Drink Scotch Whisky All Night Long

...And die behind the wheel.

Steely Dan moment. It's the weekend, people.

You Can All Just Kiss Off Into The Air

The routers, LANs, POPs, and T1s of the interweb are aflame these days with the rage of thousands of post-punk, pre-Beck music lovers. Two-kids-and-a-Subaru-Forester-in-Wauwatosa, WI thirtysomethings can agree with still-but-unadmittedly-clinging-to-hipsterhood-in-Ukrainian Village (or Buckhead, or Somerville, or Bay View, or, ugh, Brooklyn):

It sucks that Wendy's is using "Blister In The Sun" in a new commercial campaign to peddle its chili and baked potatoes. Complete with a smug, disaffected Gen X-sounding voiceover.

There's really nothing else to be said. Except that maybe the real estate market bottomed out in Connecticut just when Gordon was ditching the two-car, four-bedroom Colonial for a one-car, five-bedroom with a mud-room and sunken koi pond A-Frame, and when a man's gotta mortgage to pay, he's gotta mortgage to pay.

So, instead, let's remember our wee friend when he was fuzzy-headed and fey and frustrating and the sight of a man playing his drum kit standing up was cool, not two inches of eyeliner and a pierced something-or-other.




This clip, incidentally, is from 1984, exactly when I first heard the name "The Violent Femmes" (in homeroom in the Chem lab and I thought they were an all-female punk band, thereby presaging the Riot Grrrl movement by at least nine years) and the same year that the Wendy's "Where's the Beef" ad was rolled out and Clara Peller ruled cathode ray tubes across the nation.

Which all to say, I feel old.

Pull It On We Got A Tight Fit

Dude. I know how crappy this feels, it was totally this way last week when I was in Banana Republic trying to find a pair of overdyed boot-cut jeans...

They Smile In Your Face/All The Time They Wanna Take Your Place

I witnessed a defining moment the other night at the House of Blues.

hustle Slang. to earn one's living by illicit or unethical means.

Fig. 1: lyric from Kevin Federline's "rap music concert:"

"My name's K-Federline/Ben Franklin's a good friend of mine"

Fig. 2: lyric from Kevin Federline's "rap music concert:"

"I got 50 mill. /I can do whatever I want "

Fig. 3: lyric from Kevin Federline's "rap music concert:"

I come tight with every rhyme/I built a kingdom down the street from Pepperdine/This marijuana got me heavily sedated/I'm Kevin Federline America's most hated (what!)

Run, Rabbit, Run

In the time-honored tradition of other blogs I admire (imitation=flattery, y'all), I hereby institute

PINK FLOYD FRIDAYS

Because what's better to ease you into the weekend than a Friday-morning spin of some Floyd?

I've never been a pothead, so I delight in chillaxing with the Floyd when the day is tastily stretched out ahead of me, weekday pressures are gone.

There was a period of time where anyone who came to my two-residences-ago coach house apartment was forced to listen to the interlude on the first track of Dark Side of the Moon where "Speak to Me" effervesces into "Breathe." Even in my crumbly attic apartment with the weird ceiling-stuccoed walls, you can just imagine Dark Side of the Moon being played up to the stars, as it was in 1972 at a launch party at the London Planetarium. Better that than synchronizing it with a DVD of The Wizard of Oz. I just don't think anything should interfere with the Floyd -- except perhaps embellishments of their own design.

Oh, and record scratches.

I gotta get a turntable. Til then my own copy of DSOTM is as useful as a placemat.

Next: Steely Dan Sunday!

Starry, Starry Night

I just heard this song.

While I do have a particularly pungent loathing for "American Pie" not only due to its exhausting length but some bad experiences with it involving microwave popcorn, a college dorm lobby, and twenty over-hormoned high school drama students, I truly heard the lyrics to this song just now, and--damn. It's gorgeous.

Maybe because I just saw Vincent yesterday at the Art Institute...

We Walk Away, Maybe Then Shake Hands

I have a secret.

I love "But Anyway" by the Blues Traveler, despite the cloying harmonica and patchouli reek. It's got such a great groove. Whoever is their drummer is a pretty good drummer. And I heard them play it for the 7 minutes I watched them at Lollapalooza in August.



Good God, Allmusic tells me this song is from 1990!

