• salt & pepper kettle cooked potato chips satisfy my occasional cravings for fried chicken.

• noodles with a spoonful of miso paste stirred in satisfy my occasional cravings for shitty macaroni & cheese
• anything with ketchup, mustard and a thin pickle satisfies my occasional craving for mc donald’s cheeseburgers

the move is going ok although last night as noted i was in a hell zone. on the edges of the zone i spent the night in the new bed (having found my box with the blankets in it by cell-phone light) but woke up this morning in a brilliant rush, energized. CJ, annie pokely, and kevduff making breakfasty noise downstairs and sure enough, breakfast and plenty of it. kevin is frequently like ed mcmahon to me, red faced and shakey, but also jumping in with choice nods, facts, and how-abouts– it rules. now i’m back at the office still cleaning up / packing the drips and drabs, trying not to fall into that familiar zeno mode of constantly halving my lot and leaving a little bit to go back for.

ok, can’t fall in the interhole, gotta stay hot!

today and tomorrow i’ll be packing up / cleaning up to move literally three blocks away, moving in with little lando, clammy cluckmaster, belly barfson, amba lance and all those other rats (not literal rats) at Distinct Hastle. i’m psyched to move and to have control over my space (in re: painting the floors, nailing things where i want them to be nailed, etc.) but moving is ssuch a pain when you have such an extensive and varied library as i do. anyway when i go a while without writing i forget things, so i want to make a brief nod in the direction of my recent memory for a half second–

the party was fun although promised pictures are still forthcoming and will remain that way for a time. in the meantime i’ll entertain guesses based on these buzzwords: triumphant, suave, monstruous, mystical/mythical, still alive, and with flowy appendages. the party was lousy with college students, which is fine but gets depressing (to me alone, for my own reasons) as the night winds out. mixtape triumphant although it sure cleared the floor at first (“gravy” by dee dee sharp is apparently not as much a call to arms to others as to me, which is a shame especially considering the lyrical content). i left while my memories were still beautiful, but to be plain, the night did not stand still or turn inside out, or make everything glass, or suddenly be a magical glade, or offer any noteworthy respite from the day, although i did experience the effect of seeing someone’s face melt off, quite casually and some hours after i left.

maybe soon, maybe never:
• new directions in mixtapes
• trying hard to not be a bummer
• how anything can happen but usually doesn’t and how to address this issue
• review of recent archie acquisitions

mild chance the show friday might be totally totally new, and technically a “flash flood” show, will keep the readers informed.

tonight was the closing of the NEW OBSTRUCTION exhibit, which was fun, a good crowd from worcester came down, and afterwards we got pizza at pizza queen, then stopped to see HUMAN BEAST (aka maralie + eli) perform at as220. the performance was good although maralie had made these wearable music controllers, and i was focused too much on trying to figure out what exactly they were doing, which was kind of impossible with so many other things going on. i have to go back to providence this week to disassemble my installation, to turn it back into a pile of wood and a pile of trash.

back in worcester we stopped at the electronic show / dance party that holmes has been pulling so hard for. there were a ton of people having a great time but i wasn’t one of them. me and ML kept cracking jokes about the whole national geographic mating display, but you can crack jokes only so long– you’re still there, and everyone else is seemingly having “the time of [thier] life[s]” so what’s wrong with you? after A LOT of pacing around, i left. nostalgia for an age yet to come i guess. i was booked to play this sshow, and do a computer noise set, but i had to cancel. i wish i could’ve done it though, it would’ve been really awkward for me. the best part of the night was seeing long-time reciprocated fan karkar, who told me in a very gracious way that i need to get off my ass.

today at 3pm until tomorrow at 3pm me, jambuck, ML, fish, hebs, and maybe john guida are doing the 24 hour comic book challenge, hosted by the worcester art museum. but check it- tomorrow morning we sneak out to the public library, which is celebrating being open on sunday for the first time in a dog’s age with FREE ICE CREAM. and that’s what i call STACKIN IT.

ok, i gotta go get my snacks together.

(bloomington indiana’s) melissa number one (not that there could be another but that’s where she lives) and nate powell came to town and kidnapped me, now i’m providence, where people are going to go go in the ocean, but not me. can’t write right right now, gotta tie up other ends. back tonight/tomorrow morning.

dave, not trying to blow up a spot, just have to redeem myself with the ones from the list i couldn’t remember:
sneezy f dopey
ms misdemeanor magazine
bic pen

ok, now to stay up all night printing t-shirts.

quik update from swamped brainstates:

• tonite’s mystery band show is at the go go, 8pm, followed by a 1000 HOLMES DJS karaoke mash-up set that’s going to be OFF. DA CHAIN.

• had to ankle tomorrow’s beantown zinetown boston zine fair, on account of so busy and really, i won’t have any zines by tomorrow morning.

