this year for lent i gave up apologizing for things. maybe it sounds like this sucks, but i got in the habit of apologizing for things so fast it was really a bummer. it was a strain on me taking the hit a million times a day, but more importantly i was just overusing it and not meaning it and it was putting me in a weird power spot. i’ve slipped up a few times so far and i really don’t advocate this for everyone but for me it rules, almost apologizing and then saying “yup, i said it, and not for no reason”. totally positive responsibility-taking. yesterday i was trying to compliment a nice lady on having ass-long hair (actually post-ass, almost to her knees). i forget what i said but it was a sentiment near to “i like it because it’s totally fucked”. uhh… then “straight up”.

i guess i don’t know of other people that are really into lent (NB: i am not christian any more than i am anything else). i see lent as a real good worcester holiday– it has both self-denial and pancakes, and at the end there’s candy and zombies. this year ML is giving up what he always gives up- every beverage except water. GOD BLESS.

one of sheryl-ann’s friends got pnemonia, and i bought her ticket to see MIA tonight. it was $25, which is maybe a lot of money, maybe not, and it was at the palladium. i like MIA- both albums (and the mixtape) totally TOTALLY rule. the production, the lyrics, the delivery, everything. the videos are great, and her style is excellent. she came from a mud hut to international acclaim in 15 years, with a 505, some spray paint. i had a good time at the show, but it was really just a show about the thing, not the thing itself. we’ve talked about this before, this show/party // joining/being dichotomy, and once again, shows are awesome, but this was a big show, there was a power relationship (in that we paid $25 to watch someone on a huge stage), it was pretty mediated. it was fun, and it was great to see a mess of folks in the audience, and you have to go see the band you like when they’re on tour, but it was a lot less personal, a lot less crucial, than just playing the cd at a party or in your room or whatever.

oh, also, i missed most of the opening band and then there was an ipod shuffling for 45 minutes before MIA took the stage, but signaling the start of MIA’s performance was a 5 minute video of kouichi toyama, nihilist candidate for governor of tokyo (pictured above). the lady standing next to me couldn’t see the subtitles, which were on the bottom of the screen (NB: i’m very tall) so i read some of them back to her, which put it in my head the rest of the night. here’s an excerpt (but i recommend watching the whole video):

This nation is horrible. I have no interest whatsoever in political reform or any kind of reform. Nothing will be solved by reforming or changing anything. We are no longer in such an optimistic state! We must abandon this detestable nation. This nation must be destroyed! I do not have a single constructive proposal! The only thing we must do now is “Scrap and Scrap”… Annihilate everything that exists!

this really should have closed the night. oh well!

further reading in re show/party: hakim bey: immediatism. it’s an old essay, and there are some funny anachronisms (like the perceived musical utopia of exchanging tapes of music through the mail at cost), but these all somehow add.

ssorry if this is all tiresome, we just need to work out a new paradigm of party!

lilah totally came through with a new computer for me! well, it was old to her but new to me, an 800mhz powerPC g4 laptop. totally awesome except that yesterday i plugged the pod into it and everything got erased! which if nothing else is a good lesson on and reminder of “the way of all things”.

i can’t really start any new computer projects, as i’m waiting for the new OS to drop so i can wipe the hard drive and sstart fresh (and see if this thing can actually do what i need it to do). but the new computer, unlike the old one, is fast enough to handle youtube, so wanting to play with the new toy but not being able to do anything really constructive with it means i’ve been really geeking out and watching tons of dumb awesome shit. basically, i’m in love with the modern world. today, over and over again, i’ve been watching the chicken noodle soup video, which i found via wayne and wax in a post about regional dances like detroit jit, chicago juke, stuff like that. there’s a lot to like about the chicken noodle soup, but for me it’s that it’s wholesome, it’s filmed in a sunny, tree-lined street, the dancing is regimented enough for everyone to participate regardless of confidence level, but open enough for individual expression, there’s cool slang like “vright” and “flage” (which are shown on screen so you’ll know that it’ss slang, not just a word you can’t understand), the editing is total imovie, and lyrically, it sounds like a dan beckman song– “chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup with my hammer on my side”. also, “dumb out” parts are way waaay better than mosh parts. everybody listens to rap music nowadays!

the new phone books came today, which is really not notable.

