Wednesday, March 29, 2006

i-pod wars

us ones in between by sunset rubdown

you are a waterfall
waiting inside a while
and you are a wrecking ball
before the building fell
and every lightning rod
has got to watch the storm cloud come

and I heard of pious men
and I’ve heard of dirty fiends
but you don’t often hear
of us ones in between

and I’ve heard of creatures
who eat their babies
and I wonder if they stop
to think about the taste

and I saw the sun go down
outside of arkansas
and I saw the sun come up
somewhere in illinois
and in the darkness
I taught myself to hate
oh where were you
oh where were you
and where’d the fucking sun go

and I am a creature
and I am surviving
and I want to be alone
but I want your body
so when you eat me
mother and baby
oh baby mother me
before you eat me

and you should always pass
when you’ve got the inside lane
don’t pull your hair out
I won’t pull my hair out
for I have never seen a sun
that did not it’s bury its head
in the side of the world
when the day is done

you are a waterfall
waiting inside a while
you are a wrecking ball
before the building fell
and I will mutter like a lover
who speaks in tongues
he speaks in tongues
I speak in tongues

edward's drive-in

ratcatcher by scottish directer lynne ramsey seems like it might be one of those too real british films about a down and out area of the inner city. it's got the hard to understand accents, the filth, the drinking father, the too understanding mother and the strangely good-looking children. as the film goes on though it continues to surprise you with odd images and unexpected turns in the story. there's even a very surreal sequence that may not fit in the film and yet I can't imagine the film without it after seeing it. a few sappy moments threaten to take the story down, but it survives. what you are left with later are some really beautiful scenes in this very depressing place. most of these scenes involve child actors who are ridiculously good. thinking about it now, I'm struck by the way children can seem both crueler and sweeter than adults in equal amounts.

st. patrick's cathedral

you fall the day after
no one sees

statues line up in front of the columns, st. francis, the virgin mary, christ
many unrecognized

there is nothing I’ve figured out. how to set my head down in someone’s lap, late night cabs, how to make you understand that you are going to wonder about me more than you think, how the arches are made of uneven stones that are waiting to come down, fluttering postcards, the refusal that gathers like faith in strangers or the way you fall, the way people go down like a hole suddenly opening up in front of them, age in your mother’s voice, your mother, who would fit in just fine here with the lit white candles, the instant church smell, the giant stained glass.

if leaving then leave, if fell then crashing down broadsheet, a discotecque, a note on the door like swords, like 1851 gold-rushed into 1856, your neck dedicated in 1872, mouth felled in 1906, leaned straight step of connemara marble. a lucky stone.

poem to make up for a bad bri poem

the folsom five join me down by the bay bridge
"you don't get it, you're not a girl"
but it doesn't matter, we're indians waiting for night lights
skin cutters on a short drive
a single bow and arrow that we'll shoot out into the water
later, just to see

that's the part you don't get
really mine from the time of st. augustine grass
so is the fist on my red t-shirt
the tuck and roll
the "hills brothers coffee" sign that invaded
while we were fucking around in the brush
the gardening synthesizers so out of place

say whatever color you think
but I was a green-eyed child
in a cold-little mirror

it led here, the way animals get lost
"where did they go"
it doesn't matter
even in this state I can see you

you can't hide

Monday, March 27, 2006

bri

later, when you’re pretty sure everyone else is sleeping

when you think about the rings of a redwood

that pancho villa looked at the same moon

you think about his fist on your chest

how easy he did that


later, when you think that even pretty things need their rest

when you think about the places in a place

the bathroom where the smoke gets blown out the window

the shelf where val kilmer used to sit

the heater in the hallway

a bed you sleep in sometimes

and a spot on the cold kitchen floor where you laid down for an hour

Friday, March 17, 2006

i-pod wars

oh no! on my! is probably the band I'm listening to as much as anyone the last couple weeks. the songs I was listening to were found on music blogs. the band used to be called the jolly rogers, but I think someone already had that name so they had to change it. you can still find the band's website under that name and I did that a couple weeks ago. on the site they said they'd send you the jolly rogers cd and a pre-release copy of oh no! oh my!'s upcoming first cd. they said they'd do this for two dollars. this seemed like a trick somehow, but I paid through pay-pal and hoped for the best. a couple days went by and I e-mailed daniel from the band asking him if I was going to get the music in the mail or if I was supposed to go somewhere and download it for free or something like that. he sent me an e-mail back saying the two cd's had been sent out that morning. a few days later both cd's arrived with no artwork or in cases or anything else. on one, in what I think is probably daniel's handwriting, it said "the jolly rogers" and on the other it said "oh no! oh my!". I thought this was pretty great for some reason, probably because I think the band's music is going to make them quite famous when people hear it and they were nice enough to burn me a couple cd's at home and mail them too me the way one of your friends will do the same thing.

