Blistered

I had the pleasure of seeing Strife just after they "sold out." They were amazing. They ended with this song "Blistered"


and threw the mic right into my hands for the last breakdown. I remember holding it up with some sweaty, screaming kid growling into the microphone "Look into the sky!!! I can see the ashes falling! Look into the skyyyyyyyy! I can see it all coming dooown!"

That was a good night. I remember walking out of State Theater and seeing Boomhower in the back, smiling at me. "Saw you grab the mic there, dude," he said. "That was a good fucking show."

So much for one a day!

I bought The Get Up Kid's Four Minute Mile and Save The Day's Stay What You Are the summer between my junior and senior years of High School. I was driving a green Toyota Tacoma with a big, clunky topper on the back, in which I had constructed a platform bed and a surfboard storage area, all in hopes of driving around, sleeping in the back of my truck, listening to music and staring out at the ocean at dawn and at dusk by myself. It had been a weird summer, and I was really getting a knack for running away from things. I decided to graduate early; I had the credits I needed; what was the point of staying? So, I told the school what I was doing, they said "sure." They didn't seem to care at all, but they did keep me from being included in the Mr Venice contest because technically I had graduated and they "couldn't control what I would do on stage." I had wanted to play this song by Saves The Day:


But, I got denied, and probably for the better as I had a pretty terrible voice, even for covering whiny ass Saves The Day.

So, I graduated and moved to California. I drove out west with Tim Croft and my Dad, caravaning with my green truck and Tim's white bronco--Janessa, he called it, if memory serves me correctly. It was a good trip. I listened to Four Minute Mile and Stay What You are A LOT, and really still love both those albums and miss that period of music. Here's one of the Get Up Kids newer songs, an album that I HATED when it came out, but one I have learned to really enjoy.

I'm going to start posting favorite songs/videos. One a day. A retrospective of sorts!

I meant to post this yesterday.

Elliot Smith was introduced to me right before I moved to California, when I was 17. I didn't listen to the albums much on my drive west. I was burning to see the pacific, to move, to surf everyday, and find something out about, well, something.

California is a different story, but I will tell you that I listened to either/or and the self titled album in rotation with The Get Up Kids Four Minute Mile the whole ride home, driving through the south, following the first real arctic blast of that winter, sleeping in my truck, covered in boardbags and wetsuits to stay warm.


One of my favorite songs, covered by Smith.

I'm sure I'm late to get around to posting this. It's probably old news, but for some it might not be.

Since moving to New York I have become kind of a gearhead when it comes to bikes, though a very slow-to-learn one. I have gone through 5 bikes in less than two years now, swapping and selling them, getting hit by cars on them, giving them to Jack only to have them stolen hours later, etc. Possessing the personality that I do, it's hard for me to ever feel finalized in my bike quiver. Currently I own my Holy Grail bike--a Waterford built Schwinn Paramount track bike with a full Suntour Superbe Pro group, with the exception of the wheels which are Mavic Open Pro's laced to Phil Wood hubs--a more proper city track bike wheel, I think. I have been slowly tweaking the most current project, which I am almost ready to abandon and leave as be, a Kona Paddy Wagon, built up like a porteur bike, specifically designe, not for delivering papers, but for hunting/gathering at Trader Joe's on Monday AM's.

Anyhow, what I wanted to post was about some kids I know through a gulp bike forum. I have met some really great guys on there, many who I met in real life and later realized were on the forum. One of them was Lucas, who I have become really close with, though he talks to me like he was my girlfriend and I the negligent boyfriend.

So, they did a write up in the New York Times about of a thing that Lucas and Devotion's friend John Prolly has organized in Williamsburg each Thursday evening called Peel Sessions. I've been to a few and enjoyed hanging out talking shit, drinking a beer or two and watching kids get silly on tweaked out track bikes.

Full article here

Several people who I haven't seen in a while have asked, when I've told them I'm getting married, if Elle was pregnant.



Well.......

No.

She is not.

In fact, she is really goddamn skinny now, the results of going to the gym to run 5+miles EVERY MORNING at 615!

I, on the other hand, am only a little skinnier, having dropped below 200 for the first time since the fated Christmas trip to Florida where I did absolutely nothing but eat and sleep on the couch with Lemon and Kiwi on top of me. I'm getting slim, trim, and back on it. But fuck if I'm getting up that early for it! I can write that early, but not run.

