyone involved, i can’t help but make a class issue out of such tepid, cloying nonsense (and i realize this is a slippery slope). also, it wasn’t even bad! it didn’t even have badness. and it wasn’t actively boring– no “positively charged negative space”, it just kept not getting interesting. so if you’re in one of these bands, and you’re reading this, please, stop being in a boring band! manage a restaurant, save a tree, eat ice cream everyday for a year, come on, do something with your life!

friday i had so much fun that all-day saturday i had a fun hangover. and no drinking (except a few sips of champagne), just lots of fun, which caused me, the next day, to be a little bit slow and a teeny bit bummed and just generally “the next day”.

the day (friday) started off pretty bogue, messing up a silkscreen over and over, as noted earlier. then i met up with my western mass connection and drove to the store, went to donkey dog nuts and got coffee, and from there everything pretty much took off. josh’s show was (and is) really great, and he made a gorgeous zine / catalog, with lots of drawings from the show and lots of other stuff too. really really awesome. at one point we got really hungry and wanted quan yin, so we just called up and ordered “three good meals”, which worked out pretty good, despite QY being closed, and our call getting rerouted to the buddha hut (which as mentioned is inferior for all applications that don’t involve sketched-out parents). good turnout at the show, and mariah pariah brought a silver tray of cookies, regular and girl scout (thanks mariah!). after closing, my northampton pals drove home to see black pus, grey skull, and fat worm of error (which was in josh’s house). i wanted to go but i would have had no ride home, so i opted out. donny said the show went good and the boredoms were in the crowd, which is pretty epic, and i feel a mild pang for having missed it, the boredoms being my favorite band for a period of three years (and grey skull being awesome). nonetheless i feel i made the right move, going instead to the punk show– apeshit, CFL, dungeoneers and more at the wheelchair.

at past shows at the wheelchair, as perhaps astute readers may have gleaned, i felt like quite the sore thumb, being as a matter of course older (for the most part), soberer (with some exceptions), and not in the perceived uniform. ok, so this is pretty much all in my mind, but friday, while i sure didn’t blend or melt, i realized that sometimes a salad only has one or two croutons, and no part is not not-part-of-the-salad. RITE? so i got my head in the proper place, and as the night went on, i felt more and more in heaven, or rather, on the earth of shared creation: ML completely shredding the ramp with a wig on the whole night; me, dancing hard in a fred astaire vein hand in hand with a beautiful rogue ginger rogers, buffeted in waves of soggy t-shirts and greasy moptops. at one point the afore-mentioned champagne bottle rolled off a ramp and stood spinning on it’s side in a crowd that immediately formed a circle. the bottle slowly slowed and stopped, two sweaty lads embraced. i always cry at weddings.

ON DANCING:
i was at dinner with my mother not a month ago, talking about the sort of shows i go to and the show my aunt’s neighbor went to at the palladium where his jaw got broken. i made the case that violent dancing can be a display of aggression, and an extension of fighting, or it can be a display of affection, and an extension of hugging, and i only attend instances of the latter. this is a good way to frame it if the discussion ever comes up, but there are times (and they are the best times) when crazy dancing- fast, reckless, with equal parts abandon and trust- is neither display nor extension, but everything rolled up at once. we’re careening into flowing robes territory now, but you know: times when you realize you’re not just in the world, you are the world. on that mississippi john hurt album that pars likes (and that i like) there’s a great song about dancing crazy, and he sing/says: “i’ll be there and you’ll be there, and i’ll meet you in the soup, and we’ll get all mixed up”. that’s it!

ALSO:
apeshit played an impromptu set and even though we don’t really know each other so good it was great to see circle pat again. pat will mosh at a single dropped hat– when he sees a mike & ike on the ground, or when he finds out that a small pizza is $2 on tuesday, and it’s tuesday.

ALSO:
as i was leaving, getting my stuff, which i stashed behind a moldy loveseat, the meaty fellow displaced by actions said “get a load of this nerd”. well the girls he was trying to build himself up to were none other than those excellent warhol-looking teens and they sure tore in– “that’s jacob- he runs HBML and he rules etc.”. well, you could have knocked me over with a feather! i set out alone into the night, with big lazy snow sparsely falling, singing, almost keeping pace with a train gliding silently towards the yard.

weird snow bursts notwithstanding, it’s spring sure enough. oh, also the auction of the shop got delayed until may 1, so i figure we’re set for at least the summer through.

