(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???????
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,
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?
north ham town was quite ablossom with those tiny white flowers that smell like sexual discharge. the rest of the weekend was nice too. it was the first of two weekends of performances of this play that me and purtle are in, “go to the chateau”, and we were all ready, and everything went splendid. extracurricular activities were slim, as most of our energy went towards the four shows daily, but we’ve been very much enjoying the company of our fellow actors and actresses, as they are fine people and the meta-enjoyment comes from our great enjoyment of desert island scenarios like these in which we befriend people we otherwise would not have met. in this instance it’s particularly heightened, due to the fact that we have staged emotional (but nonetheless emotional) encounters with every person a few times a day. this weekend we hung out a ton with merc, a petite and subtle goof who first arrived in our lives wearing extremely high-waisted pants, and in the play wears a yellow jumpsuit that makes her look more than a bit like a piece in a children’s game, or a contestant on a nickelodeon game show. as noted earlier, the play happens mostly in a moving car for an audience of 2 people, and scenes are set short drives away from each other. merc’s not in our scene but she meets us at the car when the scene is over and together we scramble to the finale for our bows, then back to the house to set up again. since there’s no way for us to see the parts of the play we’re not in, we don’t know exactly what happens in merc’s scene, but it involves a tearful and emotional exit, following which she has to hoof to us on busy streets in as mentioned preposterous attire, all of which is like cult strategy to altered states and mind-attunement to goof-off frequency, making these jaunts to and fro super-enjoyable. me and mike also played basketball, and in keeping with the motif of the past few weeks, gloried in our roles as “scumbags”.
back in worcester now, trying to bust out a ton of silk screen jobs including shirts of my own design for workdeath (whose tape “le corbusier”, available at the link, is pretty much perfect). it’s raining today, which is good for the trees, which in worcester are full of those little green kix that fall and fill up certain sidewalks, plus fine pinks here and there. i walked around a lot on errands today, i got wet.
friday there was an art opening for mike t at HBML, and both the show and the set up ruled. the show is a lot of new prints and drawings, plus a limited edition cereal that mike made special for HBML, with a cool 4-color silkscreened box, and inside, actual breakfast. the set up was kicking it all day with mike t, chip, nathan, and ML. it was a beautiful day, the bench saw a lot of action. lots of awesome folks came out for the show itself, it ruled. afterwards there was a three-stage attack on duck yao, which culminated in all of us at one long thanksgiving-style table, shoveling taoist eats into our stinky mouths. perfection!
saturday me and purtle drove to north ham town for another weekend of play rehearsals, which was once again really really fun. last week we pretty much just hung out with madeline and gossiped, this week we got to explore the town a little more, we went to the skatepark (which is pretty good), hung out with josh TC, played some handball, and on top of that, we hung out with madeline and gossiped (which is fun). the play is going great and me and mike discovered that with all this monkey time (and a sort of carte blanche for hyjinx) we’re developing a practically marxian confidence, with minds less quieted than flowy. sure there will always be those times in the preposterously expensive ice cream shop with magnificent yoga instructor where you find yourself describing the cover art for munchie, in which a leather-jacketed hitler puppet surfs a pizza over loni anderson, and your mind is telling your brain “shutupshutupshutup” and your brain isn’t telling your mouth. but that’s why weeks have next weeks, RITE?!!?
incidentally handball is really fun, we’ve got to get a crowtown session burning. oh, and next weekend the play begins for real, with actual strangers that i spit on a little bit. oh, and i half-secured a ride for this wednesday’s show in turner’s falls, so eat it!
picture above from daily panel, which is still turning.
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 01376Touring 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.
Pretty Alright photoblog
updated Fri, 03 Oct 2008
