One of my favorite self-deprecating dorks is in town all week broadcasting from the Orpheum Theater. we tried to get tix a while ago but it’s near impossible. anyway, i caught a few of the shows when he was in Chicago and they were a lot of fun and made me want to visit there again.

hello my fellow granola eating bay heads. i got some war stuff for sale. any takers? $100 no less. sorry no cudgel

seriously…what is in there? that’s like the lamest box of war stuff i’ve ever seen

i guess i need a late pass because i only recently realized that dan savage had a podcast version of his syndicated column savage love with people actually calling in. i wasn’t a die hard fanatic like a lot of people but would read the column whenever i had the weekly handy. now i’m completely addicted to this audio format cause it’s made me appreciate his intelligence and wit more than i did. one thing i really like about it is hearing the callers describe their issues in their own voices which is so much more personal this way. It’s like hearing the interviews from that movie Sex, Lies, & Videotape, only minus the sexual tension and more detached and funny. i’ve laughed out loud so many times at his smutty and childish ribbing. one woman called about a psycho mean roommate who left his self-portraiture porn cd lying around and wanted to know if she should pursue sweet revenge by posting his photos all over the internet or maybe send the cd to his parents. Savage advised her that since this guy had threatened to kill her beloved cat and tried to destroy her career, she “should probably not poke a sleeping motherfucker.” he also asked her if she would email the photos to him.

at times he gets really dickish and goes on these tirades when he gets inept questions or when sycophantic fanclub types tell him he’s “frickin’ awesome” too many times. he also yells at people and calls them pussies when they’re overthinking or trying to be too ethical/selfless which isn’t a surprise if you’re familiar with the column. but even that is pretty amusing and just cause those calls are annoying to listening to and he still talks sense after the abuse. most of the time he’s sympathetic and engaged. i think what impresses me is that when he’s talking with a caller on the phone, it’s in real time & spontaneous unlike the column and yet he is delivering the same quality of insight. it amazes me listening to him talking with some of these people who are riddled with guilt & confusion because of their freaky fetishes and/or everyday love drama how he can just pull the most sensible and profound POV out of thin air and make them feel less conflicted and like normal people on the spot. he has a really high signal-to-noise ratio and as a long-winded blatherer, i envy people who can articulate themselves so concisely and poignantly. that’s there even when he’s really angry, like when he calls back this clueless misogynist and completely rips him apart everything he says to him is still on point and focused. listening to these episodes also makes me realize how lightweight my emotional baggage is. some of the stuff is eye opening and deep, some of it purely voyeuristic satisfaction. i need to stop listening to this when i’m on the move cause i’m might walk into a wall or traffic. it’s so engrossing. if you are a fan of the column, then you will be a bigger fan of the audio version.

Savage Love podcast link

so part of the macarthur maze melted. this guy was speeding and his tanker turned over and blew up part of it which means two freeways near the Bay Bridge are closed. i honestly didn’t think this shit was possible.

my commute on BART is already ridiculously crowded. i wonder what’s going to happen now since this is going to take months to repair. oh yeah the guy is alive and everyone in the bay area hates him now.

dude…

sorry for ruining your day

i can hardly keep up with music related blogs/resources on the internet cause there’s so many of them. it’s kind of overwhelming. i think the top three i checked the most were waxidermy, the wfmu blog and post-punk junk.. then i found out last month that post-punk junk was no more, i guess they overloaded the server. kind of a bummer, i found out about awesome groups like the slugfuckers and they posted the fall and pop group bootlegs which is the kind of stuff i am a total fiend for. i finally got curious and found out from wfmu that post-punk junk is now Egg City Radio. the latest entry are songs about breakfast and is making me so damn hungry right now. i’m kind of going crazy like i should try to sneak out of work for an hour and that ham sausage bacon photo i posted below isn’t helping. breakfast and songs about breakfast is my idea of heaven

update: i just noticed that dude posted a john carpenter mix on there. wtf? hella sick. i love carpenter’s scores! it’s a big reason why i still get excited about rap today cause i hear him in beats everyhwere

well most of them. i’m not really into the ones with people in em: lets take your car

gravitron! also known as spinning puke cage

and something i deeply, from the bottom of my heart, relate to

he also made his own ring light using this old gigantic vivitar flash i just sold.