tonight (friday the 28th) from 5 to 8pm. the exhibit is called “wheel of doom / we love doom”. there will be a fresh zine available, but the bandanas got delayed. bummmmmmmmerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. because i screw up everything i touch.

i’m moving again, to where the rent is 50% cheaper. actually just up the street to nick’s office. not psyched on packing up everything or having less space, but really psyched to be hanging out with nick and little andrew more regularly.

easter was great– me and LA and secret door got scratch tickets and candy bars and did vodka shots on a fallen tree on george street. i don’t remember where the superstition / tradition “vodka shots on easter to welcome the heavenly host” came from, but i think it was in a book next to “sauerkraut on new year’s day to prevent head lice”. i even won on the scratch ticket if you can believe it. that night there was a puppet show, it was great, then we watched spaceballs. political art can make people an audience uncomfortable– this puppet show had the dignity of abstraction, of not explicitly telling you what the peppers represent, and letting you realize “everything is political”. like i said, it was great. and then afterwards, spaceballs.

speaking of theatre, me and mike are going to be in a play written by madeline from missoula oblangata, at the end of april / early may. the play will only be performed for 48 people, 2 people at a time, in 24 shows over three weekends.

last night i ate yellow sandwiches and watched jurassic park with diamond and company, and 15 years later the effects still look cool / you don’t see the effects (on the movie). today lunch at the quan yin with American League was delightful and then we went to building 19 and i bought a gift copy of that ed ruscha book i love, “they called her styrene”. ok, i looked it up and couldn’t find anything definitive, but the title painting was made in 1977, x ray spex started in 1976, so it’s possible, but i feel not super likely but who knows. or, who cares enough to investigate. i also got a price guide of golden age comics, and cut off the top three inches, the only part i want, with a band saw. pretty satisfying. now i’m cleaning up, trying to sort through boxes marked “MISC”, and ironing 200 21″ squares.

readers of mcsweeney’s internet tendency may find something amusing on today’s front page. not surprisingly, they didn’t go with my original copy, which was really quite bang zip pow. also not suprisingly, they used the catchier but archaic and not preferred name. AS IF i’m complaining. lauren, thanks for hooking it up!!

not trying to spook or beg, but HBML got a nice letter from the bank’s lawyers the other day saying they (the bank) now own the property, which is the story of the year (not in this case specifically but a million times around the country). anyway they’re holding a foreclosure auction this thursday at 11, if anyone of you fresh lords want a building you might want to check it out, and if you’re really interested i can show you around my section of the space before then.

i’ve sent out to various lists the question “what happens to me?”, and got a wide array of seemingly knowledgeable answers. my distillation is this: my lease transfers to the new owner, who can evict me but must do so through the courts, or could offer “cash for keys”. sso, i could be reading this wrong, but it seems not too too bad, and not super-imminent bad, but definitely “up in the air”. all advice welcome.

also, these past two months have been really awesome, and things are going really great.

the most important part about today was that walking through the classic empty brick industrial ssection of town at night from the pizza thing at the free school to the punk show in the old thrift store, the moon coming up was so big it looked like a massive sports arena just outside of town. the show was cool, dan and jen came out, and so did crusty tim, who is moving to worcester (or wArcester as he calls it) in two weeks, and i can’t wait until he developes underlings, or i overhear people talking about him. i told him i’d show him around town, where the cheap sandwiches are, where the loose cigarettes are sold. as far as bands, the only one i paid attention to was red thread, and they were awesome, and everyone was moving, which makes everyone feel good. mike’s ramp got moved from the go go to there, so now people can skate during the entire show and not be disruptive to people trying to walk or stand or dance or not get hit by skateboards. there was a dog and the dog kept chasing the skateboarders back and forth back and forth, nipping at the air but not daring to bite (and always getting out of the way and once, pooping). it was cute but also a bummer– a loud show is no place for a dog, or didn’t you hear that spazz song? sort of met some new folks, and then i did that thing i like to do nowadays, which is leave the scene while my memories are still beautiful. there’s another show next friday, i need to come up with something to make it interesting…

