Luddism: Revisited

Flashback to fall of 1998: a younger Paul is a college senior thrashing violently against his impending entry into the "Real world" of work, revulsion, and compromise. All summer long, during breaks from his cubicle-oriented existence as a design intern at a software company in the Nightmare Suburbs, he's been reading the wildest of wild written work by wildmen anarchist authors like John Zerzan, Hakim Bey, Feral Faun, Bob Black, Guy Debord, and others. His general conclusion: technology sucks, work is for suckers.

That fall, as a design student, he was required to spend more and more "lab" time at the computer wokring on design projects, putting up with finnicky technology and generally confining his once-wild gaze to a 21' rectangle of glass and pixels. In reaction, he skipped class, wandered the woods, broke bottles, drank too much, trespassed, stalked, screamed, howled, and smashed a window with his bare hands. The gleamin maw of Info-Capital awaited him, and he wasn't going down without a fight.

Flash-forward 5 years: Paul's favorite non-wild (anti-wild) philosopher hires him on as a designer, gives him a laptop, funds his cell phone, kicks him a free iPod, and throws him into the mix of an exciting young internet company, idealistic winding its way through fields of Capital in search of something greater.

Technology = information = noosphere = progress = evolution = spirit = destiny.

But Paul still hates technology, or rather, what technology requires of him: Squinting. Pinching. Sitting. Shifting unfortably. Granted, an opposite form of movement, like hiking, is equally painful and as inherently meaningless, only in different ways. But really, is his techno-sedentary paradigm truly required by evolution, truly a natural expression of spirit-in-becoming, truly the next, Mac-powered step on the road to worldcentric destiny?

Paul ain't so sure....

The Post-Spiritual Era

Some hazy thoughts after the ISC weekend: for one, I'm starting to feel
more and more inauthentic the more I talk, read, or think about
spirituality, spiritual concepts, spiritual truths, compassionate
this-n-that. In other words, I'm starting to avert my nose to the
"stink of zen" I find all around (that, or I just need to take more
than 1 shower a week). On the one hand, I deeply resonate with 99% of
all of it: I almost (at least believe), but on the other, it makes me
roll my eyes. "The world IS emptiness". Funk dat. "You must achieve
enlightenment so you can help all beings." Yawn.

But it still all seems like--what's the word?--showing off, to even
address these topics. Spirituality doesn't even seem like an
appropriate pursuit for a young man. What deep existential pain does
someone in his 20s from a middle family really have compared to, say,
Fred Kofman, who once waited every day at a bus stop in Argentina built
directly over a subterranean torture chamber? Maybe spirituality, as it
was in ancient times, is a pursuit befitting old men and women.
Youngsters still might need to fuck around.

Of course, none of this is to deny the importance of spirituality.
However, my feeling now is that, if you completely suppress, ignore,
and deny it, its crucial, undeniable components may just push their way
into your life anyways (i.e. perhaps the universal experience of
Love?), while all the baggage, bullshit, clinging, posturing, and pride
does not.

"You shall know them by the fruits of their labors." Yes, and not by
the fruits of them TALKING about their labors.

Sheesh, good thing I write for GenSit.

PONGSATHORN!!!

[Note: been experiencing some major technical probs with my iBook
lately, please forgive the erratic posting]

My new friend Pongsathorn, a Thai dude spending the summer in DC
studying with Robert Kegan's people, was here this weekend to attend
the ISC event, see his blogs here:
http://pongsathorn.blogspot.com/
http://www.injournals.org/isc/

Pong is basically the Thai Coolmel, or rather, Coolmel is the Filipino
Pongsathorn. Just kidding dudes!

Anyways, the weird part was when he met me for the first time: "Oh,
Paul SALAMONE? You're famous!"

Notorious is more like it.

Punk Nostalgia for Hot Buffalo

Why is it that music created in Washington DC in the late 80s reminds
of Buffalo NY circa Summer 2001-3?

Yes, I've been listening to a lot of Rites of Spring lately, the early
Dischord band with members who would go on to form a little band called
FUGAZI. Rites of Spring are pulled taught, propulsive, URGENT,
something I just don't hear in any of the dancey art crap Pitchfork's
been recommending to me every day (yes, sad, I read it every day).
Sample lyrical lines:

"The world is my fuse!"
"Drink deep, it's just a taste, and it might not come again!"
"I believe that if you get it then I might set myself free."

I was introduced to Guy Piccioto's first band via the book Dance of
Days (another ROS reference), the definitive retelling of the DC punk
saga. Its author was visiting a small indie bookshop in Buffalo with
the editor of Punk Planet Dan Sinker for a reading and a book signing.
That week I bought some old Fugazi CDs, started a zine, made giant
activist puppets, and got all excited about turning Buffalo into the
next punk summer youth mecca. Then some anus knocked down 9-11 and we
all had to get lame.

Anyways, Buffalo, summer. Hot stink sweat smell, fat girls, big cars,
green grass, old cemetaries, decaying corner stores, bars open til 4am,
road races and puppies, sweating into my coffee while reading a
McSweeney's book. Wandering past Buff State, down Grant Street, to the
old school Italian market, cool on the subway, hot on the sidewalks,
ink-smears of the local arts weekly staining my arms, Labatt Blue
bottles everywhere. Scribbling manifestos at 4am before the blare of
MTV re-runs, old black men shuffling the streets, dive bars without
names disgorging hipster steam onto asphalt summer tundra.

Is music destined to serve us nothing but nostalgia?

FUCK

THE

SPURS.

Question of the Day

Can one be an ex-Romantic without being seen as jaded or--gasp--old?
Can it come from a a space of transcendence, rather than one of
immanence? Can it come from trans-egoic selfless reason, and not
egocentric selfish reaction?

Ponder....

Music: Second Thoughts / High School Rap Group

Perhaps it's good that I'm having some ambivalence with my new artistic
interest: it prevents the destabilizing tendencies of over-obsession
for one thing. My brother, of course, is completely committed to the
whole thing, and one day dreams to spend grueling 6-month, 12 hours/day
stints in the studio hashing out masterpieces. But me, I'm starting to
flash back to sophomore year of high school, when my boy Luigi and I
had a rap group called the NormBreakers (why didn't we just call it
"look at us, we're white!"?), and at a crucial point he, the MC, was
ready to put it all on the line, drop out of school if need be, to
pursue a shot at the Source Magazine's coveted 5-mic rating. Me, I had
little patience for recording, or gigging, or all the other shit-eating
required to be in a band, plus I had other things I was more interested
in, such as tagging and writing. Design and writing, same thing.

