Shows I Missed

I finally understand all the hullabaloo surrounding the...

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:54:00 -0800

I finally understand all the hullabaloo surrounding the astronomically expensive space program. There is not a single man who wouldn’t penetrate the troposphere for an opportunity to put his boot on a redhead and thrust his flag into her crater.

Doesn’t mean I had the cheese for said redhead, or even a theatrical representation of her. Rather than going, I stayed at home and matched the carpet with the drapes.

[via I Am Your Canadian Boyfriend]

Just what I want to do. Attend the afterparty of a fashion show,...

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:32:17 -0800

Just what I want to do. Attend the afterparty of a fashion show, where bird-boned ladies twice my height talk about themselves and snort powder from heaps that cost more than my computer. Not only has every fashion show I’ve explored seemed like an elaborate ploy to get attention, it’s also felt like a better-clothed and thinner extension of everything I hated about college at N.Y.U., and I already have the Internet for that, thanks. If you want a hug, just ask next time.

(And no, I wasn’t invited. So there’s that.)

Instead, I worked on my own precarious gambit for attention, You Talk to Me. I sported a slinky cotton ensemble from the 2008 Hanes collection: provocatively cut, versatile, and accented with bold stains of drip-brewed Brasilian Maragogype.

[via Either The Drapes Go Or I Do]

Why would I go to a show in Australia? Isn’t that whole...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:25:54 -0800

Why would I go to a show in Australia? Isn’t that whole continent in flames right now? Not a surprise. They’re all convicts, and it’s a good bet that a high percentage of them are arsonists.

Couldn’t have gone anyway. I was occupied with the Promethean task of re-igniting our furnace’s pilot light, which goes out more often than Paris Hilton.

[via fucking MySpace]

Those 8-track drugs our parents had back in the seventies were...

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:15:00 -0800

Those 8-track drugs our parents had back in the seventies were so weak you had to borrow your cousin TeeTee’s VW Type 2 just to be able to leave your dealer’s house with enough to get you tingly. The one thing they did was tilt your perspective enough that you thought disco was more than smoke machines, sparkling props, and sex with insecure divorcées in azure eye shadow. Other than seedy-ass grass, most drugs from that decade didn’t make your sex drive plummet or your sperm black out, which facilitated the genesis of my generation. Thank you, party favors.

Even with an Astrodome full of uppers, I wasn’t about to make it to this screening. I wasn’t yet a zygote. Not the faintest trace of me on God’s breath.

[via Waxin’ & Milkin’]

One fog-choked morning, on my way to get groceries, a cold...

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:53:21 -0800

One fog-choked morning, on my way to get groceries, a cold wiggled passed the gauntlet of my immune system and replaced my head with a sandbag. I arrived home, put down the onions I had purchased, and I took a Sleeping-Beauty nap that somehow stretched out over five months. Everyone banged on my door and filled my phone with histrionic messages, demanding confirmation of my safety. No one got through my dreamless slumber. Not my landlord, not my parents, not my parole officer, nobody. A rich rind of thorned vines crept around my house and squeezed, blocking out sunshine completely. It ensnared both songbirds and song. One day, after every other person had either forgotten about me or given up, my girlfriend procured a machete from the Internet, supposedly forged by Orcs from stainless steel and dragon spit. She spent the better part of a week hacking through the integument of dangerous creeper, avoiding allergy, injury, and worse. After countless labored hacks and slashes, she wiggled through my bedroom window and planted a sloppy wet one on my dusty crotch. I instantly awoke, hungrier than a Rwandan. I realized that, among other things, I had missed almost half a year of life, blogging, candy consumption, and this musical performance.

[caught it here.]

When I was younger, dripping optimism, and at the apex of my...

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:23:05 -0700

When I was younger, dripping optimism, and at the apex of my physical vigor, I acquired a reputation for driving around in my shit-heap 1987 Hyundai hatchback while craning my neck out the window and whistling at females twice my age. Lodged roughly in the center of the cracked maroon dash, above the ashtray that fell out every time I accelerated, was the abused tape player. My pattern was such: put on the one tape available, play it at full volume through the rattling bass-absent speakers, drive around and around the town I was stuck in until either the gas ran out or the cassette snapped. One of the tapes in question during this era was Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff Plus, the perfect soundtrack for driving from the cemetery to the skate rink to the clubhouse to the Arby’s. Don’t know what it would be like to see them now. They probably wouldn’t sound right without me sipping a Tiger’s Blood slushy from the driver’s seat of a lemon.