last night i went to see bone zone play at chris dooley’s antique warehouse in holyoke. it was pretty good, a really huge half empty room, and i mean big. cavernous. there were eight tires that we kept stacking and moving and rolling and getting inside of and playing on, which really overshadowed the bands, which were good, but playing is really fun, and ML, MZ, and dan sab are really good at playing. the touring bands were BOBO (suicidey mid tempo machine stomp with echo guitar) and BAD NEWS BATS (angular mid-tempo jams). also dooley played solo (we decided his solo name was “SNOW BLOWER”) and later, his band SKIMASK (featuring donny, MZ, and dano) played for 2 minutes. it was pretty fun, i liked all the bands. the drummer for bad news bats had big red hair, curly and in a roseanne rosanadana cut. if i were to draw a picture i would start with a drawing of a person standing directly in front of a large slice of watermelon, this would convey the shape and the fun attitude of the haircut, though not the color, texture, or kinesis. dooley tried to give dano money for gas, and dan said “no way! don’t you know about the BBM?”. then matt said “yeah, we’re bone zone. we’re fucked”. “BBM” stands for “backwards business model”, which means that they expect to lose money at every stage of operation. andy gandiva was there, and tried to get us to go see witch in northampton. instead we went to donny’s house and drank brown rice tea, then drove home and ate a ton of pizza from freshway. this is 2am now, and the bars were letting out. a man with a cool african accent kept asking for more ketchup. “a bundle of sauce”.

matt has a big rust colored biodiesel mercedes station wagon with a red submariney dome light, we called the car “red october”. our hands were black from the tire dust but we washed them with dish soap in donny’s kitchen.

he’s a drunk.

“no thanks!”

i was really close to buying this at the supermarket the other day.

i’m mousing around waiting to get picked up to go drink robot hot chocolate at the bowling place. image of the day is this new ed ruscha painting, via dolores labs.

i’m listening to the leak of the new silver jews record “lookout mountain, lookout sea”. as pointed out to me, the record contains the line “romance is the douche of the bourgeoisie.”.

NB: i spelled “bourgeoisie” right on the first try.

the comic book convention yesterday was fun, and kind of an awesome bust. i didn’t find the hardbound kamandi books or jimbo #4 – 6, and as far as “display”, almost no one was into what i was doing. i made a ton of pins, and sold very few, and even less of my comics. no one was into the fact that they contained real hair– most were distressed by this. but i’m not complaining, i had a good time.

the fair was broken up into three sections: there was the main hall, which was dealers– back issues, action figures, stuff like that; the artists section– people doing sketches and hawking their wares; and the indie section, which was the artists section but only people outside of the mainstream (ie, people not trying to get on marvel / dc, or people clearly unable to if they tried). the indie section was a tiny ghetto in a cramped corner room, and because of our connections with andy fish (and because jamie is a genuinely good and published comic artist) we escaped this, and hung out with the mid-level artists. jamie had his portfolio out and a lot of people took interest in it, and paid him to draw sketches for them. at one point someone asked him to draw a guy playing saxophone, and draw it in his book of all people playing saxophones. dan wars was there and piped up for me, and convinced the guy to let me do one too– jamie drew an alan moore swamp thing inspired swirl, so i drew man thing (playing the saxophone). the guy came back to collect his book and asked our prices, jamie told him $15 each, which is cheap for a sketch (in that world) but still kind of creased my dome. dan also commissioned me and jamie to draw ROM the space knight, and i gave some drawings to veronica from the art museum. i think i pretty much broke even, or almost anyway.

i’m used to cleaning up at stuff like this, but this wasn’t a crafts fair or zine fair (are there zine fairs anymore, or does everyone just hold it for SPX?). it was kind of fun being so totally out of my element.

some sketches on display (after the cut)
(more…)

the new zine is pretty much done, i’m making copies now. i just have to throw together a cover, a process that involved me saying (earlier, to myself) “i can’t believe i threw out that bag of hair”. the zine is kind of about a boxer, in that there’s a lot of pictures of a guy boxing. it’s definitely inspired by my war (the record, not my actual war), and it’s called “I MIGHT BE A BIG BABY”.

i’m pretty psyched about this comic book convention, mainly because 1,) hanging out with jamie is fun; 2,) it made me make a new comic book; 3,) i think i’ll be able to find a half-price copy of the KAMANDI collection.

the show tonight was fun, i sang with a microphone, which was nice for a change but i still prefer without. i had a special song medley prepared, then people got so rowdy during it that the mic got unplugged, and i couldn’t do all the super special shit (which is totally nobody’s fault). next time, maybe. also when ghost mice played they eschewed the mic and it just made me wish i had done it, not to be like them, but, well, to be louder than them. i mean, they’re from bloomington, and like everyone in that crowd, their voices come from their heads, not their lungs. i had to split before the end of the night, because sometimes you just have to split for a hundred tiny reasons that you don’t ever talk about ON THE INTERNET. oh, and as i suspected, there were a lot of teenagers at the show.