But music as of late has been first and foremost a new writing
challenge. As one Onion AV Club interviewee recently put it, songs are
a craft, like a haiku. Of course, "songwriting" is deeply embedded in
outmoded 19th- and 20th-century epistimologies (I'm talking out of my
ass here, please bear with) and one shouldn't be so naive in wishing to
craft edifices of chords-and-words without any sort of acknowledgement
of the deeper aspects of audience, psychology, ethics,
techno-satisfaction, etc. How many bands, after all, embed a critique
of Late Kapitalism in their every arpeggio, riff, and harmonic? That's
write, none.

Just got to focus on the writing part and I'll be fine, not lose myself
in over-obsession with sonics, gear, gigging, and shooting up. Keep
writing, keep writing, keep writing....

SumerTime Ain't No Time For Bloggin'

[With apologies to my 3,085 readers in the Global South]

A recent dip in participation at Generation Sit bespeaks a
disturbing/encouraging trend: there's more to life than blogging,
reading blogs, eating blogs, humping blogs, breathing blogs, etcetera.
Did you know that? This blog Just Write! has been going pretty strong
for two months, but again and again I doubt the wisdom of keeping the
thing going. Fear not, Dan Aliison, I will always be writing, though
maybe not in this format for much longer. Wild Summer Nights are
calling me, or would be calling me if i had a dime or time to spare,
but since I don't, uh...

All Hail Bear Peak

Mighty and true, second-biggest peak in the Boulder range. Three
Salamone boys climbed up, three Salamone boys climbed down, with
lightning and thunder hot on their heels. Now one blogs about it,
nursing his eviscerated quadraceps.

Ready to Snap

For the last month or so I've been conducting an experiment: not
meditating. I'd been doing it pretty consistently for 2-3 years, but
with an added workload and my new interest in music I was finding less
and less time for it, so I stopped. My reasons for meditating were
never anything pure or noble to begin with anyways, in fact I meditated
the way a Catholic prays: like it would save me from some form of pain
or another sometime in the future. For the Catholic, this pain awaits
after death, but for the "integral mystic" (as I'd dubbed myself), it
was merely later on in life. I wanted to transform, and meditation, I
believed (buffered in no small way by some of the research data Ken
Wilber often cities), offered the quickest method of doing so.

But it never made me any happier in a conventional sense. There were
other things I wanted (and still want) much more than meditation:
namely, a means of self-actualization, a way to become a full-bodied
energy conduit, expressing something beyond me through the forms of the
world I've developed facility in using over the years (i.e. writing).
And writing doesn't happen by sitting on a cushion and doing jack shit.
You have to actually WRITE. Hence this blog, and the supreme
under-emphasis on sitting. Two years ago, given 15 spare minutes in a
day, I would have meditated in lieu of writing or making art, today
it's the opposite.

I will say one thing in favor of meditation: today I'm a little more
prone to anger. Meditation, if it does anything at all, seems to
effectively sever the tie between impulse and action, between angry
idea and angry response. However, by sheer dint of the fact that I even
recognize this process occurring within me throughout the day, I feel
I've brought at least SOME meditative awareness to my worldly
experience. Likewise concentration. While I don't do 20 minutes of
breathe awareness right now, in doing something like practicing music,
I am still, again and again, returning my attention to a very limited
centre of focus. You can't read and play sheet music while thinking
about your ex-girlfriend after all.

So nyah.

Hyperstition Gives Me/War Nerd a Shout-Out

My blogo-heroes at Hyperstition gave me phat shout-out today by linking
to "Make War, Not Love" post a week back, peep it here:
http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005708.html

What is Hyperstition? Take one part "hype" and one part "superstition",
mix, boil, and simmer for 20 minutes. In other words: Hyperstition
(from what I can tell) is the study of how fictions become reality once
adopted by a mass of people. In this manner, and with the help of
modern telecomm, one can literally "write" fictions into reality, as
magickal a process as any.

I've been fascinated by this idea since last fall when I conceived of
an idea of a fake newspaper (think The Onion) which would run fake
stories as SPELLS to conjure desired situations in manifest reality.
Basically, set an intention, and hope/pray/believe/sustain it will one
day, someday come true. It's almost like once an idea becomes possible
in the mental realm as "fantasy", this lowers the bar significantly for
it to become possible in the gross realm as "reality".

I'd encourage all readers of this blog to try this for themselves (I
just did it now in fact: I'm telling myself the lie that I actually
have readers!): write yourself a story putting yourself into some
imaginary future situation of your choosing, then take whatever small
practical steps you can to move yourself in the direction of this
desired situation (i.e. if you want to do Jager shots with Ashton
Kucher, first hitch a Greyhound to Hollywood).

Report all results in the comments, thanks!

Kill the Beat: Notes on the Post-Rhythmic Future

Another great posted discovered amidst the K-Punk archives, this one on
the boring limitations of "Beat Music" (Mark was reviewing a FourTet
album), certainly a timely discussion given that we're in the midst of
this interminable art-funk/dancepunk/neo-New Wave revival thing
(although I do confess to adoring The Faint, at least in concept):
http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/002013.html

A quote:
"There's something tired about sample-based music which still holds
everything together with a metric beat, especially a generic 'hip hop'
beat. Robin's comments on beatlessness make me wonder if losing the
beat isn't the most radical step that could be taken; needless to say,
I would have found such a possibility unthinkable and heretical in the
beatplexed ecstasy of 94. But now, now, the possibilities of escaping
50 years of 'beat music' are fascinating…"

And so therein lies our challenge. For years I've been wondering about
the possibility of "free-hop", rap music liberated from the
dictatorship of the 4/4 beat, yet which does not lose the DRUMS nor
fails to enable embodiment (conventionally speaking: movement, dance).
MCs would freestyle over a chaotic stew of spiraling ULTRArhythmic
beats, in turn tied directly to his own rythmic, stop-start, speed up
slow down, 4/4 to 2/3 and back again rhyme delivery.

What Mark is proposing, of course, is something far more radical than
that. Whilst noise music, especially the incredibly harsh Nipponese
variety (think Merzbow, Violent Onsen Geisha), has been stripping music
of all sense of melody, harmony, tempo, rhythm, etc. for years, it does
so at great cost to what I think it is that makes music an enjoyable
experience for people everywhere (which is probably the point with the
noise-ists, of course). How does one write "hooks" if there is no beat?
How does one get people moving, losing themselves in their bodies
(assuming such a thing is desirable) after a hard day in the
info-fields? How do we "dance" after Dance Music has been abolished?
What are we left with: Claude DeBussey played on MOOGs? Britney Spears
covers of Schoenberg?

