i-pod wars

if you see me at midnight walking the streets

you know it’s me for I cannot sleep

I’ve pushed away the dreams and spoiled the quiet
I’m propelled by fear and not the righteous





so have you been to a place like this?
to see your breath as it paints against the sky

the fever is near, I wish you near

I’m thinking ambitious

I’ve got this feeling that things will be right
so go break a leg now
you’ve been given the green light


go entertain them
they’re waiting for you...they're waiting for you

so have you been to a place like this?

to see your breath as it paints against the sky
feeling so right when things went wrong

the fever is near, I wish you near

"the city lights" by umbrellas

i-pod wars

sit on a train, reading a book, same damn planet every time I look. try to relax and slow my heart beat, only works when i’m dead asleep. been thinking and drinking all over the town, must be gearing up for some kind of melt-down.

all I am is a body floating down- wind

what’s wrong?
nothing
are you sure nothing’s wrong?
yeah
but you’re sad about something
yeah
so tell me what
I don’t know I can’t tell you

all I am is a body floating down-wind

as the express train passes the local it moves by just like a paper boat. although it weighs a million pounds I swear it almost seems to float and as we pass by each other our heads all full of bother we can’t look, we can’t stop, we can’t think.

from "paper boats" by nada surf

edwards drive-in

my reaction to the movie tarnation:


the peculiar, the ones we’ll call mad, speak using the same words as the rest of us. listen
to it, the timbre, the siempre, the eyes too far apart for their own good.

gay boys take care of their mothers better than the rest of us, and they never grow old,
like peter pan, like ponce de leon, their carried faces of impoverished
nobility carry the years that you see in those that they hold close. think of your
own mother. think: I can’t do this now. think: I never could.

so soon a shower or something else to pass a few more hours. and the righteous, oh the
righteous, they get so lonely in their navigation.

i-pod wars

once - the dogs have quit their barking
"son" - my neighbor said to me.
"know the emptiness of talking blue
the same old sheep"
run - I'll do no more this walking
haunted by a past I just can't see
anymore
anymore

from the song the skin of my yellow country teeth
by the band clap your hands and say yeah


p.s. -- go buy this album now

sf moma

someday, after you’ve taken all your pictures, they’ll put you in a museum where you’ll sit smoking a jay. birdman.
you’ll hang with mutu’s misguided hierarchies, eating yourself, riding your own side saddle exhibition.
at night you’ll jump off the wall and make your way over to henri and the girl with the green eyes, who looks right through you no matter what you say.
you’ll cajole and tickle and whisper you fickle little…stuck-up and rutted, too good for you, or so she says, but really doesn’t. perhaps she’s autistic.
late then, henri and others guys named max gather and sing egg-fish, egg-fish, won’t you be my daddy.

a reprieve. an intermission. call it what you will.

now a time for floating heads. ink driven bodies that bow down.
mr. klee, mr. klee, won’t you be my daddy.
no john, you’re being ridiculous as usual, but give me a hit of that and I’ll show you one you’ll like. it’s called horse and man, a sly gesture of reversal of things to come, if you will. or even if you won’t. if you notice the red arrow and the…you’re not paying attention at all are you.
I am, I am.
what are you looking at. it’s the woman with the green eyes again isn’t it. don’t you get it, she’s not there, she’s never been there. he started that painting with the eyes you know and, jesus why am I wasting my time, fuck off will you. go see if joan’s still up.

the oval smile like it’s seen you before. joan has a ruler, a tripod, a compass needle that always points to the nearest bridge. today it points towards frida’s eyebrows on its way towards the bay. even then says joan, skin, the small scent of my oval and musky, diego. always, men. short and squat and folded over like hillsides. like vaginas. like the oracle and the green bird.

you notice then that crowds cost nothing. that the earth jags and moves earthquake-like, panic-like, and indeterminate voices, some of them, grating along the just polished tile. but you get used to anything, sweat down your back, wind in sudden bursts blowing like the underside of a hammock, blowing the joint ember red. paul says let me have another. paul never has any of his own smoke. you hand it absently over, still staring at her eyes which refuse to follow you anywhere.
joan says is that a pen john.
yes.
you know you’re not allowed to have pens out in my museum.
what’s the difference joan, and when did it become your museum.
rules are rules she says smiling. here, take this pencil.
I can’t write with a miniature golf pencil.
she hands it to you anyway. you make a show of clicking your papermate closed. when she turns you unclick quietly. it echoes off the air in the rooms, so empty. three walls away the woman with the green eyes gasps without her eyes moving at all. you walk over and give joan’s oval two new eyes all the way through to the wall behind it. she runs over to cover them with her hands, like a woman trying to shield a child from something she shouldn’t see.

