i cut my hair and now i look like brainiac 5.

every morning for three days now it’s strawberry rhubarb pie with yogurt, and hot coffee. then 2 hours later i eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich. pure champ!

tonight’s all that stuff then tomorrow shakespeare in the park, just a stone’s throw from my house.

my hair was perfect. DIP!

yesterday me and k-stars had another bleach party, my third and final round. earlier i scrambled all over town until i found a nice french press so i can save money not going out for coffee all the time, but still be on productivity drugs every day. the only problem is that now i need to figure out a new system of periodically leaving the house and running into people in a serendipitous fashion.

the new camera has a funny “business card” setting that skews and crops rectangles into hard alignment, so i digitized my cue cards from last fall’s fashion show (which i had the honor to host). enjoy!
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jamie’s art opening at HBML yesterday was awesome, and there were indeed lots of folks from the art museum, and he sold lots of paintings, which rules. the show will be up for three weeks.

today we had a fashion shoot at the store, and i was apprehensive about having two events back to back, and it rained pretty hard, but still people came out, and it was totally fun. pictures are forthcoming. the best part was when the landlord came by with people interested in buying the building, and none of them expecting to catch the totally weird sight they beheld, and a bunch of teenagers daring each other to dress less and less societally controlled on top of it all with parisian house music bumpin’. BUGG OUT YOUTH.

picture above from this great collection of kid’s science fair projects

maila nurmi (vampira) passed away thursday. she was 86 years old. she was not the first person to conflate sex and death, but she was the first person to make the union of the two fun.

What she had in abundance was the ability to focus a long and apparently rambling argument in a sudden, blazingly dramatic gesture.

if you want to pay credit where credit is due, somewhere, today, shriek.

vampira’s youtube channel

more after the cut.
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as gas can pointed out in the comments the other day, little andrew has put his pictures of the fashion show up on his show-picture website.

i’m playing a show on the 13th of this month with nick jackson’s band and karl blau. i think the show is going to be at my house.

i’m also playing a show on the 20th at as220 in providence, and not just a show but the corleone 10 year anniversary show! full lineup: Barnacled, Alec K Redfearn & the Eyesores, The Body, Get Killed, Tiny Hawks, Jacob Berendes, WORK/DEATH, Lazy Magnet, VVLTVRE, Bondust, Uke of Spaces Corners County, Night Wounds, Fred Thomas, Lorna Doom, Mahi Mahi & the Pines of Rome. epiiiiiiiiiiic… starts at 2pm.

tomorrow, saturday july 21st, at the firehouse in worcester, it’s the Billy Blue Blues Band Beer Blast Bacchanal BBQ (BBBBBBBBBQ).

1. this is a traditional summer beer blast, so that means during the day, starting at 2pm. not a show- a party. it’s like back to the beach, but instead of a beach it’s a backyard and instead of pee wee herman and fishbone it’s billy blue and the terribles. and the kid, bobby, stays punk at the end.
2. sunglasses
3. byo cousie (sp?)
4. the billy blue blues band is your number one drunk in the afternoon band.
5. billy blue is respected by fans and scholars and hated by other harmonica players up and down the eastern seaboard and michigan.
6. billy blue bought a new suit the other day that he’s only going to wear in europe. do you have any clothing that you can only wear ON A SEPARATE
   CONTINENT?

7. “puckering” pete henderson will be there playing guitar, and singing, and having a mustache.
8. brian “this food is really hot” gleason will be there, and he’s bringing his bass. and, he’s going to play the bass, in time with the music.
9. the other guy, justin i think, let’s call him “the mailman” for lack of a better name, he will be delivering drum beats to your body via the drums. uh, it would really help if this guy had a cool “instrument face” like the other guys, but he’s pretty deadpan.
10. terribles and the pandas are also playing
11. there will be food and beer, bring some money to chip in, or grillable items or something.

the comic book is done, just needs to be printed, and the xerox machine at the store is a liiiittle too not good for all the necessary parts to show up. maybe tomorrow, and if not tomorrow monday. individual pages will continue to appear weekly. the new name is WHITE VINEGAR.