More on this later I hope....

Earth to Stoners: Go Fuck Yourself

<fontfamily><param>Arial</param>Just dug up this vicious anti-pot
screed written by Mark K-Punk (incidentally, one of the best "Cold
Rationalist" neo-Lacanian/Freudian/Zizekian/Neitszchean blogs around,
sort of my morbid counterbalance to Matthew Dallman's aggresively
upbeat art and media theorizing), check it out:
http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/004500.html

While you should really read the article in its entirety, here's one
of many great quotes:

"What is supposed to be good about dope? The problem with it is not
just the resultant pyschosis but the ACTUAL STATE it puts people into
in the first place - chronically demotitvated, lethargic, filled with
the kind of idiot porcine self-satisfaction that is the dialectical
obverse of feeling paranoid."

FUCK YEAH. Another one:

"Fukuyama's <italic>Brave New World</italic> inspired argument against
SSRIs was that, in producing a feeling of wellbeing they remove the
psychological motivation for action, for proving yourself. Though
Fukuyama's argument is obviously advanced in the services of
pro-Kapital enterprise, its logic can also be used by communists. You
will not struggle against Kapital - you will not struggle against
anything - if you are emolliated by narcotics."

Now certainly, I've smoked my fair share of weed (particularly last
year when I was dating a girl who specifically forbade it), but I must
confess to having never understood both the culture around/of it and
the desire for it. When my friends or coworkers excuse themselves to
smoke a blunt or a bowl, I can only shake my head in pity: what a
horrible crutch to have in one's life, the chronic (!) need to blunt
(!) one's senses and smooth-smear waking experience into a manageable
fuzz of oceanic pseudo-bliss. If I never have another joint in my life
that's fine with me, those pathetic childish fucks can all fuck
themselves.

I can say this, of course, because my friends are too lazy/sedated to
read my blog anyways. Too bad....</fontfamily>

Tonight I Walked For Two Hours Straight

It involved, of course, a girl, but i won't get into that. One might
also see this enforce circuitous pilgrimmage as an act of solidarity
for my friend Matthew Dallman, the recent victim of a sprained ankle.
Where Matthew cannot walk, there goeth I.

Movies and Airports: Accessing the World Soul

Still a nebulous thought-pattern in the back of my sub-brain, but the
glimmers manifest now and again, especially when I'm present in the
above-mentioned venues.

Two moment strike: one of them recurring, one singular. The recurring
one occurs every time I go to the airport to take a flight: there's
something beautiful about mass, anonymous humanity entrusting their
lives to hulking metal aircraft, crossing paths in spotless white
airports on their way to airports all around the world. Airports are a
knot, a bottle-neck, a way station, a launchpad, the global Commons,
the campus quad of the World University. The names of the university's
departments are listed on LED signs throughout the concourse-campus:
Leipzig, Dublin, Atlanta, Kansus City, Beijing, Beirut (?).

The singular moment occurred, oddly enough, while watching a matinee
showing of the South Park movie while drunk on three Honey Browns back
in Rochester, NY. There's something crazy about schmaltzy,
insincere-yet-actually-sincere musical emotion that you KNOW is being
watched by thousands (or millions) of people around the world.
Something in that sharing of banalities, something, uh, romantic (ick),
or better yet: connective.

In Eggers' words, it's like we're all connected by this lattice of
energy, and the harder our hearts pump the brighter the lattice gets,
and what makes our hearts pump harder is what our minds deem both
tasteless and puerile: namely, mass sentiment, collectively
intense/banal experiences, such as movies and flying.

That's all.

A Virgin Musicians's ITP

[with a nod, once again, to MD]

Technical line: learn to play instrument(s)
Formal line: write songs and see how all the parts go together
Vitalist line: jam and improvise
Contemplative line: practice MD's tone yoga, or write songs from a
meditative/open mindframe
Theoretical line: study music theory and music science
Critical line: study music criticism (contemporary and old school),
also listen to and deconstruct music

Portrait of the Young Artist as a Mess

[Kudos to Matthew D. for providing this link:
http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?
id=3f3fx1g6hkqwwye00vja7vzoyuf57p5x]

As I tentatively begin devoting more and more energy to the practice,
theory, and creation of music, I find myself running across one the old
bugaboos I have left over from art school, namely puerile Romanticism.
A handful of my professors were rotten with it: their pedagogical
philosophy had little to do with skills acquisition, and absolutely
zero to do with the artist finding his or her role in society. What
mattered was being on the conceptual cutting edge, of twisting and
turning the Wonderful Artist Ego in wonderful and amazing new shapes
and forms. This, more or less, confirmed fine artists as freaks,
fragile little butterflies to hurl acrylic-laden mud back at the cruel
bureaucratic world which hated them so.

Gag. So anyways, now that I'm learning to play music, I'm hearing the
annoying old Scottish brogue of my beer-drinking (in class!) Drawing
professor, whom eschewed traditional drawing skills in the name of
Expressionism: don't bother learning notes, scales, chords, or keys,
just grab the guitar and EXPRESS YOURSELF! This of course comes
filtered through my long upbringing with punk rock and experimental
noise music, where learning to play an instrument with excellence were
all but laughed. "Detune your guitar and evolve!" became my
wannabe-improviser rallying cry, and I made dozens of personal
recordings of my old bass guitar beings tortured with a spoon and a
Casio drum pad being run through a high-reverb karaoke machine.

But now, now I'm starting to get a tiny bit of appreciation for the
nigh-impossibly complex CRAFT that is music making. Each song is like
an expanded haiku, a formal challenge to pack as much meaning and
feeling into as little space as possible. And if the listener doesn't
"get" it, its MY fault, not theirs. Art is a service, a duty, a
calling, an obligation, not a narcissist's passion play.

Word.

Paul McCartney in Red Square

Don't know why, but I was just watching the Paul McCartney concert in
Red Square on A&E, and by the time the band closed with a rousing
rendition of "Hey Jude", I was on the verge of tears. The thing is, I
never really liked Paul McCartney--I always thought he played the
annoyingly jubilant elementary school music teacher to Lennon's angry
NYC hipster--nor do I entertain such fanciful notions of Russia now
being a free nation enjoying the fruits of Democracy. Certainly,
Premier Putin was in attendance, but the little fascist turd didn't
sing along to a single line, while his countrymen all around belted out
every complicated English turn of phrase. No, Russia is as deeply
fucked as ever, and one might guess that the masses gathered in Red
Square didn't adequately reflect the True People of Russia, much the
way the jackass males attending the SuperBowl year after year don't
represent the true America. We might suspect that those watching
McCartney were the winners in the new Russia: the oligarchs,
capitalists, and Western expatriates who could afford the tickets in
the first place.

