That "i hate school" post preceded a marathon writing session that lasted until 5a.m. 5a.m.! I wrote 23 decent pages in less than 10 hours. I slept from 5 - 7, got on the 7:59 train and was in my desk at work by 8:30a.m.

I am too old for this all nighter nonsense, and I'm positive this is not what I signed up for! I might feel pretty good right now if I wasn't still hopelessly behind in like ... everything else. I could probably stay up 'til 5 every day from now until the end of the semester doing nothing but reading evidence and still not catch up. It's time to start praying to the Gilberts Gods.

i hate school.

"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself."



I am going as Anais Nin for Halloween. I am absolutely thrilled about this decision. Who wants to be my Henry Miller?

It does not move me
It does not get me going at all

I've only recently begun listening to all the music I had been downloading since 2004. Part of my depression was the inability to listen to any new music that wasn't on the radio, so I downloaded albums and never bothered to play them. I was probably right to do so, as most of the stuff I downloaded is pretty lame. Mission of Burma's OnOffOn was mediocre, The Libertines were so-so, You Could Have it So Much Better is pretty good but a bit of the same. I have also listened to bands I should have been listening to as a teenager but never got around to. It's a shame how completely lame NIN's Further Down the Spiral is. I wish someone had told me so I could have gotten that 30 minutes of my life back. The Downward Spiral and With Teeth were both less awesome than expected, which surpised me. As a goth, isn't NIN de rigeur? Isn't everyone supposed to love them, like punks and Black Flag? All listening to the NIN catelogue proves to me is that NIN writes amazing singles and everything in between is filler. I still have to give The Fragile a chance, but i'm not looking forward to the experience.

The only 2 good finds in the mess of things I downloaded were Korn's See You On the Other Side and the Kaiser Chiefs' Employment. Korn rocks me harder than no one else; unlike most metal, it isn't screaming and super fast playing, nor is it super dark and slow--it's a relentless pounding, amazing melodies, enough hooks to reel you in but not fag you up--it's rock n' roll. As for The Kaiser Chiefs, well, I'm not even going to pretend there's musical merit in a third-generation Strokes rip-off band, but I will say they're catchy, energetic, and write a fabulous 4 minute pop rock song.

Who else hasn't done it for me? Arab Strap's Mad for Sadness bored me. But they did a song off Elephant Shoe I liked, so I don't know if it's the band or the album. I don't know if I need to wade through 9 accoustic albums worth of material, though, so if anyone feels like recommending one, I'll give it a try. And another singer everyone's hard for that I don't get is Elliott Smith. He's done some songs that I've really, really loved, but I downloaded Either-Or and was completely left cold by it. The Magnetic Fields are sort of a love-hate thing; I think if we could have made 69 Love Songs, say, 21 Love songs, we'd have an utterly brilliant record. As it is, I find myself skipping over a lot of places to get to the good stuff.

In the better late than never world, I've finally broken in NMH's aeroplane over the sea and can now finally admit that despite jeff magnum's inability to sing, the album is melodic, sweeping, and most importantly, it's interesting. The little creaks and groans he records? The white noise? It's all fabuolous.

But yes, I've only just started catching up on these albums, and it's amazing how many of them completely bore me to tears. The main difference for me is now, I don't believe it's my fault. I'll listen to an album once or twice, if it doesn't catch my ear, I toss it aside. I don't need to listen to something (as was my previous habit) 10 times before making a decision. It's clearing up a lot of unwanted space.

Which means, of course, I need new music. I'm looking for music in four camps:

Circus/creepy: Rasputina, CocoRosie, Gogol Bordello, Jonathan Fire Eater, Dresden Dolls

Dirty/Garage: Louis XIV, Walkmen, Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand

Slick, polished indie: Interpol, Death Cab, Magnetic Fields

Soft and Emo: Sufjan Stevens, Album Leaf, Explosions in the Sky, Cat Power (by the way, which Cat Power album should I start with?)

So yeah, I need new bands along these veins. I have been out of the game for so long, I don't know what's in. But I can tell you this much--if the music looks the way everybody has been dressing, I'm in for some boring, uninspired garbage. So please, prove me wrong.

Monday, October 9, 2006

KISS Guitarist Denied Royalties
Former KISS guitarist Vinnie Vincent was denied claims to royalties for the album Lick It Up by the Supreme Court recently. What do you think?

Kelly Brathwaite,
Elevator Repairperson
"The fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg simply did not let go of her grudge against Vinnie Vincent is really getting out of hand. That was 20 years ago, Ruth."

Phyllis Weeden,
Bartender
"Dude, the guy almost destroyed KISS. He doesn't deserve royalties. He deserves a medal."

Dan Bender,
Antique Appraiser
"Okay, but if this Court's next step is to take away Vinnie Vincent's right to have an abortion, I am going to go apeshit."

I don't know what's wrong with me, but that last one had me laughing for like, 5 minutes.