when cool breeze was living with his dad and they shot holes in the wall with a revolver so they could run water pipes through to the other room, they stacked phone books next to the wall to catch the bullet.

i don’t know where the idea “to knock someone out painlessly with a phone book” came from, but it’s an idea i use often, often as an offer to a griping person. on two occasions there were actual tries which were neither painless nor successful, once on ML (by me), once on me (by ML), each time during an exquisite and manic personal romantical hell. i guess they were successful in that they added a fine amount of drama and camaraderie, with an avowed “you brought this upon yourself and i’d do the same in a flash” on the part of the bookswinger. i don’t not understand people that don’t understand this, but i can’t say i exactly trust them either.

speaking of trust and casual near-obliteration, there was a party at my house a few days ago and i was certainly (as mike t says) into the night. i rarely drink, and was even against it for a while, so on the occasions when i do drink (always in celebration, always with others) it’s a sacrament. in other words, i do a good job. i was wearing my phone book shirt, which features two duck-headed people having seriously tantric sex while rainbow sprinkles rain down on them, and i realized the connection between the band and drunkenness (and other things), which is abandon. at the party i was saying some wild shit but i stuck to it, didn’t back down, and it worked. similarly, phone book was a chance for me to eschew musical rules, guidelines and safety nets i had always used, and prove (to myself alone) that i could have nothing, keep going, and it’d work out, even if (and actually, because), at times, i looked like an idiot. i’m not saying that everyone should get shitfaced every night, but i do think that periodically facing reckless abandon, in a positive, creative manner, is good for a person’s developement, which is ongoing. that night i had a dream about a 4-color comic book that i knew i would draw in the future, full of complete nonsense, but the sort of nonsense i am not, right now, able to create. the pages clicked by in a rapid-fire slideshow fashion, as if i were a ghost flying through the book while the book was shut.

in a few days jim (phone book drummer) is moving to minneapolis to go to grad school. i’m bummed for me but mostly psyched for him. he’s got a new tape coming out, with a lot of weird beats and fake rapping. to quote: “za za ra za wa za za hand / zabba labba za understand”. jim rules. PHONE BOOK!

continuous somethings have lately been alwaysing in pretty flagrant ways, but i’m rolling with it– today’s little things not entirely lining up means that tomorrow will tell if the new comic will be done on time, which only matters in that i kind of have to print it before i get into the next one or it’ll just keep getting put off.

last night to continue a theme, sitting up until the wee hours with skittles (back in town for a good month), shooting the shit and listening to young “three points” wasserman relay her awesome suburban woes. again, i’m not trying to be rude or say that i’m better at life (i’m not), nor am i trying to (as cha cha once said) logic anyone’s experience out of existence, but it was totally fun. fire makes a sharp spear strong, so i didn’t tell her not to worry, but i did tell her to follow her instinct to learn to play the bass guitar– that’s good strategy for being a gay teenager in suburban florida in the first years of the 21st century, right?

no joke, this is the last panel of today’s “classic peanuts”:

good night!

today instead of band practice me and jim and ML got totally goofy and watched part one of the three-dvd tantric lovemaking box set their roommate got and left out “for everyone”. uh, first off, “goofy” ≠ “high”. but anyway, yes. also (as mentioned before), no. and most importantly, i know. it was cool in that way knowingly stupid and awkward experiences are cool, plus there was a lot of trippy new age computer kaleidoscope and embarrassing “spiritual” interior design, and anyway we got a lot of good material out of it. at one point they were talking about “sky dancing”, which is a syllabus-free dance for connecting with your personalness (or something), and i couldn’t help but think “this is a world without moshing, looking for moshing”. upon further reflection, i came to the view that the whole thing (spiritual sexuality for white people) is by and for people who don”t connect at all with music, looking for what happens when people who really like music listen to music. i guess now it’s “now who’s being trippy?”, but music is the healing force of the universe, right?

oh yeah, this weekend the phone book / bone zone / dungeoneers mini-tour (uh, i mean “tantric conference”) hits vermont and western mass. saturday at 8pm, at the main street museum, 58 bridge st., white river junction VT. sunday at hampshire college, somethinghampton MA, at, what, bong thirty?