Yet in spite of all of this, tears came to my eyes during the last song
as the cameras panned the massive audience, all of them singing along
to "Hey Jude"'s idiotically simple "nah nah nah" chorus. I guess it was
the diverse range of age, the gender balance, the hopeful looks in
their eyes, and a feeling of solidarity with people all around the
world excited to see their very favorite band live for the first time
in concert. There's something alive, electric, and dizzyingly
destabilizing about such an experience, ridden high by the fear that
one might be swept away in a wave of mass emotion and never come back.
Hitler did it for darker purposes, while McCartney, the head-bobbling
moron, has his wee gooey heart in the right place at least.

But still, Putin's silent appearance was a tad ominous. Dissenters are
starting to disappear in Russia at an alarming, Cold War-esque rate,
the Mad Midget might have been mindful of this fact: let the tune-rubes
and the pop-dullards and song-suckers have their brief breathe of fresh
air (as Putin himself dubbed the Beatles), before the Iron Walls come
crashing down again. McCartney's voice: the voice of capitalism, the
voice of consumerism, the voice of self-determination, the voice of
cheesy sentimentality... and completely incoherent to the President of
Russia.

Valmont Butte

Went running east of town, followed Valmont all the way out where it
connects with Pearl Parkway. Before the turn, though, there's a path
that leads further east towards the Butte, which from a distance looks
rather large but up close is pretty dinky. I dicked around for a while,
then discovered an old abandoned train yard nestled in some trees by a
smallish creek. One of the engines had a faded sign painted to see "We
attract job-providing businesses"... I just love the irony of rural
decay. retuning back, I happened upon a closed bike trail with a sign
outlining the extent of the damage wrought by the alien New Zealand
Mudsnails infesting the area. Wicked.

To My Last High School Girlfriend

[Fucking music always makes me nostalgic, even if it's brand new. Are
all musicians destined to simply convey, chew on, and mull over what
has gone before? Must all music convey a tinge of something "lost",
some previous emotionally-intense space-time location? We shall see...]

Hey ____,
Been listening to "Slow Worm", the last song on the first Archers of
Load album "Icky Mettle", a song riddled with incoherent tragedy and
melody-laden frustration. Anyways, one of the most-recalled songs of
the mid-90s for me, and with that (and the weather) those failed (?)
summer romances... or perhaps by their failure they were inherently
perfect. We met at the fireworks display, you dug my hat, I dug your
taste in music. A dubbed copy of Sonic Youth's "Dirty" was played
somewhere along the way. Early on you gave me a poem torn directly from
the pages of an anthology, something sweet about cleaning up after a
party, eating popcorn, and watching the waves come in.

We first made out when you twisted my fingers at a red light. It was
during Beck's "Beer Can". Remember once when we parked by the lake, I
think a flashlight shone. Remember when I was stricken by the hives for
a week, you came to my parents' living room and fed me sympathy. You
and your gorgeous brown/red (what do they call it, auburn?) hair.
Hanging with your sisters in your hellishly sterile subdivision.
Hanging with 200,000 other indie rock shmucks at the Pavement/Sonic
Youth/Beck/Hole/Moby Lollapalooza. I held your hand as we made our way
up during Pavement's opener "Grounded". I remember the sun was shining.
Later, Beck played "Satan Gave Me a Taco" on the small stage. Your
older sister's friends were the classy popular indie rockers at our
school, the guys who played soccer high on acid and started garage
bands and came late to Bio because they were smoking all day long.

Your friend, a guy, didn't like me. Said I wasn't good enough. That I
shouldn't take a bus home from Lollapalooza, what was I a fucking
scrub. We were hanging with your sister and I declined some marijuana.
There was an edge to my voice, and you called me on it: I was a snobby
self-righteous straight-edger (yes folks, believe it or not). Do you
remember us ever going to dinner? Your dad chased me down your street
once when he caught me dropping you off. I was too old (two years
older). A last hurtful memory: hanging with your friends at Dairy
Queen, a fittingly dreary suburban ending to what otherwise contained
so much hope. I couldn't promise you anything once I went to college,
you said you felt like we had "broken up already". Even spraypainting
your name in giant pink and green letters under the overpass near your
work wasn't enough to make up for the sad fact that: teenage boys are
dicks.

-Paul

TODAY IT IS raining

AND EVERYTHING IS wet.
AND grey.
AND green.
AND EVERYONE IS locked up in the office.
AND GIVING EACH OTHER sesame street NAMES.
MINE: the grouch.
OSCAR.
the.

Tom Cruise Hearts Katie Holmes

I finally understand why people say that today's celebrity-obsessed
culture is the polytheistic religion of the modern world: what else are
celebrities but modern gods we worship in packs from afar, many of them
the stars of fictional dreams and stories wherein they perform
superhuman deeds and bandy about with all the morality of a
foul-mouthed garden slug with herpes? Many celebrities, of course,
start at as humans, but via a long PR climb up the Mount Olympus that
is Hollywood, they take their seat at the right or left hands of the
Gods of old. This all hit me the other day when I saw the cover of a
magazine announcing that former Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes and
celebrity uber-God Tom Cruise (certainly a postmodern Zeus if there
ever was one) were now involved in a relationship.

Back in college, some friends and I obsessed over the 'Creek, some of
them going so far as to starting a band called james Vanderbeek which
features vocal samples of Katie's "Joey" in every song. Dawson's Creek
was as indie rock as network TV could get back in those days, with a
stellar college radio soundtrack, a facade of genteel, educated
blue-state aristocracy, and the articulate intelligence of the cast.
The 'Creek was a little show for modest people in humble shorts
listening to albums which never sold more than 50,00 copies. Katie was
ours, far too young, intelligent, and just plain weird-looking (no
amount of celebrity hairstyling will hide the weirdly attractive
arrangement of her facial features). Seeing her on the big screen in
the slept-upon "Wonder Boys" alongside Toby McGuire (one who also held
an indie pass) and Robert Downey Jr. as a struggling, horny creative
writing student in Pittsburg only cemented the point: Katie Holmes was
the Pavement of starlets.

