keep it live out there

(more…)

two from the vaults

this saturday we’re having another silk screen day at HBML, from 2 - 5. for halloween we’ll have two designs to choose from: a ghoulish headless horseman replete with jack o’lantern, and a design based on john & yoko “two virgins” but with jack o’lantern heads and, uh, goblin genitalia (like in the painting at the art museum in which bacchus & company call bees to nest in a disgusting tree by clattering dishware). both designs will be in black ink and cost $5. huppy hulloween!

tonight lazy magnet is playing at the firehouse. 5pm seems unlikely but that’s what the flyer says, and it’s a pre-show before another rumbler at dishpan casserole– a bunch of punk bands i can’t remember but one of them includes sy, who made the incredible zine “those fucking unicorns”.

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.

jeremy took me out for lunch at the quan yin and we talked about my obsession with tagging (which is to say, categorizing the posts on a (this) webpage). i even have a system for tagging older posts from the days before tagging, in which i randomly choose a previous post and apply appropriate categories, or clean things up (right now there’s tags for both “psyched” and “P.O.L.”, for example). of course, at the rate i’m going, roughly one per day, the past will catch up with the present in only seven years.

i grant you, it’s crazythinking to pretend this is comprehensive, but in a pinch, it’s nice to be able to quickly sort through and see, oh, i don’t know, as mentioned before, things i’m psyched about, or rhetorical questions i have asked. i think once the tags start to pile up things will really get interesting. joining the every day and the long term, that’s my goal lately.

in any event, the best example of this is daily panel, which is finally accumulating enough material for the categories to be valuable. see for example all panels relevant to god, or better yet, the universe.

ok, so the update over the phone thing doesn’t work ssuper super great, but what do you want for nothing? the past week has been really good, lots of thinly-velied and sometimes veiled not at all requests from me to other people that they make dinner for me and also i stay at their house, WHICH IS COOL. that was providence. return to worcester on the saturday and immediately jumped into the big mystery band show, which ruled. there was an auction that i was the auctioneer for, to raise money for HBML, and that was splendid also– lots of people donated skills and services like cranio-sacral massages and time in a recording studio and a piggyback to anywhere, and then i fast-talked and lots of people bid in a mild frenzy, pretty ideal. as is the custom, all the bands were great and many of them had people that had never been in bands before, and you could see them realizing that their own creative instincts were valid. the audience was lots of people. the second show of the summer is this friday, at the go go, it’s gonna rip.

ssunday i hung out with my sister, my brurinlaw, and my niece. sheryl-ann, if you’re out in oak-land reading this, you’ll be pleassed i’m sure to see the photoevidence of this on the photo blog. the day was fun and the baby is great, and me and the brurinlaw talked more about the flash game idea i had, DONKEY COMMAND.

the installation thing i’m doing, the grand opening got pushed back to the 26th or 27th, which frees me up to do tons of get-ready stuff for the big start on the street streetfest this sunday, plus the boston zine fair this saturday. as it turns out, i’m playing music at the start in the street thing, which is fine but really just one more thing to stress about, but it’ll be fun, plus i’m getting paid, which is good, because i have to move out of where i’m now living at, and into a more expensive place.

me and mickey DM are meeting tomorrow to put the layout down of the new broadsheet magazine, previously called RHODODENDRON FESTIVAL, now i think to be called NEW PARIS GAZETTE, or something like that. tonight until late, finishing writing everything.

fujichia: when it rains, it pours.
fujichia: it’s always raining something.

other quick news:
• the new empty mountain site looks hecka tite bro…
• robot finds kitten, the video game that was the sole entrant to a contest i created 10 years ago has been included as a minigame in a recent PSP release. more news here. also, RFK came preloaded on dave paquette’s mp3 player.
• peter sibley reps a paris of the eighties tshirt in the group shot for the software project he’s been working on, which (the software) is nuts, which was recently launched into outer space for some reason.

more filming of the cosby show friday and saturday got us almost to the half-way mark! of filming, leaving the arduous process of editing entirely on my shoulders. that aside, this week has been pretty tite. i got the HBML site redesign and catalog up and running, and already the orders have been coming in, in a slow trickle to be sure, but hopefully the sort of trickle that is indicative of a larger flood, and more stuff getting added every few days, so, uh, let’s be exponential, monied interests!