I spent the evening of the Mudhoney concert pursuing endeavors free of high-school nostalgia, namely: sex. I didn’t wear a safety belt.

[via Tuff Shit]

I’ve done gallons of idiotic things. Once I built a...

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:29:07 -0700

I’ve done gallons of idiotic things. Once I built a bonfire on a suburban sidewalk in broad daylight. I dated the daughter of a guy who thought that AIDS was something you caught from “a gay” sneezing on you. I tattooed an enormous spark plug on my forearm. I even voted for Ralph Nader, but that’s what cocaine will do to you. Fortunately, I’ve never done anything as stupid as attending a Widespread Panic show. I’m not about to slip into the idiot abyss now. If I want the delicate bones in my eardrums to go slushy, I’ll pour hydrogen fluoride into them, thank you.

Instead, I went to the roller rink and found a large dude named Charles who wore puffy brown jeans and a permanent sneer. I called him a bitch.

The doctors say I’m lucky the scars are in places I can conceal with clothing.

[poster design: Chris Bilheimer, via this place]

Early one morning, while on the bus reading To Kill A...

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:21:00 -0700

Early one morning, while on the bus reading To Kill A Mockingbird, I fell in love with a font. My mind turned from Atticus Finch to Verdana. Like the charged air before a storm, I could sense the change in the ink’s pallor and earthy perfume. Suddenly, Boo Radley was represented not by the words so much as the words’ specific genetic makeup, its design DNA.

So I delicately followed the sensual curves of the S in Scout. The spaces between the letters in her name became tiny breaths connecting all fragments to the single heartbeat of the entire word, on through the cardiac rhythm of the entire sentence, working in concert with the white space on the rest of the page, forming the visceral makeup of the overall story.

As I’m climbing off the bus, I think, “Verdana is the typeface next door. It’s a font that will hold hands with the eye, emotion and sweat blooming ad infinitum. I’m tired of the exotic fonts like Braggadocio and Haettenschweiler. They’re high maintenance and cavalier, sans versatility and elegance. It is time to settle down with a solid font like this Verdana.”

We decided to form an everlasting union and elope right away. Family wouldn’t have understood, so we had a small ceremony in a cozy bookstore that night, away from the scorn and poor kerning of others. It was everything we’d hoped, intimate and romantic and legible. Our wedding night was bold and on point. Verdana tickled my fingers with every letter of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Without the love story, I probably would have skipped the exhibit anyway. I’m just that type.

[via here]

When the two men of Lightning Bolt perform, they assemble their...

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:32:09 -0700

When the two men of Lightning Bolt perform, they assemble their instruments in the middle of the audience. The drummer wears a ski mask with his mic taped to the inside, the guitarist seizures about, and the music they make with the crowd whiplashing around them sounds like werewolves riding a triple-loop roller coaster with a hurricane rolling in. In short, it’s a life changing experience channeled through a few large amps. If one’s ultimate goal was to have a deeply fulfilling existence, attending this musical event was imperative.

I went to a friend’s house and watched Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, which didn’t feature any wailing guitars or sweaty art-school punks. Just lots of salt water and a little bit of sunburnt tension. I drank a beer, too. There goes my chance at a colorful life.

[via Chongoloid]

I enjoy nightmarish hallucinations just as much as the next guy,...

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:47:57 -0700

I enjoy nightmarish hallucinations just as much as the next guy, but let’s be honest: with all my familial obligations, work schedule, and compulsive need to check my email every forty-three seconds, I simply don’t have time for this Mickey-Mouse bullshit.

Instead, I spent my time wisely. Drank a couple of pints of Guinness, wrote a few dozen haiku, and fell asleep watching The Secret of NIMH.

[via some guy’s myspace-ness]

I went to college in New York, a fact that I tend to omit from...

