readers, my computer is on its last legs– the screen is gone, and every other start up requires a ginger tapping on the side of the case to reconnect the hard drive– it was trying to fix this problem that broke the screen, so i’m loathe to tempt fate again. i’ve got everything (i think) i want off it, and am using it sidesaddle with an old CRT until the last roundup. ANYWAY, as is my custom, i’m putting the call out for people for whom the purchase of a brand new computer has left them computer rich. ideally we’re looking at mac laptops, but would accept anything… i’m not begging here, but if you recently got a new computer, and the old(ish) one is “just sitting around”, this is a good chance to give it a good home with someone who will run it absolutely into the ground. i will trade for artwork, website help, i’ll write you a song and play it at ten shows…

oh! also looking for cast iron pans, an electric kettle, and a coffee grinder, for the new place. and lumber. also, backrubs.

i have a more for-serious address now, so begin sending postcards and mix tapes and veiled love letters and the other kind to:

JACOB BERENDES
PO BOX 29081
PROVIDENCE RI
02909

the first batch of letters (letters waiting on my first successful day checking the mail) get extra-special responses. APT NOW!

i really need to warm up my drawing hand (and eye), for an upcoming illustration project. so i bought a mess of pre-stamped postcards, and will send a drawing on a postcard to, um, anyone that comments in this post, up to a certain time. if you feel weird about leaving your mailing address in a post, you can rot13 it, or email it to me: jacob at fujichia dot crom. true story!

NB: requests of subject matter will not be honored– this is a catch-as-catch-can offer.

also, previous and current pen pals: i have carefully packed and stored our important and revivifying correspondences, and as such, i am without current addresses. so…

spring days matched with missing engagements and shake-up talks with milk leslie in an exciting transitory mood. i’m weeding though records in emption of an exodus and it’s a nice though tense matter. currently i have 1.5 shelf-feet that is all to sell off / let them throw away. pop music, as predicted, is getting decimated, dimated even. the weirdest section now is “future project” (things i was going to do things with) which may also go out the window because there’s no shortage of certain kinds of ideas and in general stuff is cheap and space is expensive, and moreover the world does not lack for stereo demonstration records, hawaiian escapades, basil rathbone narrations, and haunted houses. i’ve been putting on records i picked up years ago and never listened to (and moved several times with), only to find actual different records in the sleeves all along. eli and maralie told me that before they met me they bought my CD in france somehow, brought it back to little rock, then sold it when they moved to new england, where boxes of them sit in my mother’s house.

oh, i’ll be subletting cybele’s place in olneyville starting june. AND i’m piecing together travel plans for fall, hopefully to be somewhere warm in winter. dear friends please keep a peeled ear for residencies, gallery ops, and funky stores near you that i could session in the form of an installation, performance (musical or lecture) and/or straight hawking, hopefully making some money at where you are while i sleep on your floor eating cold beans undercover in a pricey cafe. true story!

message from the balmy south for immediate release! mike taylor writes:

Dear traveling bands and art rebels, et al. In the early 80s, Black Flag drove to Miami, Their style of Hello Kitty t shirts and cutoff jeans forced the Miami Beach punxes of the era to doff their leather jackets and mohawks in favor of fuggit apparel that the rest of the youth culture only caught onto like 5 months ago. Fast forward to 2006, When Animal Collective and GangGang Dance played at the Vagabond in midtown, because bands only come to Miami when galleries pay their way in December for Art Basel; Animal Collective is now alternative Miami’s favorite band.

It’s like Daydream Nation, but Animal Collective.

And that could’ve been your band.

Do you understand?

Come here. It is 6 hours south of Gainesville, which you should be playing anyway. Yes, I know it’s along, dull drive. You still play Nebraska, though. The time is now, 2009. They even made a joke about it on 30 Rock last night: “Why does anyone go to Miami? Ass. And the bourgeoning art scene”.

I quit booking shows when I lived where everyone wanted to go. Now, I will book your show. I will make sure you eat well. I’ll take you to the beach in February. You’ll get to scope out your apt. for when Cuban travel is an Obama possibility. I can’t promise the ass thing, but if you know how to work it…

I know it’s not 1996 and you don’t have to bust your ass anymore and Myspace guarantees whatever you think they guarantee. But seriously, fix your sense of adventure. This is one of the last major US cities that freak culture avoids, yet it has more pirate radio than ANY US CITY and better coffee than ANYWHERE. Right now, noise kids are descending on MIami for the annual Int’l Noise Conference and they’re gonna have a blast. Then, all will be quiet until December. If you tour here, you will have a memorable experience.