So it was with more than shock to see Katie strut onstage this evening
for the MTV Movie Awards with Mr. Tom Cruise, who probably lost his
indie credentials the moment in his youth when his family moved out of
my neighborhood back in upstate NY (which occurred before I actually
lived there, but it's true nonetheless). Tom is the anti-Pavement, a
perpetual blockbuster star (who, I'll grant, has recently been taking
on some more difficult roles) and mouthpiece for another unthinking
celebrity cult. He's also a tad too old for Ms. Holmes.

Say it ain't so Katie!

In this very moment, we catch one of our own--the genteel literary
aristocrats of normal humanity -- being swept up into the big, stupid
dramas of the massive hypnosis we see hanging over heads. Katie the
human star of a human show in now a Goddess, her mortal body left as a
husk on the earthen floor, the subtle energy-flame of her thought-body
floating upwards and outwards into some goddamn eternal sunshine
rainbow cloud-kissed ULTRAsphere, where one--through the power of mass
DVD duplication--has now become omnipotent, ubiquitous, and immortal.

Fare thee well, Ms. Holmes, do look fondly on us, won't you? And don't
forget James Vanderbeek.

Quickie

Ride the skies ride em high ride aboard the glowing clouds in your
eyes, ride and slide down the sloping nose of Minnie Driver, making out
with Matt Damon, ride the bushy beard of Robin Williams, ride it right
into his early-80s coke binge, on out and past that old Mrk and Mindy
house located here on the one street in Boulder, ride it down, around,
inside, outside, through Dr. Seuss ice cream dreams and experimental
White Stripes videos, ride it into a canyon and back out to
civilization, ride it into the gaping mouth of an employee making
excuses, of a boss suddenly confronted with his own ineptitude, of a
media manager grasping for straws while his true poetry lies dormant.
Ride it through sweaty summer nights, cool wet mornings,
ironically-detached one nights stands, coffee breaks and basketballs
courts and sidewalks covered in kickstand gouges. Ride it over the
clumps of divets and grass and mangled slugs and banana peels twisted
into knotty shapes, ride it right through -- sailing! -- the window of
your therapist on 38th street, as she coos to her daughter you drop
jelly-scented coffee beans in their familial laps and right on out the
door like the retarded 28-year-old tripping on foreign chemicals
provided by his brother earlier today..,,///

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Make War, Not Love (part 2)

[see below for part 1]

Some day soon Terrence Malick is going to make the Romance version of a
Thin Red Line, where men bend at the knees, grasp at dirt, and shriek
to the heavens "what does this all mean?!!?" If war is hell, then
Romantic Love is the Hell below Hell, where former enemies are united
in an awkward bond and humans do stupid things for one another. Love is
quaint, gawky, and ill-suited for the 21st Century. Though War ruled
the day in the previous century, Love was just as prominent, if not
more so in certain arenas (certainly in music: what ever happened to
writing martial hymns and war ballads?!? Doomed in the hands of the
Amoracracy). That will change in this century, as the last great
marriages are dissolved and the Bush Republic opens a can of whoop-ass
on the entire world, launching a hornets nest of teccch-savvy warriors
fighting mad enough to last another millenia. Century of War, here it
comes!

And what of Love? Romantic Love will be officially banned, couplehood
barred, and all bullshit love poetry wiped from the face of the Earth.
All humans will be voluntarily neutered, or forced to live in
gender-specific work-n-play camps. Love will be seen as a social
pathology, like drug addiction or being a sniper, and even TV reality
shows will make a game of rooting out the undesirable elements of
Romance, Sex will whither, die, and be forgotten, and soon enough human
consciousness will be transmutated into the asexual meta-consciousness
of a Planet on the Move, of supremely amazing space travel and all the
rest.

Where prostitution today is a black market activity, its market will
fall to the underground Love trade, wear hugs and handholding will be
traded for opium and guns, and hearts will be tattooed on biceps in
secretive back-alley locations where only swastikas were once drawn.

Am I an anti-Romantic? Perhaps. Or perhaps I love Love so much I'd be
willing to vote it into the oblivion of the Forbidden, increasing its
erotic-energetic power by millions of orders of magnitude. You know how
drugs today are so much stronger than they were back when legal (i.e.
weed)? Imagine what will happen to Love once its wrested from the
schmaltz-hands of Hallamark to be manufactured in basement meth labs by
evil one-armed bikers and half man/half dogs named Leroy Brown and
Sergio Tomacilliano Jr.

But first things first: ban Romance, and let's get on with this
Evolution thing already (the first four letters of which, you'll notice
are the OPPOSITE of Love).

Make War, Not Love

The eXile is back! My favorite English-speaking Russian newspaper's
server has been down for a few weeks, but they're back and roaring as
usual. Check especially Gary Brechter's "War Nerd", one of the most
original and informative columns I've ever read. People always say
"write what you know", and this guy practices that to the hilt:
http://www.exile.ru/2005-May-20/war_nerd.html

This being another lonely night without a phone call from the current
female-of-interest, I'm inclined to "revert" back to the old war-loving
self, the one who used to live next door to a WWII fighter pilot and
once created a science fair project all about the air attacks on Pearl
Harbor. Reading "War Nerd" really reminds me of the sensible, rational,
goal-oriented A to B nature of warfare. Contrary to the many
existentialist war films of the last 30-50 years, tonight I'm
completely enamored with idea of Warfare as a truly noble way-of-life.
Hyperstition couldn't agree more in their analysis of the US's War on
Terror: http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005641.html

What is it that makes war and warfare so cool? The epic strategies. The
straining against limitations. The seemingly impossible coming together
of diverse logistical maneuvers. The cold-blooded, non-emotional modes
of action. The clear goals. The discipline, the rigor, the aesthetics.
Contrast this with what we know about Romantic Love, with its
vagueness, hyper-subjectivity, intuitional overkill, frustrated
expectations, mysterious intentions. War's intentions are clear, and
war gets results. All Romantic Love gets you is a box of Kleenex and a
one-month subscription to RoundandBrown.com. Weezer said it best:

Why bother? it's gonna hurt me
It's gonna kill when you desert me
This happened to me twice before
Won't happen to me anymore

See, with war we need not worry since the objective is always clear:
trust no one, aim for the target, kill hard and fight well. I will
grant this one similarity between Love and War, and that's their
finicky nature: neither allow much room for error, and even the
smallest details and miscommunications can be disastrous in the field.
Take me: I had a date at 8pm on Saturday. I arrived at 9pm to find
she'd already left. Haven't talked to her since.