badass

from approx. 9-11 tonight

when i went out during my lunch hour today, i was waiting at a busy intersection absorbed in headphoneland when out of the corner of my eye, a naked dude comes up next to me and i jumped and kinda went “aggh!” really loud. all these people turn and look at me. turns out that guy was just wearing all tan clothes. who the fuck wears all tan? people who want you to think they’re naked, that’s who. has he not seen seinfeld? i told him i got caught off guard and freaked out cause it looked like he was naked in the corner of my eye and he laughed, big deal. 10 minutes later i walk passed the hyatt and there was a dj blasting patchouli house outside with approx. 7 women hoola-hooping and about 20 regular financial district types just staring, including myself i guess. it was surreal. i wish i had my camera today

i’m bored with my digital cameras so i bought 3 packs of polaroid film, batteries for a borrowed olympus rangefinder and 5 rolls of film for the lomo lc-a just for some variety. i’m excited. oh yeah, there’s other things i’m excited about too, but i’ll save that for another day. there’s always something to be excited about. until then, here are random and appropriate photos of me playing Rear Window as young would say.

i’ve written about elephant seals a total of 3 times here and it must have had some bloody mary effect cause there is one terrorizing local beaches right now. a really psycho, sexually frustrated 2,500-pound one.

Sorenson says that soon after the bull first appeared, he tried unsuccessfully to mate with the (much smaller) female harbor seals. Then, last year, after trying again to mate, he turned violent and began to kill. This year, he is staying around well past his usual departure date at the end of March, and now has started to consume his kills.

“This bull does straight-out murder,” said Keary Sorenson of Sebastopol, a former surfer who volunteers for government and nonprofit agencies in Sonoma County. “A week ago, I saw him chase down a female harbor seal, use chest blows to crush her, then bare his upper canine teeth and drive them down onto her head and back.”

“Nibbles” has killed a dozen seals and flew out of the ocean without warning to attack a pit bull. seriously…pit bull vs elephant seal, did that really happen?

“I saw the elephant seal come out of the water like a torpedo, angle down on the dog and land on him,” said Lowrey. “Somehow the dog wriggled out and turned and squared off with the seal.”

Erinn Flaherty, the dog’s owner, said Garcia told her Sativa barked defiantly at the seal while Garcia hurled the stick at him. Garcia then escaped with the dog, which suffered a puncture wound the diameter of a quarter in one thigh.

i can’t believe this made the front page of the chronicle today. i mean yeah it’s my kinda story and whatnot, but still. i was up in sebastopol/sonoma just two weeks ago. how awesome would it be if i could have photographed a real elephant seal? pretty awesome. not so awesome if i’d get killed though.

oh my god, i’m so proud of myself cause instead of sulking and feeling for myself tonight, i put together a mix of post-punk stuff that he would really not be into. it’s a post-punk primer complete with changing album artwork if you use itunes. mostly dancey party post-punk stuff like we were 20somethings in college in the 80s cause i’m ‘retro’ like that. i admit if these were all records & mixed manually, there would be longer transitions and it would be blended better, but i think it’s still a decent mix cause i’m too aware of 4/4 timing & momentum. i’m gonna call it ‘a crying shame’ cause ed ruscha is my favorite. it’s a nebraska thing you wouldn’t understand.

right click -> save as-> eat my bandwidth

josef k - heads watch
b-52’s - 52 girls-
modern lovers - modern world
wire- a question of degree
talking heads - cities
a certain ratio - do the du
100 flowers - head, no heart
r.e.m. - wolves, lower
sonic youth - mary christ
gang of four - i found that essence rare
chrome - eyes in the center
slits -love und romance (peel sessions)
the damned - alone
the pop group - we are time

monkeys are not cute, they’re scary. i don’t like them and i don’t understand this tradition of watering down their image to depict them as these cuddly & warm creatures when they’re unpredictable, territorial, and capable of intense violence. in that movie aguirre wrath of god, there’s an infestation scene w/ klaus kinski that makes my skin crawl. i also saw an episode of Nature on PBS where aggressive baboons in south africa mug people in the parking lot for their groceries like total thugs. the people they confronted were stunned and slowly backed away from their bags like they were being held up by gunpoint. i’m familiar with evolution and all and understand we are primates, but it still weirds me out how human they are. i find it unsettling and therefore necessary to talk shit about them