Take me up on this. I’m not sure how long my time is for here. Email me at scenerific@yahoo.com ( in the spirit of true-to-life trust and adventure) if you want a show NOT IN DECEMBER. I will not deal with Art Basel shows! I DO NOT HAVE A MYSPACE ADDRESS.

Thank you and get psyched,
Mike Taylor

also, mike pointed me to this mindbending turn on the silver jews fan forum. here’s the jist, should this link degrade: SJ frontman/onlyman david berman is quitting music to focus on writing in the hopes that he can make a larger cultural dent as a writer, in order to offset the miserable bulge caused by his own father, DC lobbyist richard berman. holy shit! from the forum: “My life has been riddled with Ibsenism. In a way I am the son of a demon come to make good the damage. Previously I thought, through songs and poems and drawings I could find and build a refuge away from his world. But there is the matter of Justice. “. HOLY SHIT!

coffee with jer, who’s addicted to the word “hack”, and driving “funny bad” in the snow. playing too much of the rolling game, that rolling ball video game, a real “time toilet” as MZ says. making plans with purtle to draw every day. tonight there’s a godard double feature over at knapp’s spacious weirdo apartment, too bad i already made the joke “DO NOT GODARD”. listening to huggybear and redownloading the kirby “fourth world” collection (athough i would rather someone buy me the four books @ $50 each for christmas). inspired by the digital loss of the past week, i’m getting ready to get rid of a ton of clothes, although i may just bring all the extra t-shirts to the serger (sp?) at my mom’s house and make sheets out of them. that’s cute right? or too dingy? the grant went through for the shop– three month’s vacation rent and one month’s nonvacation “back on the feet” rent. after she ohio bowls with her cousins tonight, teleconference with grant writer and spitty handshaker susan succotash, we will talk about what exactly to run up which flagpole and how to get who people to salute. still playing the 4 track game, although i missed a night but i still recorded some stuff that night. so that’s what, seven days in a row? this is what my songs are about: daydreaming about being a viking; a love triangle between a helicopter pilot, a mounted police, and a werewolf; a haunty house that looks totally nice and fine and well kept; baby ducks spitting poison (this is the worst song– apologies to cool breeze who invented “baby ducks spit poison” years ago); teddy; something else i can’t remember. joanne played last night and was super apprehensive about it but her song was obviously awesome, even though it was about how the four track game suxx, and it’s too much pressure, and the basement is really cold (which is all true). the computer with the battery in it is a cool experience, i’ve been moving around the house and sitting next to people, the next step is in public, although at the coffee place everyone had one out except me, it was like an battleship tournament but without explosion sounds.

it’s snowing and i’ve been having a great time being snowed in and playing the four track game, which over the course of five days has already filled up a tape (also, this means i’ve been writing and recording song a day for 5 days). just as i’m starting to get back in to writing, the rug gets pulled– my computer went “tits up” as it were, and now i’m trying to figure some sort of cheap cheap replacement. keep me in mind if you get a new laptop for christmas. also, on the topic of begging, the store ipod (a present from kpars a million years ago) shit the bed, so in either case, if you upgrade, consider downgrading your old guy to me.

tonight went to see yoni gordon and the goods at collective a go go, plus bread and roses and can kickers, a total 2002 kind of show. yoni always plays a long time, this time pretty early on he asked the crowd, “i can play a few more songs, hit it and quit, or i can go right into a long-ass set– which do you guys want?”. we decided to want a long-ass set. it ruled, although he did not play any of my requests, which were, in order over the course of the night, all of “electric warrior”, 75% of “electric warrior”, 2/3 of “electric warrior”, and a full album side from “electric warrior”. he did however, play the chorus of “bang a gong”.

big big thanks to mickey DM who indeed, baked me a loaf of excellent bread and delivered it today, and joanne, who knitted me a pair of mittens that fit totally perfect, on account of me and joanne having exactly the same size hands. THE BEST!

oh yeah, i’m playing a show in turners falls next wednesday (a week from tomorrow):

Montague Phantom Brain Exchange #3.5
Wednesday, April 23rd, 7:30pm $5.
at the Brickhouse Community Resource Center 24 Third St Turners Falls, MA 01376