• actually, i do have some zines, copies of the new newspaper me and mickey dm have been treading on, but i only have an advance of 200 from a run of 2000, so i’m holding them for sunday, when i can give them to people i don’t know and the people slap my face.

• sunday is the start on the street fest, which i’m playing at, at like, 11am, which is kind of ideal. also i’ll be sharing a table with Jujube Buckmaster and Kit-Kat Perry. TIIIIIIIIITE.

• slight possibility of having a new comic book by sunday. SLIGHT. i don’t know what i’ll call it- i left my sketchbook with all my names in it at the store. which reminds me, DMO- i thought up some BAD NEW RAP DUDES, but they aren’t that great: LL MacPherson, Virginia Slim Thug, Fat Joan of R Kelly, Jodeci 3PO… strickly mort drucker parody-grade stuff, except one that i remember being really funny but if so why can’t i remember it?

• i can’t remember if i mentioned this already but october 1st, at BLDGXVI in providence, the first show kind of by JACOB TERRENDIBLENDES. AKA “the TERRIBLES play the music of JACOB BERENDES featuring JACOB
BERENDES singing the words part of the music”.

yikes! who put all these ducks in a row???????

• tomorrow: main south farmer’s market, 10 – 2 across from the artichoke food co-op (pray for rain)
• hbml 2 – 5
• bone zone snow ghost at zachy’s place 6pm – infinity
• sunday – nize brunch with baby niece ramona and her feeders
• monday – get to providence somehow to begin working on the big as220 installation, sleep on couches but not the same couch over and over again and try to not eat at too many restaurants or buy records. mike nice, i will be taking you up on your offer of a bought dinner at houlihan’s.
• tuesday and friday – screen printing at RISD during freshman orientation– any risd students out there? come say hi! this is a good gig i get every year despite not being an alumnus and being not especially skilled at screenprinting.
• saturday- mystery band 2008 show #1 at the firehouse in worcester with apple pie contest, auction / raffle to support HBML, free food, beverages, plus 5 (?) awesome bands formed out of a hat for this very occasion, featuring lots of people that have never been in bands before. yikes!!!!!!!!
• sunday back in providence somehow
• friday the 19th installation show opens, at the new as220 “mercantile block” building. i realize now that i know almost nothing about the opening itself- MT, do you have an address, time, list of contributors handy?
• saturday the 20th – boston zine fair with mickey z, mikey t, and me, mocky b.
• sunday the 21st, start on the street craftsfair, park ave worcester!
• saturday the 27th, mystery band show #2.
• and this is not the same month, but october 1st (wednesday), i’ll be playing a show with chim up meriwether and a mess of other bands, at building 16 in providence, possibly playing with full band.

in the providence stretch i’ll be back and forth to worcester a few times to do store shit and probably a million other things i need to do. so if you’re driving to or from providence from or to worcester any time from the 7th to the 19th, please let’s conspire. and if you have a good source of scrap lumber and/or large pieces of cardboard in providence, i need you. and if you are interested in volunteering at the shoppe any w th or f, COME ON. (and) if you have a sservice or skill to donate to the auction / raffle on the 13th, let me know soon…

believe it or not, this is my vacation, and all this is on top of the usual workload. yo……….

i’m on another episode of the snow ghost community show, discussing my opinions on art (and everything) in worcester. i’ll cut you to the end, where i say something i think about a lot in a way i’ve never said before: “anything can grow in a garden– who cares?”. also i call everyone with pretentions of being a fine artist in worcester “a chump”. it’ll be great when that bites me in the ass. i’m trying to not look at the camera dead-on, in keeping with my decision to be 3/4 as much as possible.

today i went to the beach, which was great, but i didn’t eat all day and then at 7:30 got really really grouchy. earlier i passed to will and danielle the meme “D.W-P.O.M.F-B.”, a weird mishearing so psychologically damaging i can’t even write it on the internet.

september looks like it may be money month for me, with lots of small scams (aka jobs) for me to run– chiefly silk screening at RISD and the start on the street street fair. there’s more but i don’t want to ruin it. anyway, also bumping this [next] month is a big installation at the new as220 “mercantile block” space in providence. and this is big, like 20 foot ceilings, nigh-unlimited floor space. since it’s a really great opportunity for me, i’m doing that thing i like to do- something i’ve never done and have no skills at and haven’t really thought out supergreat. tentative title “my life 08″. oh, and i got the ask on the virtue of a couple snappy mass emails, nothing else. this is good, but “nothing else”? why not do the unthinkable and just write letters all day? no more nothing! anyway i’m trying to get two weeks off from my troubles to work on the bastard on site, but that may be unfeasible. but it would be fun, and as close to a vacation as i’ll ever get, it seems.

last night it was a little chilly, and get dark earlier than i had expected. today i realized that it was going to get really cold again, and in not a very long time. i’m strategizing for what will surely be, without adequate strategy, a really really rough winter.