Sometimes I feel like History is going to crush me.

It's beginning to feel like Fall here in NYC. I'm pumped. I built up a Kona Paddy Wagon with some slightly more burly all-weather tires, put some Pasela touring tires on Elle's bike, and am working on getting a 5-rail Cetma rack for the Wagon so I can haul around my bag without sweaty-back. We've been really enjoying our morning rides down to Tribeca from out apartment on 20th and 1st. It takes the edge offf a bit. I end up not punching windows or slapping rear-view mirrors as much when its nice out; pleasant weather has a calming effect on me that i never realized until moving to NYC. The seasons really change my disposition, writing, and worldview.

We're heading to Rhodes Island on Friday evening or early Saturday morning to pay my dear friends, the Attias family, a visit. We are hoping to poke around Providence, look at Brown and RISD, meet their new Frenchie, Lola, and generally enjoy the company of some of the gentlest people I know.

Dehumanized

There's a really wonderful piece in the September issue of Harper's Magazine written by Mark Slouka,about the effects of an economically driven educational system, the current fate of democracy, etc. It's a great piece to give to someone when they ask, "What are you going to do with a degree in __________(insert any of the humanities here: Literature, Philosophy, History, Etc.)."

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/09/0082640

here's some clips:



Rain does not follow the plow. Political freedom, whatever the market evangelists may tell us, is not an automatic by-product of a growing economy; democratic institutions do not spring up, like flowers at the feet of the magi, in the tire tracks of commerce. They just don’t. They’re a different species. They require a different kind of tending.

The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult—to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization—not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible within which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do but how to be. ......

They are thus, inescapably, political. Why? Because they complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties. Because they grow uncertainty. Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and redraw the borders of tolerance. Because out of all this work of self-building might emerge an individual capable of humility in the face of complexity; an individual formed through questioning and therefore unlikely to cede that right; an individual resistant to coercion, to manipulation and demagoguery in all their forms. The humanities, in short, are a superb delivery mechanism for what we might call democratic values. There is no better that I am aware of.

For me, this shot summed up the SDRE show on Saturday

Do you remember CD clubs?

I do.

My Dad let us join one when we were like 9 or 10. It was one of those deals where you bought one CD for full price (16.99!!) and then got 11 CD's for a penny each. For Christmas that year my Mom had been given a 5 disk CD changer, and one CD: Tracy Chapman. Whenever I hear that "He's Got a Fast Car" song, I feel like I am 9 again, being woken up for school, or eating Honey Bunches of Oats with Jack, looking at 1+ year old Kayla learning to walk, my Dad drinking coffee and filing his briefcase with bills and invoices for Beliken, his clothing company. Mom would try to cut bananas into our cereal. I just recently, as in, like, yesterday, began to tolerate bananas.

Anyhow, I remember a few of the CD's we ordered. We each got to pick three, I think, but I don't remember who ordered what. Here's a list from foggy memory:
Shaquille O'Neal: Shaq Diesel
Crash Test Dummies: God Shuffled His Feet
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Greatest Hits
Soul Asylum: Grave Dancer's Union
Montell Jordan: This is How We Do it
Pearl Jam: Ten
Gin Blossoms: New Miserable Experience

The last album was my Dad's jam. We listened to that album a thousand times if we listened to it once. I remember many an afternoon out in the shed, putting the drywall on what would eventually become the Rompin Room, singing along:

"Things you said and did to me
Seemed to come so easily
The love I thought Id won you give for free
Whispers at the bus stop
I heard about nights out in the school yard
I found out about you"

Recently, my friend Futureman hooked me up with an invitation to an "exclusive" torrent site for DLing music. It was like being 9 again, flipping through the BMG catalog, circling the pictures of the album covers I wanted, making a list of fifteen albums and laboring over the final cuts, except I didn't have to make any cuts-; I can download whatever the fuck I want! The anxiety is short-lived now( it took WEEKS to get the CD's from BMG; it only takes about 45 seconds to DL an album from the site), but I still get excited about new music the same way I did back then.

I haven't been home to see my pops in 6 months now, and have been missing him and my sis terribly lately. The first album I snatched from the site--can you guess? Gin Blossoms discography. And damn have I been listening to it, blasting it when the ladies aren't home, drowning out the little girl that lives next door's singing lesson, playing air guitar in the living room, thinking of my Pops.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7WaJt02sTE