dyke out

Cortney Harding at Freewilliamsburg has been putting up all these music videos lately by all these bands i used to listen to when i was in high school, so i'm snaking him (or her) by putting this one up before he (or she) can. team dresch was one of the rawest bands i heard when i first started listening to (good) music; i think one of my few friends from high school put this song on a mixtape he made for me, along with other stuff i still listen to to this day (shellac, six finger satellite, rodan, the spinanes). personal best is still a really good record, full of musical adjectives i very much dislike using, but feel are mostly appropriate in this case. anyhow, i'll let pitchfork's writers embarrass themselves with that. this video is from last year—i didn't even know they were playing shows, but then again i'm out of the music loop for the most part. and listen to the crowd singing along—i don't think those girls would let me get anywhere near the stage without them getting all fired up and kicking me in the balls. which would suck for them because i'd have to get melissa or heidi to rock their jaws, if they could keep from making out with my assailants. dykes are a horny bunch, as i know.

new bike

well i'm glad i made that last post about jena malone, even though it was somewhat embarassing, it helped me get over being crushed out. now i'm the same super depressed guy i've always been. otherwise, the super cruiser is one step away from being done. it's very cruise-worthy and really fun after five years of riding a track bike. i get to ride it for about another month before i give it away, with all my good intentions.

totally crushed out

it's been an inordinate amount of time since i've updated this with a real post, one that i've put any sort of thought or effort into, especially since i consider myself a "writer/editor" (thought now i add "apprentice printer" to the list) when contemplating any sort of employment. i won't bore the hordes with updating my life until now with details of various minutiae of daily life or bad, prescient dreams, or my usual visions of bad luck, but i will offer a few odd facts to bring myself up to speed before offering admissions toward my own personal embarassment to you in hopes of forgiveness of the lateness of these sporadic updates. one: i'm getting kicked out of my apartment in brooklyn because the landlord got greedy, and to stay in the neighborhood as i'd like to do, will raise my rent by about $400. two, i pretty much finished the bike (my mom's old 1979 schwinn suburban) i was working on. the bike shop (NYC Bikes) did a really good job at getting the old positron one-piece crank set off and converting the American bottom bracket shell to an English threaded one (as well as fixing a few other things i screwed up), and they were really chill people too (thanks to Rich for his help), unlike too many bike shops i go into where people are total dicks in their narrow little cycling world. one thing i want to change out still is the chainring, which is a Rocket ring, a 110/130mm chainring that looks like it should be on a BMX bike. trying to keep things looking pretty '70s. three, (fanzine is moving into an office right across the hall from coeur noir and is getting almost legit.

re: title. is there an age limit to being crushed out? i'm really not sure what the rules are there, although i'd imagine being 67 years old and crushed out on a 23 year old, though she may possess some very admiral... err... admirable qualities (none of which are probably a pair of big tits, at least as far as i can predict my tastes as i'd see myself as a 67-year-old man), would probably be really creepy and weird to said young lady. but i suppose the limit on age range isn't completely violated in this case, although i think an exception could be made considering these ridiculous circumstances.

one scenario isn't really being crushed out in a sexually-attracted sense, but rather in an insecure, re-interpretation of an earlier (like 12 years ago earlier) age when i was really into this band called the spinanes, who were this girl/boy duo from seattle in the early 1990s, the heyday of sub pop. i was initially really into their first record manos because of the simplistic guitar/drum/voice combo, but the drummer left the band and the singer, rebecca gates, expanded the band's sound in strand and arches and aisles, in which she collaborated with some guys from the sea and cake on a few songs. i saw her play a few times in washington dc (at the height of my indie-rock nerdness; once at some urban outfitters on M street in georgetown, down the street from the exorcist stairs and close to the hotel i stayed at with sam when she won that writing award), and also one of their last shows at the khyber in philly (ted leo was on guitar, which was awesome). gates recently played a show up here in brooklyn at union pool, which was unsettling for me since i found out about it a day late, and also didn't know (a) rebecca gates lives in brooklyn, and (b) that she still played out.