also, the new mike leslie skateboards are in and they are gorgeous. $40 at HBML.

today i was listening to the siren cult / feral children tape in the store (mikey h sauce stopped by yesterday) and i got intense deja vu, and i think i get more deja vu than most people, but this time there was sound (that lady singing on the siren cult side), sight (looking at a bunch of styrofoam i hot glued to the ceiling in a “space city” configuration), taste (arizona green ice tea tall boy), smell (moldy shirt), and then just to make it all the way around the horn i reached out and touched grip tape and that was dead on too. it really made me feel great, like i was on a glorious path i glimpsed in a dream years ago (which i think is entirely accurate). i even wasn’t bummed when, staying open late by special request, the requestee didn’t show. what do i care?– i was sitting on a bench in the sun eating candy like a sultan. hey if you’re reading this, you missed out only on me inviting you to a catholic group home to watch cable access TV and drink root beer with “a crazed madman and [honorary] defender of metal”. that’s right- today was the first wcca broadcast of the first episode of the snow ghost community show!

the viewing party was at the catholic worker house, and it was pretty sweet. i’d never been over there but i see all the red headed kids that live there at least once a week at the store or just walking around, so i was psyched to check out the lair. the snow ghost’s connection with them is peculiar, in that he is a self-avowed “satanic warrior”, but i guess they can still respect each other by virtue of being on the same coin, if opposite sides. i kept to myself the fact that i don’t believe in original sin, but really, how often does that come up while the tv’s on? anyway it was a good time, we ate newman “O”s, and snow ghost laughed at his televised self’s [jokes / descriptions of three stooges episodes] until he was actually crying. then we watched commercials a little bit, then i went home.

the new bruce nauman backpatches are done and will be at the store tomorrow. also if anyone has a digital camera i can take ~18 pictures on (while you are there waiting) please stop by early (but after 2). big big party tomorrow and me with nothing to wear but i’ll manage i’m sure possibly with a ninth-inning kimono. hey peter, hope you’re bringing your iron stomach, i made more of that typewriter polish and it’s a doozy.

well, the page is up but janky, which you’d know if you tried to leave a comment, or visit a sub-page, or link to anything. but my man diamond’s on it, whose abilities i am confident of. or i should say, whose ability to acquire abilities to complete a task i am at a comfortable level with. NB: this is not the same diamond as when ML puts on a wig and sunglasses and acts like a tough guy and we call him diamond. this is a real person. i mean, this person’s identity is still in effect when their body is asleep (geez, guy…).

i just got sidetracked for a minute in the writing of this post and then firefox crashed (it happens). this browser crash to writing loss scenario has played out a number of times through the years to often disastrous and at least disheartening effect, but now i find that i can just “restore session” and it’s all as nice as rice wine. this is not an adequate metaphor, but it is a good cap to the day. in the morning and for most of the daylight hours i felt like endless blockades. sure, i ate some nice breakfast, i maybe but probably not (but maybe) finished finally the music video entanglement for brian o (although now that i said it there’s probably way more to do), i had a nice day at the store hanging out with bad eddie and estherose, i drew a comic, i had artichokes for dinner, and then instead of spending money on a movie i spent the last 4 hours sewing new fucked clothing for the store with nice company. but i was bummed/stressed for a good chunk of the day, and only in this last bit did things really start to gel, enabling me to see the previous hours from a better vantage point. it’s regrettable that so often i forget that being creative and making things will help me feel a million times better, and that rather than a burden, the store can be a hub of creativity and agent of unburdenness.

on the topic of the store being a burden, next week is the first week with volunteers at the store and me walking the city (over you), and hopefully remembering my lesson of today and knocking some more crazy shit out. oh, and if you’re interested in volunteering, email me or call. there is a calendar at the store to sign up on, and even one day a month would go a long way. also this is “make or break” month, so if you’ve been thinking about bringing in your zine, tape, cdr, t-shirt, small sculpture, or whatever to sell at the store, don’t sleep- you’ll wake up to another dried-up project and a head full of should’ves.