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:05:18 -0700

I went to college in New York, a fact that I tend to omit from most train-yard burn-barrel conversation. Boxcar dwellers don’t look kindly upon the formally educated, and if your formal education comes from New York City, it’s likely they’ll whittle hobo signs on your forehead with rusty box cutters and leave you bleeding in the dirt. A life of privilege, whether economic or academic, cannot be trusted amongst the no-income set. There are too many rich kids playing poor for sport, and although I’m not one of them (I’m genuinely broke, just look at the scars on my feet from stepping on piggy-bank shards), a degree from NYU lumps me in with the snootiest of the snooty. After all, I did go to school with celebrities and Middle-Eastern nobility. I’ve attended parties where bags of cocaine were handed out as party favors. I’ve skateboarded through the spiraled Guggenheim. I’ve ridden more subways than steam engines.

There are, however, times when I lean on my laurels. At hipster parties pretty much anywhere outside of New York, you mention the letters N-Y-U, and the girl who wouldn’t pass you the warmest Pabst from her messenger bag will suddenly see you as a cool, intellectual way out of her empty, Hot-Topic life. She’ll lead you into the nearest bathroom and let your genitals share stomping grounds with her Bubblicious.

This was one of those nights when it was advantageous to mention my association with the neighborhood where this concert took place. I was at a house party in New Mexico, far from Avenue A, so the Big Apple’s clout worked to my advantage. Some girl named “Andromeda,” hooked on Pop Rocks, actually thought I’d be crafty enough to play Perseus and freight her away from the monster her life had become. For about twelve minutes, I let her believe it.

[via Ryan Walsh and The Stairs]

I’m not interested in solo guitar recitals because they...

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:58:36 -0700

I’m not interested in solo guitar recitals because they never include the use of feedback or the whammy bar. I grew up playing percussion and goofing off at the back of band classrooms, honing my dating skills on stringy and off-pitch orchestral ladies. I know my way around a practice room, and I’m quite familiar with the kinds of things you might run through when you’re in one. Recitals are usually overwhelmingly stale. The upper-level ones feature an abundance of pretension and a dearth of death metal. If I didn’t eventually ditch marching band, I might never have known the smash-nose serenity of Slayer.

I was nowhere close to this recital. A freshman in college, crammed into a tiny sweatbox dorm with two other guys in the East Village, I was doing anything I could to get some time alone. I grew up an only child in an Oklahoma suburb, where you come to take hand-romance for granted. In lower Manhattan, you’ve got to wait until the right moment presents itself, then seize it. Both the roommates were out getting drunk somewhere. I lit some candles, found a crumbless spot on my bed, and tuned my guitar until it wept.

[via Visual Culture]

I wish I knew what this handbill meant, other than what is...

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:25:07 -0700

I wish I knew what this handbill meant, other than what is already known: Europe gets all the colorful dik. I hope, in the most mildewed corner of my heart, that this poster was designed by a unicorn that escaped from Buchenwald in 1945.

It was cold as hell outside, so I took cover in a high school gymnasium during a JV basketball game. The players were awkward. The squeaks of their shoes ricocheted off the walls dozens of times before hitting the ears, and the cheerleaders made me dribble doubly. Eventually, the glares I received from parents far outweighed my need to leer, so I grabbed my coat and reintroduced my cheeks to the biting air outside.

Next time, I’ll wear my Chupa Cabra suit and pretend I’m a misplaced mascot. Everyone loves mystical creatures, including cheerleaders. Oh, you thought that a unicorn’s horn is purely there for decoration? It’s for goring Nazis and whoring Nancys, too.

[via perongeluk]

Shadows frighten me. Following the walleyed logic of fear,...

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:14:33 -0700

Shadows frighten me. Following the walleyed logic of fear, shadow puppets and puppeteers frighten me, too. The very nature of shadows ensures that mine has to follow me around everywhere I go, like a reanimated puppy. This creeps me out. I figure you can’t trust a shadow puppeteer, or any other iteration of shadow wrangler who dabbles in the dark arts. They toy with the creatures that cling to your soul.

Cloudy days mean I can go about my business without having to watch my back for the darkness stepping on my heels. Five years ago, when I read in some nature book that Portland is blessed with an abundance of clouds, I packed up my possessions and moved there (here), lickety-split. Haven’t bumped into a shadow puppeteer yet.

Instead of attending this exhibition of evil, I microwaved a factory-packed beef stroganoff dinner, threw on some Goblin, and organized my books by color. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, it was the best way to occupy my evening.

[via jayrz]

If only. This event was probably irrefutably influential, like...