Of course, she might have moved to Syria.

I Was Depressed and Now I'm Not

Why is 28 such a milestone? I've been 28 for over half a year now, and
it still affects me deeply. 21 was nothing, 26 kinda hurt, but 28!
Given that 27 is the classic Rock Star Death Age, I've outlived
countless rock heroes (Cobain, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison), who were in
their prime when I was just getting hints of what "prime" actually
meant. Now here I am, playing guitars and drums every night, courting
dreams of rock star glory, laughing in the face of the youth-obsessed
pop AND alternative cultures. Last night, I saw the Pixies and the
Violent Femmes rock Red Rocks, both with members will into their late
(?) 30s and even 40s, but with plenty of the rockist vitality which
made them face (even if their hairlines were a little more sparse). Can
one rock if one is old? Once one becomes old, isn't it time for more
"adult" forms of performance work, especially stand-up comedy? Rock
stardom seems almost tailor-made for vain youthful romanticism, whereas
comedy is the poetic vehicle of the jaded oldster, the man nearing
middle age (not that, uh, 28 is anywhere middle age), the man who's
seen it all and can only shake his head at the laughably naive ideals
of the Kids with the Guitars.

But then, what about Guided by Voices? The Dayton, OH indie legends
never even became a band until well into their 40s, but once they
did--hot damn! I mean, "Alien Lanes"? Greatest album ever made. Ditto
"Bee Thousand." Sure, their latter stuff proved to be wanting, but all
is forgiven with "Lanes" and "Bee", and damn it: the odl bastards put
out a new album every year--sometimes two! And the live shows! No
20-something punk could drink as much as GBV frontman Robert Pollard,
and no one rocked the mic with 60s-tinged British Invasion indie guitar
pop the way he and his oldster pals could do it.

I vividly remember two summers ago, jumping up and down in a 2-3 inch
puddle of beer, blood, and broken glass IN MY FLIP-FLOPS, shouting
along to every damn word spewing from Mr. Pollard's loud sloshy mouth.
"Echoes Myron", "Motor Away", "Teenage FBI", "Tractor Rape Train"--all
the classics were in evidence (some of them twice, those drunk fucks),
and with arms around pals both new and old, I echoed back the
unceasingly compelling rock drama the five-piece culled from their
PBR-drenched bodies and mechanical extensions. Pollard swings the mic
chord, sweat sprays and bounces off the cieling, arm pits release a
flood of Live Exixir, and all wounds are healed, all wrongs forgiven,
all misdeeds taken back, buried, smothered, erased, forgotten, and let
go of/released.

Yes, Rock is the Language of Pan, but Pan is not an energy or a
lifeform available only to the young. Pan--the rock star energy--is a
divine archetype, an energy being/vortex sitting outside the stream of
time, available to all who put his practice into place, who invoke his
unquenchable passionate rage-tastic mania for LIFE. Call him KUNDALINI,
call him the SNAKE, call him BAPHOMET, call him the WORLD SOUL, the
DIVINE FEMININE, the INFINITELY SMALL DOT FROM WHICH ALL IS DERIVED.

Just don't call him too old to rock.

Music Review of an Album That Doesn't Exist

[That's right, all fake, but you can try downloading it on Limewire if
you don't believe me.]

Band: Spent Our Twenties in T-Shirts
Album: "Dakron Fetish '86"
Label: Rough Trade/Matador

The 'Shirts return for a sophomore album featuring all the elements you
loved from their debut "...And That's Not a Bad Thing!" and so much
more. Gone, sadly, are the between-song karaoke covers, but in their
stead are some live recordings of lead singer Paul's
absurdist/performative take on spoken word poetry, along with more of
the same ridiculous staged photo galleries we've all come to love (fans
of their website know what I'm talking about-- have you ever seen a
stalk of corn mistreated in such a way?). Combing simplistic chord
progressions, hip-shaking MOOG baselines, frightfully motivating
melodies, and the usual shout-spoken literary vocals (if there's
nothing else these guys can do), you're in for another 64-minute
surprise, something akin to Pavement jamming on MSN Messenger with a
fifth of rye whiskey and a Casio SK-1.

"Samba Hoez Need to Know" opens things off with a low guttaral roar
from Paul before drummer Chris kicks into an impossibly complex
polyrhythm over what sounds like the sample of a mail truck delivering
mail in a small upstate NY town circa 1983. This morphs right into "Cut
My Chin Mama", a plaintive ballad roughly akin to The Decline of
British Sea Power's "Black Out" but with more emphasis on the Legend of
Zelda-worthy sound effects and samples.

"Blood State" concludes side A with Paul's most incendiary political
diatribe yet (even more infuriating than last year's "Pump Your First
at the Stupid F-cking Donkey"), which is basically an impassioned
indictment of the entire Mountain Time Zone's rightward slide over the
last 20 years (with some dire predictions of its future progression, in
one word: fascist secession).

Side two launches with a blast with a 12-minute instrumental jam which,
as far as I can tell, dips into every major and minor key and features
every instrument known to man, from an Amplified Abacus to a Zoological
Zither (whatever that means). Check out Chris's theremin solo at the
8:30 mark--the Coctails wish they could have "rocked the antenna so
well". After a couple standard pop-punk comedy numbers ("I Took Your
Mother Out For Quarter Drafts", "But Those Young Woman a Jager on Us,"
and the show-stoppingly ribald "Eat This Too"), things get beyond
strange with an improv nosie-jam homage to Seattle-area free noise
greats Noggin, where one can literally hear a kitchen sink being
slammed against a hollow refrigerator door. 10 seconds of Paul and his
girlfriend fucking than introduces album closer "Greatest Hits of the
Space Station" where Chris and Paul trade call-and-response lines
regarding a very sci-fi subject: the eradication of the human race and
establishment of a divine order of asexual robo-clones. This, of
course, is a nod to the French novelist Michel Houellbecq's "Elementary
Particles", and we found it to be a little more tha extremely
disturbing that P & C give every indication of being absolutely
sincere.

And thus lies this album';s main conflict and primary paradox: the
Shirts' stance on intimate relationships. On the one hand, these guys
come off as died-in-the-wool romantics, going so far as to invoke a
time travel ceremony to the date of their still-together parents' first
date (in order to ask them for advice). But compare this "Greatest
Hits" or any of the other misanthropic, nearly misogynist one-liners
("I like young women, especially when they're not around" from the last
album), and you've got some serious conflict.