so, one of the ‘highlights’ in the jungle episode of planet earth was a segment on chimpanzees. i thought everything was cool. they were showing the chimps hanging out gorging on figs and it was all so innocent and calm. later, about 30 of them banded together creeping about the jungle in stealth mode and then suddenly declared war on their rivals’ territory, shrieking and wielding branches as weapons. it was insane. then they ripped apart a rival chimp and starting eating it, which was traumatizing. cannibalism is already messed up psychologically but adding more to the inherent mindfuckery of it all, their mannerisms reminded me of people. they weren’t digging into the carcass with their mouths like lions & tigers do. they sat in a circle and shared the entrails and organs amongst each other with their hands. it was like a sit down dinner with the family. one of the chimps held out its hand while the other was cleaning out a skull, and it obliged and courteously passed the skull to him. strange & scary. it’s behavior that seems both civil and uncivil, the civil being the sharing & good manners and the uncivil being the war waging & cannibalism. one minute eating figs and another minute an enemy’s brain? i don’t get it. strange how chimpanzees are our closest evolutionary relatives and yet they get down with eating their own. there’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

in conclusion, monkeys are not cute. eating brain is NOT cute. and paul frank is wrong

aside from violent chimpanzee gangs cannibalizing their rivals in the jungle, this has to be by far the most terrifying and perversely beautiful segment from the planet earth series. cordyceps fungi attack insects, infiltrating their body and mind “like something out of science fiction” and causing weird alienlike deformities after death. it seems like nature’s version of invasion of the body snatchers mixed with a little of macabre david cronenberg special effects

only it’s the real deal. nature is so awesome. i can’t wait for these dvd’s to come out next week

dogs, turkeys, bunnies, vietnamese beer, flora & fauna, spooky sheds, trout heads, nephews etc

martin short….am i crazy?

goddamn it… there are times when i cant stand talking heads but tonight is not one of those nights. file under: bands i love, then hate, then love again

this lp has never sounded so good to me as right now. brian eno 4-eva. so glad to be home, a mess of pics tomorrow etc

i saw that ayres posted links to all brooklyn radio ‘history of hip hop’ shows on the soulstrut board. it’s 10 volumes total (so far) and each mix is a year from 1979 - 1988. it’s pretty damn impressive and kinda overwhelming. i’ve only had a chance to listen to 87 and 88 first cause the mc lyte eric b rakim stuff is more of my thing and those mixes are fire. there’s no way i can repost all the links and all the tracklists, but they are all here on the the rub brooklyn radio page.

i killed my sister’s car battery when i tried to go on a beer run and freaked out for a minute. then when everthing was hunkydory again, i reverted to obnoxiousness. i feel sorry for my friends sometimes.

brain injuries from a fall…. jesus that’s sad. but he did lived longer than most expected.

when i was 19 or 20 i burned many of those hilarious drawings out of breakfast of champions onto a small wood box and gave it to a boyfriend who was a kurt vonnegut fanatic (and a champion stoner). i wish i still had that. i still laugh when i think of the phrase ‘wide open beavers’ including his illustrated interpretation of that. also in high school i made a puppet movie inspired by his writing for my english final project. i think vonnegut was probably one of the first ever authors that i got into seriously and made me actually want to read during a period where a majority of my idle time was spent either watching tv or- watching tv. my attention span was short as hell, more than your average teenager i think. vonnegut taught me how to read… for fun? the concept was so foreign to me as a person who was (and mostly still is) visually stimulated.

anyway, rest in peace to a damn funny pessimist. (and so on.)

this morning when i went out to the backyard, a wild turkey took off from the grass into a tree about 100ft above, eyeballing me the whole time. i didn’t know wild turkeys could fly. it looked like a beachball in the air.

starting to miss the city already.

great Rockpalast footage from 1979. colin newman = smoldering spazz. i love pink flag but chairs missing is just so sexy and grown. “never for money, always for loooooove!” such a perfect album