I wrote this on my way to work this morning, stealing lyrics from songs I was listening to and sent it to daniel over e-mail--


your music steps down on my floorboard a little too hard worrying about the crazy woman downstairs who asks me questions when I see her like “do you really think they actually have satellites up in space”. then she smacks her lips the way some old people do. I put the years in a lunch pail and shut the door behind me, a loose jiggle in the lock. 5:48 a.m.. pre-morning ruddiness, the rain taking a moment. down the middle of the street a drunk bleach blonde black woman is walking petite in very high heels. she’s singing but I have my headphones in so it sounds like you. a break comes between two songs and she says “what’s up brother”. I sing back “oh you are the one obe-wan”.

coffee, sweet vanilla soy, the way she smelled three months ago coming out of the shower, which is how it starts raining again. it made me want to stop eating, mark the occasion somehow. down in the empty train station you’re singing “I live alone”, and it’s not entirely empty, there’s a guy sleeping sideways on a stone bench, but he’s part of the emtpy, stays there when the bloodthirsty train comes, its doors mouthing the words “open up and let us come in”. there’s a guy from the cafeteria at work sleeping, his head against the glass. he flips burgers. I always wonder how many people sleep past their stops on the train.

“I was in a hurry”

“do you have the time sir”

“I fall all the time sir”

then back out of the tunnel into the world the way the world looks before people get to it. the way you can look at everything without worrying about it. a voice buried in the mix of the music. zombies. wires everywhere you go. the way that woman took off her coat last night. the way a new song in your ears feels like it was waiting for you like the smell of the avenues.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

off the rack

"I mean you can't see it," he says, gesturing toward the screen. "I can't see it either. I can't see it any more than you can. They take what I do and they pour it into this huge machine, and the incredible thing is it usually comes out just the way they want it. And that's terrific, I suppose, that's just great, I'm not saying it isn't. I'm proud of it, I'm proud that I can do it. It's difficult, it's scary as hell, hardly anyone can do it very well. I'm amazed every time it works. But the thing I want to say is, the reason I'm proud is not because it's a good thing to do, it's just because I can do it, don't you think? I'll tell you what I think. I think that people like to do what they're able to do. People love to do what they're able to do. That's what nature is, right? The expression of itself."

from "under the 82nd airborne", stories by deborah eisenberg

Sunday, March 12, 2006

edwards drive-in

just watched the first disc of the two disc set “the tomorrow show with tom snyder: punk and new wave”

tom snyder on these shows has his seventies big shaggy haircut, a cigarette in his hand most of the time and one of the best laughs ever in television. he also knows nothing about the people or the music that he’s talking about and this makes it better in a way. he puts the word “the” in front of things that seem alien to him the way your father first talked about the vcr or the computer.

this first dvd has four shows and the shows aren’t entirely devoted to punk and new wave, but they have the full shows anyway. this tends to add something as instead of being distracting.

some of the highlights:

an exchange where robert hilburn, l.a. times music critic labels the music as mostly a fringe group trying to get attention.

snyder: “it this a trend or a fad”

hilburn: “it’s a fad”.

while asking this question snyder holds up pictures of people taken at a concert who wouldn’t look terribly out of place today.

in the nothing changes department, these bands couldn’t get on the radio because the radio was too safe.

kim fowley, the original mayor of the sunset strip. one of those people who you don’t know about, but realize you should have when you do. he started the runaways which became known as joan jett and the runaways. he’s dressed up like a bowie hybrid here and refuses to take the discussion too seriously. and yet he’s still smarter about the subject than anyone else on the show that night.

paul weller, 18 years old, smart and pissed off a bit and saying things like “punk rock is a big flashy neon sign, new wave is an attitude”. he’s sitting next to a very young joan jett when he says this.

a guy named donald wildmon on the show featuring elvis costello. he’s another instance of nothing changes. he’s on the show saying that television has gone to hell with too much sex and violence. he’s got a christian southern organization that wants to make it “decent” once again. my favorite line of his, “sex is a beautiful gift given by god to be shared between husband and wife”. a few of the shows his group objected to were amen, blossom, cbs schoolbreak special, cheers, doogie howser, facts of life, full house, growing pains, johnny carson, the love boat, murder she wrote, scooby doo, taxi, the wonder years and who’s the boss. no, I’m not making this up.

frank capra tells the story of congress trying to stop the release of his film “mr. smith goes to washington”. if you haven’t seen this movie it’s about a young guy staging a filibuster on the floor of the senate to save a boy’s club. the senate actually voted to censure this film by a vote of 96-0. further efforts were made to buy the film outright and not release it. the argument against it was that it was a bad idea to criticize the government during wartime. again, nothing changes.

iggy pop sings a couple songs and then has a very good friendly interview with snyder. you can see the snyder likes him, just the way it’s obvious in another show that he likes wendy o. williams of the plasmatics.

snyder: “why are you bleeding”

iggy: “because I’m on your show”

wendy o. williams appears on a show with a televangelist and the contrast is perfect. I looked up her biography to see that she committed suicide in 1998. here you see her chat with snyder then sing “master plan”. during the song you get the feeling that billy idol was a plasmatics fan at some point as you watch her left arm swinging out at her side. during the performance she spray-paints “fuck the status quo” on her car. she then takes a sledge-hammer to it before blowing it up.