Touring filmmaker Bill Daniel presents his documentary “Who Is Bozo Texino?”
music by Jacob Berendes
and also the Vaudevillains

i’m pretty psyched about the movie, which is a documentary in search of the hobo graffitti artist bozo texino, whose cowboy drawing has graced freight cars for 50 years or something. if you want to go to this let me know, i have no idea how i’m getting out there. yes, this iss the same night as the international noise conference on tour, which is in amherst. if you’re going to this, no hard feelings, and can i still get a ride?

also this wednesday (tomorrow) peter brotzmann and han bennink are playing at a tiny church in amherst, and i wicked want to go but again how?

in re: turners falls– josh told me yesterday that turners falls had a curse upon from king phillip’s war up until very recent times, when remaining members of the tribe what cursed it held a lifting ceremony. does anyone (which is to say dan o’neill) have any more information about this? i feel like curses are a dime a dozen, but actual lifted curses are far more rare.

selling some awesome t-shirts at the HBML site, in an effort to make enough money to get by this month. also if you were thinking about making a monetary donation, now is really the perfect time to do so, we’re really up the creek.

hey players, lots of people have asked me about the giant squid stuffed animal that is hanging up at HBML. they ask if i made it (i did), they ask how did i learn how to do it (by doing) and they ask how much it is. well, it’s not for sale. BUT NOW, and for a very limited time, we are offering, as a money maker for the shop (which is always is straights of varying direness but never non-dire), raffle tickets that you might win the squid in a raffle. the internet buy-in is $5 (for 6 tickets) or $10 (for 14). the squid being raffled is not the same one as the one hanging up, but it is its identical brother– one of three that i made for the “cephalopod dominance” installation i did at the dirt palace a few years ago. the squid is approximately 16 feet from tip to tip, with a mantle of approximately 6 feet and tentacles that extend another 8. it is anatomically correct- there are 10 tentacles, 2 of which are significantly longer than the others. there is also a nozzle. in order that it be easily stuffed and unstuffed, i did not make a hard beak for it- there is instead an opening at the mouth (at the center of the legs) which you can stitch up after stuffing. there are more pictures of the squid on the HBMLpage.

this is your only chance to maybe get one of these super rare sculptures, unless of course you steal the one i gave to the dirt palace or manage to shoplift the one at the store (which would be a herculean effort with a mercurial assist). you don’t need to be at the drawing to win the squid, and you don’t even have to come pick it up- we’ll ship it to you (unstuffed). again, there’s no guarantee you’ll win, but it’s like they say– there’s a dream, and if you don’t have a dream you’ll never have a dream come true.

in addition to being this potentially awesome thing for you, this squid raffle is a great way to support the shoppe, which is getting weirder and weirder but certainly not without help. to buy tickets online see relevant entry on the newly relaunched (and sstill being design-tweaked) HBML fresh garbage blog. ZAPP!

uh, just because you gotta make calls if you want results, here’s my amazon wishlist. mostly books. ok, sorry.

amazon has a book search feature where it displays “statistically improbable phrases”– phrases that occur more in the book in question than in any other book. there’s a newly republished harry stephen keeler book called the case of the 16 beans and the SIPs are “copper fingers” and “materials room”.

some other statistically improbable phrases: amongst others, don quixote gets “everything your grace”, “three nightcaps”, “errant chivalry”, “lion keeper”, “enchanted head”, “enamored knight”, “jalousied window”, “lady the duchess”, “six reales”, “sorrowful face”, “good squire”, “knight errantry”, “captive knight”, and “virtuous desire”. leonardr’s “beginning python” includes “omelet class”, “gui queue”, “meal module”, “pickle file”, and “persistent dictionary”. borges “ficciones” gets “pink corner”, “circular ruins”, “blue tiger”, “forking paths”, “knife fighters”. most of these are titles of stories, but “knife fighters” isn’t, and that’s a good one. tale of two cities gets “immovable close”, “eight great towers”, “dun médecin”, “wigged gentleman”, “honest tradesman”, and “monthly parts”. “wigged gentleman” is good.

the search is limited to books with the once-controversial “search inside” feature, so there’s a lot of books you can’t boil down in this way. anyway if you find a good one let’s hear it.

also, if anyone wants to get me a present, i’d really like that keeler book.