friday my bike finally caught a flat. well, actually, i got fed up with waiting and popped the tire with a pin. i know this seems ridiculous, but the tire had a worn-out section that went through the black (exterior) rubber AND through the white (interior) rubber, and you could see an eighth-inch section of the tube itself! and moreover, i’d been riding it like that since last winter! friday i was carrying my computer and pars’ camcorder, plus sshirts and stickers, and i just knew i was going to catch a flat and be late to the shoppe, so i took ML’s old ROLLFAST chopper, which he half-gave to me, and then just because, i went “way of the samurai” and popped that b myself, just to see how much it would take. the important part of this story is, riding the chopper totally rules. leopard-print banana seat, ape hanger handlebars, front and rear fenders… shiiiiiiiiit. it’s a knee-burner, and i have to walk it up all bu the most slight hills, and the understuffed seat is like sitting on another bony butt, but still… shiiiiiiiiit. i thought i would get a lot of people heckling me for being a tall dude on a tiny bike, or being mad for going hell slow in the street with wide squirrely steering, but surprisingly all i got was respect. also it was the latin american fest downtown this weekend, so lots of other lowrider bikes were out, their owners giving me what’s ups. really really fun. here’s a video, shot during nat needle’s “creative laundry” event at elm park: don’t blink.

friday like i said we got some more shooting in the can for the cosby show idea, plus dan and sue came in from boston and hung out, and delivered a bunch of awesome stuff for the shoppe from the sue jeivan lifestyle collection. that night there was a show at the wheelchair, featuring a band from holland called “antidote”, and other usual suspects. great crowd, the bands were fun, i had a blast. there were some brief moments where some people were just acting crazy, then one of them decided this craziness was an act of war, not of love, and things got tense and violent, and then they got broken up, and then one of the parties stormed over to the other party and you think “here we go again”, but then the stormer says “i was only being crazy, let’s hug each other”, then they do. this was totally cute and happened, like i said, a few times. the warhol twins were there except they both dyed their hair back to natural and it’s too hot to wear leather jackets or maybe they were only borrowed. also radical rodney the casual commie, bruce bertleman, dan and grant from nadir, (almost) all the stars. oh, and it was cameron’s 21st birthday, and he got wasted and lovey-dovey, it was totally cute.

during antidote matty buttcakes was throwing fireworks into the crowd from sort of a balcony area, and someone from the venue came up all hard like “are you the one throwing the fireworks?”. buttcakes was sheepishly like “yeah…” and the someone said “why are you throwing them in the middle of everyone? really hit someone!”. pause. “well, not just anyone… uh, hit that guy (points).”.

ok, lots of funny stuff happened at the show but the funniest was that when antidote started playing, all the cushions from the couches (which remain perennially soaked with beer spilled before, during, or after digestion) started flying, and there was a big greasy pillowfight, it was totally pure fun, and big silliness, and perfect. the band was initially psyched but then one of them got his hat pushed back and they stopped to apparently admonish the crowd though no one could tell what they were saying due to language and distortion issues. they resumed, the pillowfight resumed, and then they stopped again while someone collected all the pillows and hid them, then people decided en masse that if they could only be crazy in a sanctioned way it was peace out time, and the rest of the set was pretty lackluster on the audience side of things. if i’m ever in a band trying to get people to wall of death and someone gets from a backroom a boogie board and starts using it as a shield and i’m upset, wedgie me.

saturday more filming at the shop, although i went in early to have breakfast at the diner next door (which was decent) and read comic books i got tricked into buying the previous day (omega the unknown #s 1 - 6, which the comic books store ordered for me even though i only wanted #7 (which they did not order)). saturday a steady drip of folks, then on the way home i ran into vaula van who took me out to dinner at da lat, just when i was good and hungry. dan, you were right about me having it pretty sweet.

doing a routine image search for “embrace the chaos” yields this as the *first* choice:

good morning, everything!

also, for best image search, i strongly recommend the google image ripper, which i use about a million times a day. it loads all the pictures automatically with no thumbnails or other not-needed information. super usefull.

k-prizzy took me on errands yesterday, the first week of a regular deal by which she takes me on errands every tuesday and i buy her lunch. it was heavenly. full disclosure: i can’t drive.

we went to:

• economy paint

  mis-tints are your best value, but maybe i got the not-perfect color for the chroma key screen i’m installing in the shop. “oh well”.