last night i wanted to take it easy– finally got sick after bragging about eating so healthy then eating a mess of tactical desert items and weakening my immune system just for a few hours. of course when you’re sick you don’t want to eat brown rice and raw garlic, you want ramen noodles and dr peppers so i got a little sick and let myself get sicker. anyway i’d do it again in a heartbeat but i wanted to take it easy so instead of going to the teenage waistband tape release show with SA and jim i went with billy blue to the dumb tapas bar for the “worcester movies weekly” launch party. i know that going to a bar isn’t taking it easy as such, but it was only for a little bit and in answer to your question, yes, it is still funny to conflate “tapas” and “topless”. i like rob, the guy that does the magazine, and i’m trying to get a job writing reviews, so i’m happy i went. it was a decent turnout and when i got there they were playing the theme song to “billy jack“, which i was into but thought was really really weird until i realized an hour later that they had been playing movie songs all night. billy blue bought me a drink, which was more expensive than either of us had anticipated, and was actually the second drink choice, after the first drink came and with it a too-hefty price tag. the nice guy bartender took the first drink back no problem, and i can only hope that he dumped it into a big jug with all the other “balk” drinks, to be drank at a later date. it was, you know, exposed duct work, brick wall… i guess the bar wasn’t “dumb”, it was just weird to be someplace expensive. maybe this is going to sound amateurish, but everytime i’m in someplace “nice” i think about how “they” need “us” but “we” don’t need “them”. you know (or, you don’t)… of course it was doubly weird as it was in the same building as “the space”, the seminal worcester punk club and most important physical location in my (as-yet brief) history, and right above where emma goldman’s ice cream shop used to be. times change i guess but i can’t help but think about all this new development in the old mills going underused for a long spell and gradually a new generation of weirdos move in. i know, we’re talking about things in geologic time now.

i got myself two presents in the past week or so, both of which i deserve. i finally got the albert ayler $90 10 disk box set i’ve been wanting for years and it rules. the dick tracy reprint book was more of an impulse buy but as i told mel this evening, i can write it off as an educational expense, and anyway kasey henniman told me that i had to give myself a present every day. it sucks that all the comics i want to buy nowadays (with the exception of all the “planet terry”s i bought off a shaef-duff last week) are $30 hardbound books- the gasoline alley reprints, the popeye reprints, the dick tracy reprints… what kind of sucks about the dick tracy book (and to some extent the popeye book, which i don’t yet have) is that what i really want is the later stuff, when it was super goony and bonkers and really flexing. full writeup of the ayler box after i listen to everyhing 5 or six times, and the inevitable me-tying-it-in-to-everything-i’ve-been-thinking-about-lately.

maybe the most important part of this post is this: “tapas” & “topless”— still funny. anyway give me a break i’m sick.

the show last night was a bummer but it was also fun. first, let me say to matt, thanks for booking the show, thanks for thinking of me, and especially thanks for dreaming and thinking that it would be a smash success to have me play in the bookstore and everyone would groove on it and the town would be transformed. jim and sheryl-ann, thanks for coming with me- having you as an audience made everything possible/enjoyable.

now, as for the show itself, it was not a show but a bunch of people milling about a bookstore in salem MA, trying to continue their conversations as i was singing, which only made me sing louder, which only made them talk louder, and so on. the fact of the matter is that i was unwanted by most, which fact i played up to the few people that were excited to have me around. the lady who owned the bookstore even asked matt to tell me to play quieter, and bless his heart he told her he couldn’t. two people bought cds, which was nice. one lady tried to buy a cd with $2 and an origami crane– no dice lady, and not even a good try– folding a crane is origami day one. overall (and this is nothing about having a poor reception at the show) the shop just kind of sucked- the stock was fine (small press books and some larger zines), but that’s the kind of stuff that if you’re into it, you already have it or know where to get it, and if you’re not into it, this boring store isn’t going to change your mind. vinyl letter tarp sign, bad typography, white walls, dumb overpriced art, who cares. no punks, no kids, no “kids”, no smellbads, no wingnuts, no stoned professors, no obsessives, no personalities, not even any partydawgs- just well-meaning lefty bummers in funky hats. still, i had a good time gooning around with jim and SA, in whose charming company i’m sure i could quite pleasantly have a tooth extracted.

matt– again, thanks for hoping!