on the topic of crazy shit for the store, the clothes we made tonight are pretty far out and some of them feature one of my favorite product ideas right now. in his autobiography (which rules), salvador dali describes a small, mass-produced piece of art that is so perfectly repugnant (though appealing enough for it to be purchased) that it’s apotheosis is reached only when its owner decides to throw it away. to this end some of the clothes feature far out aspects and appendages that, while i genuinely really like them, are not really suited to a functional garment. when the wearer decides to cut the offending sections off, they are making an important jump from consumer to creator, and that’s what this is all about right? or, it’s one thing that this all could be said to be about anyway.

now back to the music video again- i edited it using imovie, which isn’t really for editing movies for dvd, it’s for sharing videos on the internet with the grandparents of the babies in the videos. i made some assumptions early in the editing game that proved to be false and subsequently the quality is LO, like, totally bitty. but i think it’ll work out, because i used a ton of stupid and already seriously dated built-in effects like digital comets, lightening, earthquakes, and “old film filter”. yes, all the classic self-sabotaging tricks i play when i find myself wondering how nothing i can get and still rep. to wit- the music video has poor sound quality, it’s only one shot (and one take), the shot is set up poorly with a lot of the action happening just outside the frame, it manages to drag in parts despite being one minute long, it’s edited distractingly, cheap filters and hackneyed effects are used aggressively (offensively even), and the subject matter is nauseating. well, what do you want from me- spartacus?

fujichia: it is never spartacus

ugh! this site’s been down for a few weeks i guess due to server problems that resulted in a switching of servers which i didn’t have to actually deal with (and good thing)but i did have to wait for (which is nothing new). writing is such a huge part of my learning and remembering process that when i can’t or don’t write, things start to go bad. this time i did ok, though (i think). so what happened in the interim? oh, the weather was nice, i walked around.

• there were a couple shows, enough that i got temporarily sick of shows. i will highlight one- nadir, the dungeoneers, trap them, furnace, and some other band with a basement-themed name, at maniac mansion (in the basement obviously). this was supposed to be the dungeoneers tape release but things didn’t happen in time (as they tend to not), so it was merely “the second-to-last show” (before matt carroll returned from germany and the terribles could continue being a band). nadir played before them and totally destroyed. i know no one likes to be put in a box, but nadir is a grind-oriented band from worcester. guitar drums vocals, and everything is so fast and so tech it’s like watching hummingbirds- all wrist, all twitch. i’ve seen them a couple times and i like it more and more, and more and more they make other bands on the bill look like a bunch of sleepy kittens by comparison. i don’t remember who the third band was- my understanding is that hardcore is now (and has been for some time) driven by a sort of nerd so psyched on specific parts of previous canonical hardcore bands that only nerds can really tell you if a band’s sources are valid and their construction sound, making them good. but no need to hate, as electronic dance music is also driven by specific tempo ranges, lustrous clichés, and precision homage, and that’s still fun (though also not my idiom). anyway, i absolutely had to leave halfway through, as 2.5 bands is my limit in the basement of maniac mansion- all the smoke you know, but mostly it’s the low ceilings that force me into a bad posture which gives me horrible stomach cramps.

• there were these beautiful russians visiting some friend of a friend and we ended up hanging out and talking about music, prisons, hygeine, and the internet. the best part was when one of them asked me why punks didn’t shower and i gave her a brief but thorough breakdown of the ways in which not showering displayed the best of the punk ethos. basically, that being OK with your own body odor is an enourmous step towards being OK with your body; that it is the tantalizing smell of action; that smelling like a person sets one apart in a clear and unfakeable way from the the beauty standards of a possibly large and certainly objectionable set of people who would rather smell like a supermarket aisle, and more in line with the rest of the animal kingdom. the one talkative lady told me i was very funny, and moreover that i “say good things”, which made me really happy and to some degree rescued me from a foggy outlook. she had a weird shirt with a very high moderately floppy collar, long straight black hair with one ear poking through, high elfish cheekbones, and sharp facial features set farther away from each other than might seem reasonable in a planning stage. in short, the sort of person it is simply nice to be amid, like a full-spectrum lightbulb.