nobody ever went with me to the spinanes shows, which only reaffirms my sense that nobody really knew who they were or gave a shit (though freewilliamsburg posted a video here, so someone else must be into them), but they were one of my favorite bands at the time and i still put their songs on mixtapes to this day. i still tell people about the time i saw sebadoh play at Yale, me and jason lowenstein had the same spinanes t-shirt on. i found rebecca gates on myspace and attempted to add her as a friend. even though my current picture is a photo of my crotch, though fully clothed, i'm hoping she accepts me. i've been checking about every hour on the hour and i'm actually fearing rejection, which might be the most crushing blow i've experienced via the Internet, with certain exceptions made for particular girls from LA (though i then called them up and at least made them vocally repeat what they typed to me, i guess in an effort to solidify my rejection).

my second, equally ridiculous, crush at the moment is Jena Malone, who you probably remember from Donnie Darko, Saved, The Secret Life of Altar Boys, and other films of well-appreciated critical accomplishment. this one i feel really creepy about, because i once had a similar sort of thing for Natalie Portman after i saw Beautiful Girls. not really in a purely-sexual sense either (although i will categorically deny ever having sexual feelings for natalie portman in that movie, i still feel especially creepy since i've been reading a lot of Peter Sotos lately), but more this desperate old-man feeling of admiration toward some precocious old-soul, perhaps in some subconscious attempt to thwart age, or the immaturity of one's own past. anyhow, without any real, personal information to back this claim up, Jena Malone seems like a pretty rad person. i think i started getting crushed out on her after the INDEX (see above pic) interview came out a few years ago, which is really strange to me since i rarely ever have a thing for famous, or semi-famous people, but with certain individuals, under specific parameters, i think it's okay. just to give this a current, newsworthy hook, she's playing guitar at the mercury lounge on tuesday. i'm thinking about going and asking her out on a date.

all hail mr. and mrs. McKinney

i wish i had pics right now of the craziest and funnest event in a long time. congratulations to casey and robin on probably the fastest marriage in these modern days. somebody had to show people how it's done. "who would have thought, the night before your wedding, we'd be sitting here in the misses/juniors department at macy's eating pretzles and ice cream and drinking soda?" more TK for sure.

edit: robin sent me pics finally...

me, casey, robin, zoe at the courthouse.

some super chink-y picture of me.

also, susan gave me her old digital camera, so supposedly i will post more pictures of interesting things.

finding jesus

Since Sufjan Stevens has pretty much made it acceptable and cool to be Christian again, i've decided to find Jesus, myself. I originally planned to give this playlist to a certain somebody, but then i thought, what would Jesus H. Christ do? That is to say, he would share it with everyone. You will note the many obvious and subtle references. Also take note that every playlist i've made for others in 2006 included at least one David Bowie and/or Mogwai song. This one contains neither. If you get a message that you need to sign up in order to download this, don't come bitching to me. Just sign up. It's free. Free. Praise be to Jesus.[sorry, no cover this time]

FINDING JESUS

1. BIG STAR - september girls
2. SPIRITUALIZED - won't get to heaven
3. THE ROLLING STONES - salt of the earth
4. EUPHIO 6 - ???
5. YO LA TENGO - today is the day
6. THE POGUES - tuesday morning
7. HÜSKER DÜ - celebrated summer
8. JETS TO BRAZIL - chinatown
9. THE VASELINES - slushy
10. AM/FM - getting into the sinking
11. LEONARD COHEN - sisters of mercy
12. SPACEMEN3 - lord can you hear me?
13. GRAM PARSONS - in my hour of darkness
14. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - what goes on

this is how we keep wu-tang money all up in the family

if you know my family at all, you probably know that the three other people in the picture from my previous post are married and/or have kids. those are my cousins chris, who has a son and got married this past summer, marissa, who just yesterday (january 5) had a son she calls jack, and branden, who is married and lives in maine. my brother also has a kid, and my cousin jen, branden's sister, is in a serious relationship, whatever that means. i'm more or less the loser in my family of this particular generation, seeing as how i haven't had a real relationship in ten years, and that one thankfully seems less and less real with every passing day. i have, however, had a few ridiculously drawn-out situations that didn't really lead anywhere, but might have worked out in a parallel universe, perhaps where the UFO that flew over O'Hare airport back in November live.