here are my current best plans:

and

i almost didn’t leave the house yesterday, i was working working working on a new page redesign for the HBML webiste. well, barring any weird cross-browser issues, i think just finished it up! now there’s a nice online catalog of things you can order from home, including a new sticker set that me and ML were working on the other night, which is BONKERS!!!

tonight and seemingly every wednesday night until the end of summer, our pal HO P WI will be hosting a karaoke nite at ralph’s. if you know holmes, you know that this is a dream come true for him, he’s carzy about karaoke. when he was traveling around south america he would use karaoke as a funny icebreaker, as a way to get to know fun people in any place he was. he also has a lot of cool karaoke styles– his interest in dancehall led to the idea “karaoke mashup” where you sing one song over another, or blend two songs together on the fly. but to quote the email:

…don’t be intimidated. This is like youth soccer, everybody gets a medal.

OKEKARAOKEKARAOKEKARAOKEKARAOKEKARAOKEKARAOKEKARA

this is going to be super fun!

ALSO
tomorrow (thursday the 5th) 7pm at the go go,

• good luck (bloomington, in) (feel good, up beat punk rock. matty pop chart’s rock band)

• grass widow (san francisco, ca) (magical, harmonious pop music)
• bold slug (athens, ga) (sloppy pop punk)
• hot new mexicans (athens, ga) (rock n rollers)

again, no local draw? get some bands together, dudes!

THEN
saturday 2pm – 5 it’s t-shirt tailor with my mom, louise berendes, at HBML.

FOLLOWED BY
4pm – ?, billy blue blues band beer blast barbeque backyard birthday blowout! it’s billy’s 50th birthday, come rock out to his awesome band in his own backyard. this is also the terribles cd release party for the new epic, “in congrefs”.

damn, stack it up!

today was a crafts fair in the park, which was good and i did OK, and more than that i had a fun time talking fast and counting coup with passers by and those i just walked right up to. i bought a bunch of tiny glass elephants and some soap that smells like oatmeal cookies, the idea being that i would start to smell like cookies and subconsciously you would connect the smell of cookies to me, and then when you made cookies you would think to yourself or someone nearby “you know who i should call?…”. pretty devious on a few fronts really. pictured above is ashling’s arm, she got a cool sunburn which you can well imagine. see also: heavy reppin’ (with pogo), a laffy lady (with dark clouds (that flew by really fast with no static)).

yesterday there was a lot going on, but i didn’t go to the bone zone show, i went to the noise show at the firehouse, which was as advertised but shirt quitters didn’t play. chris cooper (angst hase pfeffer nase) destroyed it with a classic table top guitar set on the ground, and i filmed it and already put it up on the internet. there was almost no one there that didn’t live there, which was a bummer, but the lesson is “book a local draw”. i gave them all the money i had, and was glad to do it: a big change jar, with a lot of quarters in it, except for $1.50, which i got a coffee with later (although the diner didn’t charge for the coffee). i told george washington myers that i would say something about him on the internet so here goes: hi george!

tonight i went to a show that jenine played, at the go go. also matt f and a touring act called led to sea, which was good songwriting over violin with phrase samplers, outside by the fire, real nice. tomorrow i catch up on some bullshit, start some new bullshit. bed!

“first, you look at it, then you smell it, then you touch it, then you taste it, then you eat it” is a scientific method that dan wars observed from a kitten. when i told ben hersey at the actual poetry school party, he was holding a small plate of barbeque sauce and looking bummed. a smile wetted his face and he said so quietly “that’s it!”. then louder, and both of us: “first you look at it” (look at the barbeque sauce), “then you smell it” (smell it), “then you touch it” (touch the barbeque sauce), “then you taste it” (dot our tonguetips), “then you eat it!” (duh). “what are you guys doing?” “FIRST YOU LOOK AT IT! THEN YOU SMELL IT, THEN YOU TOUCH IT, THEN YOU TASTE IT, THEN YOU EAT IT!”. and then over and over and over and over and over. when we got to the party it was an acoustic open mic and we were getting shushed for giggling if you can believe it. pretty soon it was everyone screaming in unison and eating tiny tiny bits of barbeque sauce. ben hersey for emotional president! SHUT DOWN 2008

this was the last weekend of our play, and it went great. except for the time i ate the cigarette and all the oreos and the tiny whiskey bottle and the multiple party pizzas and getting the same hand slammed in the car door twice, i did exceptionally well for my health– lots of stretching, lots of fresh fruit and nuts, and i chugged a quart of water every two hours like clockwork. plus lots of people enjoyed the play, and of course we continued to enjoy ourselves immensely. back in crowtown now and a particular sense of… normalcy? which is to say, working and not working on a million different things already/again/still.

oh yeah, dan, one of the stars of the play (a poet, naturally) is a secret hair punk that used to date one of the pinkerton thugs! small world, huh?