Small things that I want to do to feel better about life:
> shop local to the extent possible (Note that this does not mean curtailing my rapacious consumerism, but rather shopping at Diana Shoes instead of Payless; Intelligentsia instead of Starbucks; Belmont Produce instead of Dominicks; Myopic instead of any crappy chain bookstore; and eating at Jackson Grill rather than Corner Bakery.)
> eat less meat
> eat less sugar
> record my music
> maintain better posture

----

Today I am wearing really tight skinny jeans with gold round-toed flats. It's horrible, and I love it.

I found rat/mouse feces in my kitchen tonight. My perfect, spotless kitchen which has no dishes in the sink and has all of the food put away in special plastic containers. I'm going to be sick.

(Other) Things I could do with my life after law school:
*a list, written in the margins of my class notes this evening

> stay at mag forever
> freelance for trade magazines
> try to find law jobs
> run away and change my name, default on debts, stop showering and start a punk band
> marry rich
> write a zine
> life of crime
> monasticism
> try to find cooler/diff. mag job
> freelance to law mags
> hang a shingle and put ad on back of yellow pages
> declare bankruptcy
> patent something
> move to small town and be a lawyer
> start beauty parlor

It's not that I don't have anything to blog about. I do. I have lots of fun things -- my coworker's hilarious kareoke outing; my perilous trip through the wilds of southern Indiana with Mark's family; Lakshmi's awesome visit to Chicago and my fun party; the awesome tuning I came up with for my cute steel string guitar.

But I'm just consumed and overwhelmed most of the time. This is the most intense semester of school I've taken so far, between classes that have weekly presentations or other due dates and the soul-stealing black hole that is law review. Plus, work hasn't abated at all. Plus, I spend inordinate amounts of time frolicking in Ravenswood with Mark. Plus, other things that cannot be named at this time.

So what it comes down to is that I usually feel really guilty about blogging when there are innumerable other things I should be doing. Yet, as luck would have it, tonight I am at school feeling cranky and defiant, reading Marg Atwood in the student lounge and now blogging of all things when I vowed to myself that the assignment from hell would finally, finally be put to rest tonight.

But really, when we're this far behind already, what's the rush?

I felt like in honor of Project Runway's season finale tonight, I would post Creation Nation's version, "Projeckt Runwausen". Favorite line?
"This is the first baby I had with The Seal. It is cute, but boring."

There are two things this morning I am very happy about and wish to share:

1) The New Demetri Martin website: Clearification. This website is important to me for the following reasons:
A) Demetri Martin's Comedy Centrall Stand up continues to be the cutest, funniest thing I've ever seen
B) Demetri Martin is the cutest thing I've ever seen. Seriously. I want to have little Jewish/greek/russian babies with him
C) Just listening to his 20 minute flash intro where he expounds about choclate frogs and his attempts not to woo the ladies on his tour was the single best auditory experience I've had this month
D) Perhaps most importantly, go to the EPISODES area of the website and click on "A Rare Condition." If you do not like it, we cannot be friends.

2) Lady Sovereign
Radar has a cute little interview with Lady Sovereign, the absolutely adorable British rapper who apparently just got signed to Def Jam. Radar has a copy of her new video "Love me or Hate me". I'll wait here while you go watch it.

...

No, seriously. Go watch it.

...

Isn't she everything you ever wanted? It's like Eminem and Mike Skinner had a beautiful, beautiful baby. And Jay-Z stole that baby. And gave it a record deal. I am in love.

So I went to the Upper East Side crash site last week to gawk. Completely overrated. Just tons and tons of press tents, some wires, and a burnt out facade. I wanted to go the day of but there was a torrential downpour. It's sad in a way--the Post reported there was a body strapped into a seat in the middle of 72street for most of the night. I missed that!

I'm beginning to have some pricks of regret for settling for midtown. Yes, it's safe, yes, it's incredibly convenient, yes, I'm in the good church ward, but the area is bled of anything resembling local flavor. I feel like I'm in one huge mall of America, with nothing but chains and generics all around. My brief dabbling into the Village and the LES also have met with mediocre results--the rent is just so high in all of Manhattan that the strange and quirky businesses are almost all gone. Biggest disappointments today include:

1) Lack of a Bollywood movie theater in Manhattan (wtf?)
2) Lack of a non-starbucks coffee shop within 10 blocks of my house
3) Lack of small, reasonably priced clothing stores within 30 blocks
4) Lack of goth club in Manhattan (to my knowledge, thus far)

I'm holding judgment yet, though--I still have to give the city a thorough exploring, of which I have not yet attempted. I need to go over to Brooklyn too, as that seems to be where all the hip stores and coffee shops have expated. Still, a bit of a disappointment.

My disappointment, of course, isn't the fault of the city. I always do this when I move--I always romanticize and hype up my new living arrangements, and then once I get there have a period of disillusionment where New Place is not nearly as awesome as Old Place and wasn't Old Place just perfect--there was so much to do, the people were so amazing, etc. This is a coping mechanism I devised during the many moves of my childhood/adolescence, and I have yet to shake it.