I’m in a bit of trouble I say, as if two were a number
something is bending,
or has
it scares me when you say that and I think of the maps
occupying the second shelf on the bookcase
in my one room
the lines on them recently tread as the sun moves down
the wall and into the room through closed blinds
the maps eventually seeping
a disease in the making
or the way some people seem to bounce off the ground
as they run
was I ever that young I wonder while I wait out the
minutes of you falling asleep in
twitches and jolts

hours are needed to get to the next hours
how do I explain the way it rolls by to take me with it
postcards held by obscured magnets on the fridge
a puzzle on the table
bad country music and jesus holding down the radio
in places where the smell of you is lost
while pancake make-up and compact mirrors
recall seventies haircuts
or my lack of memory when I try to find some rain
outside the window
of the house I grew up in

it takes a while to come around sometimes,
like prophets
in storied containers of genes, myth-makers
or cartographers
what’s the difference really when everyone is
trying to tell you
what they think you want to hear

some hours then, in some places, are enough
which is hard to explain unless you have that need
thinking back now, I grew up in the shadows
of the san gabriels
in a place where the sun was often gone before
the light
none of that remembered until I moved away

that was the year...

that was the year of indian nector, a wrist pull of a smell. cut into pieces and dryed, an eye on the prize although it really wasn’t a prize. it was soap to strengthen the brain and the bottoms of your designer jeans still damp. songs we liked and couldn’t remember the names of. late night invitations perfumed and oiled and barely touched. a climbing orchid bit of skin between pants and shirt, but a creeper, only not the way the days are so obvious now. not the way bike riders get bigger legs. not the sudden distractions of popcorn and notes that float public squares, a collective consciousness that makes it easier to do crossword puzzles, smell the aroma of open pain relief bottles and kiss in hallways with our backs to the walls. the smell of vanillas out to be penetrating and agreeable, so come in closer, put your nose to my temple. later, a taste of church hymns, the remains of us stuck in our teeth, laid out on my bed, or yours, beans processed to smell like your lips just leaving a water bottle and me, suddenly so thirsty.

i-pod wars

for real by okkervil river--


Some nights I thirst for real blood, for real knives, for real cries. And then the flash of steel from real guns in real life really fills my mind. Then I really miss what really did exist when I held your throat so tight. And I miss the bus as it swerved from us and almost came crashing to its side. Sometimes the blood from real cuts feels real nice when it's really mine. And if you want it to be real, come over for a night, we can really, really climb, and those blue bridge lights might really burn most bright while we watch that dark lake rise. And if you really want to see what really matters most to me, we can just take a real short drive. Just a drive into the dark stretch, long stretch of night, will really stretch this shaking mind. And this room, unlit, unheated, and the ceiling striped, and the dark black blinds.... I want to know this time if you’re really finally mine. I need to know that you're not lying, and so I want to see you tried. And I don't want to hear you say it shouldn’t really be this way, because I like this way just fine. And there’s nothing quite like the blinding light when that curtain’s cast aside, and no attempt is made to explain away the things that really, really, really are behind.

notes from a waking

the spinning globe sounds like a spanish song sung by connie francis
you went to knew york one time to find this out

she takes off her sleeves for five minutes of young
a fervor governed in hands and skin and half-empty beds
let it find a mood in the sound of water moving routes
the telling of all and sundry and giving in

words from the hundreds wake up sunday morning where you left off

what owns us will come to rush us on

i-pod wars

morning becomes eclectic is a radio show that is on weekday mornings in los angeles, but you can also check it out online, and it's worth doing that. nic harcourt is the dj and he often has guests in studio and they play sets of a good length and they talk as well about their music at some point. all of this is archived on kcrw's website and watchable as well as listenable.

one of the better sessions was with elvis costello and that was mostly because of the interview. costello was thoughtful and well-spoken and he said he's going to stop making albums and that he thought maybe the album is dead. he said he may just record singles and make them available online. for the first time in his career he isn't signed with a record company, intentionally, and he wanted to see how that would affect his work.

I watched the interview and was convinced that costello might be right. and then the decemberists released picaresque which is definitely an album. but I still thought costello had a point. now comes come on feel the illinoise from sufjan stevens. perhaps costello's mistake is forgetting that their are zealouts amongst us, because I'm convinced stevens is a zealout of some kind, I'm just not sure what kind yet. it's a strange listen, but it's obviously great at times. and the concept is both funny and smart. go, listen.

which red sox player are you?

You are Jason Varitek. You are a natural leader and are highly respected by many. You are tough and will duke it out with any purple-lipped princess when it comes to defending your buddies, which makes you a very loyal friend. Oh Captain, my captain!


Jason Varitek
93%
Johnny Damon
70%
Kevin Millar
53%
Theo Epstein
53%
David Ortiz
53%
Curt Schilling
53%
Mark Bellhorn
40%
Manny Ramirez
17%

to find out which red sox player you are go here-- http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=4637