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 15:06:28 -0700

If only. This event was probably irrefutably influential, like geometry. Because no one from my circle of squares planned to attend, I wanted to go, simply to see if it measured up. Unfortunately, I was in no shape to leave the house.

I flopped around in my sweat-salted sheets, sick as a snake shedding skin. When I awoke the next morning, acute pain splintered through my neck. By my calculations, I had slept at a strange angle, protracting my illness and making my fever dreams even more obtuse.

[via maths]

No matter how long I ruminate, no matter how many lists I make,...

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:11:00 -0700

No matter how long I ruminate, no matter how many lists I make, no matter how many pages of my roommate’s journal I transcribe, I can’t find a single good excuse for skipping the “Summer Slaughter Tour.” Just look at all that blood. If you’re the kind of person who sits for entire Sunn O))) albums in front of the mirror, practicing your fiercest scowl, I hope you donned your blackest of black robes and your whitest of white corpse paint and attended this group bloodcurdling. I didn’t.

When suddenly afflicted with an overwhelming urge to better my crumbling physique, I went to the gym without remembering that exercise is usually a mistake. There was a woman there on some sort of machine that looked like a cousin of the 18th century Nuremberg iron maiden, and as she grunted I caught her eye. She totally wants me, I thought, so I casually waved at her with the 10-pound dumbbell in my hand, simultaneously pulling a muscle in my armpit I had forgotten was there. Played it off as a nothing and got my clipped wing out of that place. Spent the next two weeks applying deodorant gingerly. Told everyone it was a tickling injury.

[via accident prone]

I couldn’t be bothered to travel to Flagstaff, I was busy...

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:10:00 -0700

I couldn’t be bothered to travel to Flagstaff, I was busy writing a mediocre story about a boy who drowns in a wheat field. If I were to have gone anywhere, it would have been Kansas, for research. Also, I would have packed a snorkel.

Later that night, I got into a nasty row with the girlfriend over whose penis is bigger, mine or hers (mine, obviously). She kicked me out of her house and I skated home and sat on my porch, drinking black coffee and stroking my ego.

[via elten eleven]

It doesn’t take a Mensa inductee to figure out that this...

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:26:00 -0700

It doesn’t take a Mensa inductee to figure out that this show had some of the best-named acts in entertainment’s long legacy. “Ghost: Bitch” seems like some sort of classification in the Library of Sexual Congress. “Some Young Pedro” assumes many of us know multiple guys named Pedro, and this just happens to be another one with that name, and he’s young. Most notably, there’s “ACRNYM.” This might seem like an arbitrary emcee moniker to you, but when I look at that name, the first thing between my ears is, “Where did the ‘O’ go?” Then I realized: It’s around his dick. Oh.

See the cover price? Yeah, that’s not American cash. No matter how perfectly titled the lineup, I can’t shell out seven hundred dollars to Jet Blue my way across the globe. That’s cake and steak money. Rent, honey.

I wrote a letter to an old friend in a coffee shop and lost it before I made it home. Saddened, I watched YouTube videos of dudes revving mopeds until I fell asleep with my clothes still on.

[via here]

Got out of L.A. long before this show, but just in time to snare...

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:16:05 -0700

Got out of L.A. long before this show, but just in time to snare the last fibrous remnants of my sanity. Echo Park? Silver Lake? No thank you. I’m surrounded by plenty of unattainable affluence right here in rainy Portland, OR. Los Angeles might have In ‘N Out Burger, but the girls in Portland actually make eye contact with me, which allows me to believe it could lead to the fabled act of in and out. Hold your tongue, friends. My whole life is upheld by such delusions and denial, like rotting stilts holding up a teetering shanty in the swamp. Spare me your gale-force facts. Instead, I went to my friend Noah’s house for a cookout. Ate someone else’s steaks, drank someone else’s beer. Gotta make the most of the upper left coast. Then I was ghost. [via Eagle and Talon]

Had three beers at 5 p.m. and passed out in the park around 7...

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:52:42 -0700

Had three beers at 5 p.m. and passed out in the park around 7 p.m. Woke up half past midnight, a blade of grass in my nostril. Walked home, wondering if cracks in the pavement happen over years or in a blink. I’m sure it’s a gradual thing, but I want to believe it happens suddenly, like a balloon bursting. I craved spaghetti and meatballs, but not enough to deal with the whole going-to-the-store thing.

Didn’t even think about live music. Not once.

[via these guys]