Cripey. I was placing it at an entirely different time, say 96 or 97, round about the time the Bob Dylan's hot son was singing in the Top Ten in his leather jacket.

What's clear is that this decade has entered its second half, and I need to get into the first. Maybe I should start with, say, OK GO. That will get me up to at least 2002...

Life In A Northern Town

Ah hey ma ma ma ma...

He Is Your Marrow/And Your Ride Home

Postscript to Brown-Eyed Blue Line Emo Boy,

I saw you again tonight, this time at the Damen station. I ran into a friend and as she and I walked down the east-side stairs, you came down the west. We were on the same train.

Tonight you wore a sporty Timberland-type coat and a backpack. But I knew it was you when I saw those eyes--and that tuft of hair that juts from the right side of your head.

I didn't see your cassette player and headphones; tonight, were you just listening to your thoughts?

I Don't Care What They Say About Us Anyway, I Don't Care About That

An Open Letter to the Emo Boy with the Sweet Brown Eyes on the Blue Line, Thursday, October 5, 7:30pm

Dear Emo Boy,

First of all, let me say that I like your tilted haircut.

You were reading a small paperback, folded over, like a Sixties or Seventies Penguin or Avon edition of something classic. It was slim enough to be Siddartha, but too small for Atlas Shrugged or Foucault's Pendulum. And I don't think Emo boys read Bukowski, that was really favored by the post-punk malcontent boys of my own era.

Because the thing is, Emo Boy, while I was struck by your ragged but clean boyishness, I recognized there's a Lake Michigan of age that laps our shores. I mean, the small paperback volume I have at home that resembles yours is The Awakening, which I would not have understood whatsoever when I was 22 and listening to Matthew Sweet's "I Thought I Knew You" when I wanted to really work up some sentimental anguish over something or someone, just like you probably listen to Joan of Arc sometimes and stare stonily out the train window instead of reading your novelette.

Would you mind that I like to sing along with circa 1988-90 George Michael?

But seriously, I think your book looked interesting, whatever it was (from Myopic?), and so handy since you could hold the door rail and read as we lumbered under Milwaukee Avenue.

After we both exited the train at Damen, I noticed the Walkman cassette player clipped to your studded belt. You listen to tapes! What were you listening to? It couldn't have been too sad because you seemed--without even knowing you--cheerful...? I don't want to scare you off or anything, but Emo Boy, I have so many tapes. I even purged like three-quarters of them, and they still fill a filebox to its brim. Maybe we could listen to tapes together sometime? I know, I know, there's probably very little in that box that interests you, maybe the New Order Power, Corruption and Lies tape that was a used copy even when I found it. Or The Dream of the Blue Turtles might just make you chuckle since I bought it the year you were born. Then again, if you are listening to tapes on a cassette Walkman, you must be listening to older stuff, because I don't really know if Jets To Brazil releases tapes, do they? I haven't bought a new album on tape since 2000, when you could still get them at that short-lived Coconuts on Damen. And, okay, I admit it: Kylie Minogue's Fever was the tape I bought there, maybe because it was less shameful the less money I spent on it--but have you ever heard that song? La-la-la, la-la, lala-la, la-la-la, la-la, lala-la, Can't Get You Out of My Head? It's fierce.

Anyway, maybe we listen to some tapes, I still have a stereo with cassette player...we can meet in the middle with some Bowie? Some "Moonage Daydream?"

You know, Emo Boy, when I was your age had our own Emo, and it was called Weezer. Well, they are still called Weezer, but I think they were/are Emo. What do you think? I mean, I think when I sang (and sing) along with "Say It Ain't So," it feels like what Emo should feel like, despondent but...literate, angry--but a rage mild enough to throw only a sentimentally-saved bouquet of dead flowers in the garbage.

Which is what I think I saw in your huge bear-brown eyes: intelligence, with a capacity for woe. Like in The Great Gatsby, how Nick can see Myrtle Wilson's "tremendous vitality" in her dead, gaping mouth when she's dead in the Valley of Ashes.

Now, that's something that actually sounds like Emo.

Maybe you can explain it to me over chai lattes at Earwax? Hopefully they will play the Police box set while we're there, and it'll mist with cold, grey rain outside.

Until then, I'm yours, wistfully,