For the first time in my life I am having trouble with hipsters. I have always believed hipsters to be people who were both hip and cool--people like Lakshmi, Adele, or Theron. People like Volcano!. People who listened to the right music, were in the right bands, built their own synths, had ridiculous themes parties, worked in media or in music, liked the right movies, cut their own hair, and at the same time were cool enough to be comfortable with themselves not to take themselves too seriously--hence wearing a child's spiderman costume (Mike Wang) or obsessing about Kylie Minogue (The). Anyone who did take themselves and their 'image' too seriously wasn't a hipster too me--they were a poseur. And that was sort of the end of the discussion.

My experience in SLC this summer, and now in New York, has taught me that hipsters are not what I had imagined. Hipsters are mean, awful people. Let me give you a story to explain:

A week or so ago, my roommate tells me one of his childhood friends has just moved into town. We have him over. Let me paint the picture: he has skintight black pants, checkered vans, a newsboy cap, a long black shawl wrapped around his neck, and a tight red t-shirt with some ironic slogan. He immediately starts telling roommate and me about his stencil art (he tags buildings, etc), name-dropping Banksy, the whole 9 yards. When he asks me if I know who Banksy is, I tell him about the Paris Hilton prank I had read about, and he tells me I must be thinking of the wrong artist, because he knows everything Banksy ever did, and he would have heard of that. The night proceeds with more stereotypical hipster behavior--him showing me the myspace profiles of all the chicks he's banged (you know the type already, I don't even have to describe them--ingénue, 100 pound hipster girls with the black eye make up and the large eyes and the choppy haircuts), talking about running away to Columbia to work in emerald mines--throwing out opinions as to why The Science of Sleep was going to be the best movie EVER. My favorite, though, was when he mentioned that he was in several fight clubs, where he went around 'serving' people. I laughed and asked if he engaged in some awesome street-wise dancing moves, shouting "you got served, dawg!" after the battle. He stared me down, giving me the most withering look I have ever received. "No," he says icily. "These are real challenges we're serving. You can get messed up bad."

I mean, for heaven's sake. Are you all vomiting in your mouths yet?

So roommate, Hipster friend, and I walk into central park, as I wanted some photos of the two of them fighting. Apparently, the used to have a lot of fistfights back when they were teenagers, and I asked them if they would mind having another one so I could document it. As both roommate and HF were very look-conscious, dare-I-say vain boys, they were more than happy to indulge me. Things warmed up again between me and hipster friend--he even condescended to tell me he had seen the photos I had done for the Hellbound Saints and that they were "amazing"--until I made the mistake of calling said Hipster friend a hipster.

Apparently, there is no worse insult then referring to a hipster as a hipster. I was put on the receiving end of a 15 minute diatribe about how HF had Always Dressed Like This and how he had Liked Indie Music Since Before It Was Cool and how he had Always Been Interested In Stencil Art. It was so pathetic.

But the best part of all of this is, HF called roommate the next day to invite him out to a comedy show and specifically disinvested me. Not because I had hurt his feeling or was mean--but because I WASN'T HOT ENOUGH AND I DIDN'T WEAR THE RIGHT CLOTHES.

And it isn't like HF was a unique incident. I'm having the same problem with the hipster kids at church, and the same problem with the hipster kids in Provo. I don't know when it was decided that hipster kids were going to become the judgmental, close-minded jock kids we all hated from high school, but it happened. It blows my mind that by your mid-20's, you still actually care about how other people perceive you--so much so, in fact, that you will warp yourself to fit into a pre-existing mold in order to impress others. I mean, I know criticizing hipsters is well-worn territory, but I'm legitimately shocked at this subgenre. Give me back my NU hipsters, dangit. They was rock n roll. They was down.

Here's a question for the people: do I pay over $150 for a scalped ticket to CBGBs last show with Patti Smith, or around $90 for a bad brains/bouncing souls show? I mean, on one hand, I've only listened to these artists recreationally, but on the other hand, it's CBGB's, and it's shutting down Sunday. Do I try visiting the club during the day as a tourist? And keep in mind that I am on a razor thin budget--$150 will price me out of food for the last week in October. Thoughts? Comments?

Things I have been doing: a photo montage

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADELE!

oh my goodness. so much to do. i just want to cool out. maybe drink some beers. but no. so so so much to do. i definitely need a robot or a smart and helpful doppleganger to make this happen.

then out of nowhere, you put me right back there

I mostly like that song because my surname is in the title.

I'm up quite late this evening, taking a progress test that's due tomorrow morning. Wouldn't be a problem, except that I can't make-up for tonight's lack of sleep tomorrow night, because a new episode of LagunaBeach is on tomorrow night at 10:30 pm. And I'm not about to miss LagunaBeach for an extra half hour's sleep. That's what caffeine is for.