A problem? For their prsonal lives, perhaps, but as fodder for 30 more
greatly albums--fuck no.

And don't push "stop" after tha last song, at 22:25 there's a ghost
track called "Meathead Surprise" which get you in more drunken brawls
than you'll know what to do with. Nice.

Condom Island

[No, I am not making this up:
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4636]

I am the all-fucking, all-consuming BEAST lurking at the bottom of your
oceans. I am Cthulu, I am the anti-coral, I am the product of endless
acts of human lust practiced in the fearful "safe" manner. The irony,
of course, is that 300 million of these "safe" acts have produced ME,
the most lethal, devasting floating eco-disaster since the Exon Valdez
bloodied the Alaskan seaboard with crude amounts of crude. But I'm also
filled with cum.

Think about it: 300 million used condoms, 99 Quadrazillion dead sperm.
That's a lot of dead babies! That's a lot of wasted male ejaculate! And
there's a whole insland of -- ME! -- floating in the middle of nowhere,
in the vast saltwater WASTES of the Pacific, where just over 50 years
ago massive aircraft carrier battles waged their imperial way too and
fro, and countless Nip fighter pilots willingly tossed their
fighter-clad bodies into the wooden/waiting decks of so many
unfortunate Yankee clippers, cruisers, tankers, destroyers, frigates,
and battleships. So much wasted male fluid hurling itself into the
Pacific, all to produce ME, the all-seeing spirit of frustrated
masculinity.

Wherever men practice safe sex, a little bit of energy is lost, and it
accumulates deep down where dolphins drown, and soon, one day, it -- I
-- will rise up, dousing the coastlines of the world in a decrepit
murk of sickening grotesque latex, spermicide, and jizz. Then, and only
then, may we speak of Male Liberation.

Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs

You feel me dawg? Luantic. That's what I am, that's what I eat. All of
you ladies at the bus stop know the deal: I step up, I drop a quarter
on the ground, I look at a post-it note I found in my pocket that says
"Kill Ferris." You say NO, I say NO HARM DONE, I shuffle a bit to the
left and go after the next femme. Word to your mother.

So I'm bouncing down this alleyway in Boulder the other night, and a
hoot owl is dancing along with me, 50 feet overhead, making creepy
Henson-esque noises. I reach for my inner Kermit gun and squeeze three
green rounds into the sky: said owl starts, stops, plummets, and drowns
in a wading pool three doors down from my cousins in Tallahassee (what
can I say, it was windy).

Then a beam of pure electricity teleports itself from the carport
behind the local post office (two blocks to my North) to a gumball
machine outside the Walmart on Route 3045A. The old woman sitting on
the bench fails to notice.

At the hoot owl memorial service, Brown Robber steps up to me to offer
his condolences (SORRY PAUL, SORRY). I say FAIR ENOUGH, then we don our
matching T-Fal stainless steel soup pots, spread ourselves 10 paces
apart, then CHARGE headlong into each other, clotheslining a 3rd
grader, his mother, and an old farm mule from Horace, NB in the
process.

I am now--WHAT?-- standing up again, standing in a pile of gum, trying
to lift weights with a pierced guinea pig on each dumbell, thinking
back to the time I plugged a MOOG synthesizer into the wall outlet of
an Air Force base up in Rome, NY, when sudden sparks shot out
everywhere and the white keys all fused with the white keys and black
keys all fused with the black keys and Michael jackson is drowning at
the bottom of my pool, face frozen in shock-sur-terror by the Pepsi
commercial fireworks still burning his brains.

Then the Mafia moves into the Eurovan down by the Convent River, and
everything gets a little more greasy.....

A Novel Idea

[A tad drunk still, played music after going to Stuart's party, now
writing after seeing some stupid sell-out "hardcore" band on MTV Spring
Break called Fallout Boy, with the by now obligatory acrobatic guitar
players-- i've heard of lip-syncing, but is there such thing as
guitar-syncing? At the party, had a conversation about writing a novel,
something I was planning to do in the fall of 2003, and then again
spring 2004. But alas, laziness....]

What a surprise: my novel idea is semi-autobiographical! Guy is in his
late 20s, starting to feel insecure, starting to feel slight twinges of
his age, hints of a far-off death (but death nonetheless). Fears he may
become out-of-touch with current music trends, obsessively reads an
online indie rock ezine every day. Unbeknownst to him, said ezine is
run but other insecure late 20-somethings, and collectively they too
are falling depressingly out of touch with what's actually going on
with the stupid youths in the black t-shirts with the hair and the 89
buddy lists and the text messaging-inflicted thumb injuries and
whatnot.

Scenario A: said late 20-something develops a get-rich-quick scheme
involving bringing porn to the world of text messaging in the form of
quick passages of erotic writing. 18-year-old assholes can download
10-clip packages of erotic mini-stories/poems/rants/pick-up lines and
send them to the 18-year-old biotches of their choice [no offense
kismet]. He pitches this idea to the writers of the ezine, and they
collectively tank on writing any more record reviews and secretly
devote their staff hours full time to writing quick flash fiction
pieces about horny dogs licking peanut butter off of redneck nuts,
about sweetly retarded co-workers at an Arby's in Burbank attempting
oral sex (with Horsey Sauce as lube), and about rich reality TV show
producers shagging their secretaries on the graves of their dead
grandmothers on auspicious dates so as to conjure demons/servitors for
the benefit of said reality show (which is taking a heavy beating in
the ratings by the Eric and Lyle Mendendez Trial Remake, starring kd
lang and Lyle Lovett as the M. Bros).

What then happens is: said indie rock ezine goes under, indie rock
itself witnesses a huge downturn, corporate emo rock reigns supreme,
and all music before Dashboard Confessional's third album is completely
forgotten. This collective, all-encompassing, worldwide global musical
amnesia accidentally triggers a brand new musical movement in the DREAM
REALMS of corpo-emo kids everywhere, and their subconsciousnesses,
imprisoned in the Delta-like ghettos of their everyday waking state,
react with all the ferocity of a po' poeple enslaved for a thousand
years.

This super-psyche-blues pushes these kids to writing, composing,
arranging, practicing, recording, and even performing the Dream Blues
in their sleep, and an entire new musical movement is launched
unbeknowst to the originators of said movement.