• my show at julian’s with adam gnade was really fun- i was really stressed out but all the stress just made me want more and more to get lost in myself and my friends and abandon myself to rogue operators and sing super fucking loud, which is what i did and it worked. also they gave me really good food– i got a side order of asparagus because i’d never buy it for myself, it was delicious.

• went to the art museum two weeks in a row (still free on saturdays before noon), first to see the pettibon / ed ruscha exhibit, then to manage a scavenger hunt for esther and jen.

  • pettibon/ruscha killed. obviously i like both of these guys a ton. ruscha (“ru-SHAY”) for his great boringness, his californiosity, his craft, and for being another great creator in the perambulatory mode (basing his paintings on things overheard while walking around the city). i look at “styrene they called her”, his book of word paintings, at least once a month. pettibon i like for his lineage (black flag duh), his subject matter (scummy hippies, trains, surfers on huge waves), his goony style, his handwriting, his inclusion of texts, and the texts he includes. both i like a lot for their dry wit, and for employing reading as a skill. the show at the art museum was 1/2 about “the end” and 1/2 about “the bible”. i expected their collabs to feature pettibon on the images and ruscha on the texts, but it was actually quite the reverse, and not a disappointment. it’s still at the art museum, i’d really like to hear a review by someone with a black flag tattoo.

  • the scavenger hunt totally ruled, a version of an idea i had a while back regarding my own personal relationship to the worcester art museum (with the ultimate goal of getting others to develop such a relationship as well, and work the paintings of the museum into a local artistic vocabulary). the scavenger hunt featured about 20 items- all pieces in the museum. the clues were jokes about or things i think about or funny things in any of the given paintings- “a lady that is a spaceship”, “a dude, holding”, “a garish and sinister mess from which the only comfort that can be had is tackiness.”. it went great and they got most of them (with a little help). i’ll post the full list of items when i get the sheet back from esther (maybe never).

well, that’s enough of the past off my brainback to allow me some rest. there’s always more, but we are now sufficiently caught up that i can go draw, or make food, or read comic books, or anything, and not feel the weight of recent memory compounding. glad to be back.

not much to say on last night’s billy blue show- lilah bought me beers, the antifaustian allure of blues music weaved it’s spell for good or bad on a floor full of chooglers, mz said that the decor was “ugly-new” (dim lighting over garish colors, no dust, patina, or signs of use etc.). anyway i had a good time. of course the music was great, billy was so psyched to be there and lived up, and the band is always on point. i especially delight in the guitar player, who has a great lemon-eating guitar face and new errol flynn mustache. as for the crowd, like i said, some real chooglin’ going on, some people flaunting the fact that they took dance lessons, karl lagerfeld was there, lots of students or whatever. there was one lady sore thumbing amongst the people on dates and full-on beering in a red sweatsuit who was OG from the old gilrein’s, i’d love to get her take on the whole thing. ok, back to this, but as for me, i guess i echo bucky jones’ cyber squat piss-take on the affair- that all the cleanliness, the marble, the lines, the lack of character, the idea that lack of character embues a profitable safeness, all these ideas, are sad. white bite.

also, i’m willing to admit to the possibility that the guy i saw just looked like karl lagerfeld.

this epic shirt was designed by mel soter and printed at john shirley temple. two color print- rusty purple monster party backdrop with black silhouette of a one-horned (or one-eared) creature with claws at the ready. says “HBML” and “junk shoppe”. playerrrrrrrrrr. screened by hand on 100% cotton (and 100% LAVENDER) american apparel shirts, available in S M L and XL (also known as “petite”, “rock music”, “frisbee” and “rap music”). proceeds go to support HBML.

HBML shirt - $20 postage paid

don’t forget to include what size you want!