i stopped thinking of creative ways to off myself long enough to take a phone call from my grandmother. she's 72 years old, was born in brooklyn, grew up in guangzhou, china and moved back to the US in the 1940s. guangzhou, china circa-1940 was not the guangzhou, china of today. in 1940, guangzhou was occupied by japanese troops, largely rural (this will become important in a paragraph or two), and it wasn't until 1949 that it began to become urbanized with the arrival of communist influences. it's very close to Hong Kong, which also lead to rapid urban development. today, it has one of the top economies among chinese cities. but back to my grandmother's phone call: she was calling to hook me up with a girl. i'm guessing my history of floundering so badly on my own was out of the bag, and she had a lady for me. i have good news, she said. she had the phone number of a girl who, conveniently, lives across the williamsburg bridge from me, in nyc's chinatown. she's my age and chinese, which is good since all my cousins and brother totally blew it by marrying and/or had kids with a bunch of honkies. that's another post. i was a little tipsy when my grandmother called, so i was kind of going along with the hookup, even though i clearly remember the last time she tried to hook me up...

aside (and this warrants an aside): i was probably 20 the last time my grandmother tried to set me up with some ladies. they were two sisters, the daughters of the man who owned chopsticks restaurant on elkton road in newark. at first i was stoked on it, but after i met them i quickly realized they were among the dumbest people i'd ever met. i continually ignored them as they squawked about all the white boys they were into back and forth like a couple of now-extinct dodos with lazy eyes. i can't recall another couple of girls who sounded more like dumb shit valley girls straight from satire.

anyhow, i was drunk when my grandmother called me and halfway entertained the idea of actually calling this girl. she lives with her parents, which was a minus in my book. i can't really speak chinese, which is probably a minus in her book. i'm also a scumbag, which is probably a huge minus in her book. but then my grandmother said something that negated the whole visualization process anyway. "she's my sister's granddaughter," she said. uh... huh... i said. doesn't that make us kinda related? yes, she said, she's your cousin... second cousin. oh. ok. well, that's rather prescient of her to realize that i must be doing that bad that i need to be hooked up with my second cousin. like i wrote to bobby su, i guess there's some redneck in my family after all, and if not, there might be some in the future. i'm thinking of getting together with her, maybe just to spite the family. i haven't gotten drunk enough yet to do it, though; i keep fallling asleep before i am drunk enough.

in other news, i'm building up a new bike that i'm pretty excited about. it's my mom's schwinn suburban from 1977 or so, which she rode once. i'm stripping it and making it into a single-speed freewheel that will be amazing for cruising in the summertime. i already have some mavic cxp22 rims laced to formula hubs, i need to get some decent vintage-looking cranks and a few other cool things like cork grips and pedals, but should be pretty fun to fix up.

can it be that it was all so simple then

when did it all go wrong for #12?

scumbags

Today's word is: scumbags. Scumbags have hacked Dennis Cooper's blog site—probably one of the best blog sites out there. The author of Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, Period (collectively, the George Miles Cycle), The Sluts, and, most recently, God Jr., Cooper maintained a blog that was one of the best sources of information on the the whole J.T. Leroy blow-up last fall, which I followed pretty religiously as I traveled back east on I-80. Hopefully blogspot's servers have a temporary backup of his information and writings (of which there was a ton), but for now, he's rebuilding his blog at dennis cooper-the weaklings.