Scenario B: Hero Protagonist grabs a couple ezine writers and starts a
band called Deth Wish, which sees itself less as an entertainment
troupe (after all, what's the point of entertainment, really?) and more
as a functional, social unit, a sonic antibody. Deth Wish basically
declares war on the TRL "cult of youth" emotional-ego obsessions of The
Industry. They do so by creating decidedly UNemotional, NONintuitive
ROBOrock, with a sole purpose not so much to incite dancing, passion,
rage, or heavy petting, but to create socially-programmed automatons.
These automatons, Deth Wish commands, basically say "fuck you" to the
ages-old human dramas which weigh us all down (i.e. why does the rich
kid in my company get to bang the hottest girl? why is my roommate
sacrificing all of his free time just to lay in bed with some chick he
met two months ago? why am i going on a date when i don't feel like
dating?), and thereupon they get on with the TRUE TASK OF HUMANITY,
which of course is the colonization of the entire fucking galaxy.

Deth Wish's music, we discover, also doubles as the operational code
for all of the new wave rocket systems we've got pointed at the
heavens, and with a final Red Rocks concert, Deth Wish propels a cross
section of humanity (8,054 crewmen, 3,456 spouses, 6 dogs, 10 cats, and
a gecko named Roy) beyond the solar system.

And then and only then do black-cad, white-belt wearing emo kids with
pomade in their hair look up from their private epiphanies and their
everyday banalities, and then and only then do they see, realize, and
grow ragingly depressed over the UNLIMITED POTENTIALS they've long been
supressing in order to start lame 3-chord bands erected for the soul
purpose of fucking girls who look 5% like Lindsey Lohan.

The other 95%? Mon Mothra.

Neighbors: Lack Thereof

[Currently listening to: UK punk band Art Brut, who actually have a
sense of humor!]

Be reading Mark's post on K-Punk regarding the death of community in
80s Thatcher England and the arise of the atomized individual, link
here:

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005635.html

Made me realize, and grow depressed at the fact, that I don't know a
single one of my neighbors except for the dude across the hall (who I
met in a different context than this shite apartment complex). This
itself is a banal realization, the stuff of sitcoms by this point, but
there's still the underlying guilt, dread, and pining for something.
But I, dear lads, am as afraid to connect with people as anyone else.
When confronted with a stranger approaching me down the sidewalk, I can
usually manage a weak smile at most, but typically I must find an
excuse to look away. Its not that I hate people, I just can't handle
the mild stress and social confusing of sort-of meeting someone for the
first (and usually last time). "Hi, how are ya?"

We all go about our day, dreading the idea of being DERAILED form our
daily agenda and task list, of being put-out or put-upon by the
unexpected meeting, harassment, stalking, whatever. We're stuck in this
utilitarian, day-to-day survival mode -- "just got to make enough to
pay the rent this month" -- which was always the classic Bad Guy for
Situationists: mere survival. With my rent check staring me in the face
as I type this, I only know this too well. Also do I know the
impossibilit of trade, barter, and sharing with neighbors: asking the
psychotic Amish ladies next door for a cup of sugar is far mroe of an
energy investment than working a second job to buy my own at the
Safeway down the street (er, not that sugar's that expensive).

But that's what we (?) do: work crazy amounts of time, or take dirty
shit-eating second jobs, just to avoid the annoyance of emotional
entanglement with another person. The only connections we sustain,
then, are those of transaction: with la mexican chica at the Rite Aid,
with the short blonde girl with big boobs at the coffee shop, with that
girl we once made a drunken pass at at Barnes & Noble, with balding
Filipino hippie at Whole Foods, with the endless array of cranky old
white malkes driving the buses all over cities (I am speaking, of
course, universally ;)).

And, you know? It's almost perfectly fine. Really, who needs people?
That's really been the source of supreme suffering for us for millenia:
other people. Instead of the unmediated, unstructure face-to-face
exchange, we prefer a relationship with INTENT, something that's not
just a relationship-for-relationship's sake. THAT, of course, would be
too revolutionary. So we'll continue on: I'm friends with Sean because
he's my roommate and he need his rent money, I'm going on a date
because I need physical intimacy, I'll go to the coffee shop for some
buzz, I'll write emails to co-workers and IMs to old friends.

All of it mediated by a type of exchange, none of it a pure connection.

June Music List

The other day my friend Kismet confessed to going out to buy a Pavement
album based solely on my recommendation. This reminded me, once again
(it's been a while since this has been acknowledged) that I have
fabulous taste in music (thanks in no small part to Pitchforkmedia.com
and the now-defunct Puncture Magazine). And so it is for you, my 3
active readers and 289 assorted lurkers, fan boys, and hangers on, that
I present the first ever "Paul's Recommended Music List for the Month
of June", in random order.

1. Gang of Four: "Entertainment!" LP
Don't bother listening to today's trendy pseudo-New Wavers (El Guapo,
I'm looking at you), get the real deal from this 1980s UK masterpiece,
dance and be angry!

2. The Fall: "Hex Induction Hour" LP
A primary influence on Pavement and a grim warning on the combination
of English alcoholism, dub reggae, and pretentious literary
shout-n-speak.

3. Lead Belly: get anything by this foundational blues legend asap!

4. Bloc Party: "Silent Alarm" LP
These guys will be bigger than Franz Ferdinand, just you wait. Standard
modern rock in The Killers vein.

5. Fiery Furnaces: "Here Comes the Summer" single
The best goddamn song ever written by anyone, anywhere. Hyperbole? Yes.
Worth repeating 10-20 times? Absolutely.

6. Q and Not U: "Different Damage" LP
Came out a few years ago but still stands strong as one of the best
post-Fugazi DC post-punk albums of all time. No one else can rock a
harmonium like these hip-shaking scrubs from our nation's capital.

7. Kelly Clarkson: "Since You Been Gone" single
Look, I hate American Idol as much as the next angry hipster, but this
is just a goddamn GREAT song. I mean, TED LEO covered it! Close runner
up: Lindsey Lohan's "Over"-- hot video, and the song will soon be a
collector's item if her rumored coke habit gets any worse.

8. Dave Attell: anything this comic puts out is comedy gold. Catch him
live this summer!

9. Dan Allison: why not plug a co-worker? Check out his blog(s)--link
at right--for regular mp3 files of his ongoing sonic explorations. He's
a multi-instrumentalist, and a damn good one at that from what I can
tell.

10. Pavement: "Slanted and Enchanted" LP
You didn't think I'd rant all week about them and not plug them? This
is their original classic, much noisier and weirder (read: more like
The Fall than the Stones) than their later stuff, and you'll rack up
mucho indie bonus points if you name-check it in a dive bar with White
Stripes on the juke.

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been having problems with my moblogging, please bear with....