• micheal’s in white city

  there’s usually some cool artsy girl archetype working but there wasn’t yesterday. they always ask for my zip code and i always say “90120″, which is, i think, a perfect response, because it’s good to resist or at least question the constant harvesting of personal data, but if you say “no, you can’t have my zip code”, then it’s a big production. giving obvious false information is great because it’s points out that it totally doesn’t matter, and you show distain for the system, but it’s light and fun, and at a person to person level, really no one cares. the last time i was at michael’s the lady (who was the archetype) said “really?” and i told her “hey, everyone lives in hollywood nowadays”. let’s you say that 90210 is actually beverly hills, let’s me say that the idea “beverly hills” exists in the idea “hollywood”.

  micheal’s is in the same plaza as the 24 hour dunkin donuts, which is a really good scene, and the bodybuilder burrito store with the tribal tat menus. there’s also an “iParty”, which is a funny name for something that has nothing to do with computers. it’s just plastic animals that you can put in your pocket. actually i’ve never done this but i always think about it.

• the dumb supermarket

  the trick to supermarkets is to only buy things from the periphery- produce, dairy, bread. everything in the middle is a vast wasteland of vast waistbands. although it’s always worth it to go to the cereal aisle and treat it like an art gallery (and for this the best supermarket is the price hopper, which has really good generic brands with good stupid names). the shaws at white city (possibly all shaw’ses) redesigned to compete with the trader joe’s across the way and now has a few “mini sstores” inside the larger stores, where they parse out “natural” and “ethnic” foods from the stock and display them in areas separate from everything else, with particular lighting and design elements (wood grain vinyl floors in the “natural” section is particularly appropriate). maybe it works, but when you’re trying to compare prices and four different cans of black beans are in “natural”, “ethnic >> latin american” “foods of the world >> mexico”, and “miscellaneous”, come on.

• dollar forever

  dollar stores have the best names, even though this one is patently false– more than a year ago they changed to a “dollar and up” store. hmmph! anyway, they have the best dvds, which are so cheap to make that tons of movies that never saw a video release are getting dumped on the market at a phenominal rate. lots of kung fu, spanish-language singing westerns, really old cartoons, and old sci-fi horror. perfect! yesterday i got a luchador / robot movie with a totally totally 100% bananas “rock” sequence by a band called “shadow of the beast”. it looks like they were recording a bunch of nonsense just to drop a tite instrumental over in post, then forgot. everybody’s waving everything around for two minutes, then ssomehow it really falls to shit, and you hear someone in the background say (in english) “stop the rock!”. almost everyone drops out, then the drummer says in a vincent price voice (again, in english) “when the music changes… SO DO I!” and things get way wiggy again fast. definitely worth $1.05! i forget what the movie was called but i remember fake translating the title as “lunch with the feet”, so put that in your translator. backwards… and i’m in! oh, i also got stuff for the store…

• ben franklin used books

  yes, i went to sell books from HBML, that were kind of boring and kind of nice, that i thought no one who came into the store would want. is that so wrong? ben franklin’s is the best bookstore in worcester, and i would say this even if there were another bookstore in worcester. there are cats that roam around, classical music on the radio, lots of art books and a GREAT occult section. working there was my first real job, and the first job i ever quit (but amicably so). times are tough for bookstores, so i didn’t get cash for the books, only credit, which is inideal, but is also a perfect way to engage a quasi-frivlous pleasure in exhaustive monographs and privately-published daemonic encyclopaedias.

• tech pizza

  every tuesday a small pizza in the greek / new england style is $2.50, so every tuesday it’s like montparnasse. well, except that instead of painters it’s skaters and instead of talking about surrealísme they’re talking about how to rationalize a hickey to your mom (consensus: paintball accident). your best drink option is a tall ‘zona from the convience store down the street.

every tuesday errand regimen! you know, it’s the little things?