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[Jul. 6th, 2009|12:55 pm] |
Okay, nobody wants to talk about trans women, suicide, and the nonexistence of offline community? Fine, then let's talk about how "Sometime Around Midnight" by the Airborne Toxic Event is at least as pretentious, mopey, and awesome as the best one-hit-wonders' songs in the early eighties, even though the singer is somehow involved with McSweeney's, which leads to my new theory that
McSweeney's is the Duran Duran of the Oughties.
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|10:58 pm] |
( intense. )
I figured out how to play the keyboard cat song on the guitar! Here is a tab:
e----------------------------------------------
b----------------------------------------------
g----------------------------------------------
d--2-5-2--2-5-2-----2-------2------------------
a-3------3------0-3---3-0-3---3----------------
e-------------------------------3-3-3-3-3-3----
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|09:31 am] |
Did I tell you we are recording an album? We are. Paul, who is the bass player in Sonya's other band (Dead Souls- a Joy Division tribute band) works at Digidesign, the studio where they make Protools. And he is allowed to use their recording equipment when he is not working! Which means that, between playing shows, going on the radio, and helping Sonya and Alicia move to a new apartment in the Mission, we have been staying up late every night, watching me try to play the stupid motherfucking weird guitar part I wrote for "Birdsmilk" for two hours before we all get too tired and go home exhausted failures.
This thing happened twice now where I kept trying to record a guitar part in the big hardwood floor sound room ( where this picture is from )and in the mixing room they're making faces every time I start playing, so I start to get frustrated and convinced that I just can't play the guitar at all, I start to pull off my limbs in frustration, and then they realize that there's a motherfucking delay in the signal I'm getting into my headphones, so everything sounds a half second later than it actually is at which point we fix it and I do some Eddie Van Halen/Yngwie Malmsteen bullshit to save the day. Sort of.
Maybe you have to be there to feel the brutal, human emotion of desperation.
Anyway, I'm not a very good singer, or guitarist, so it's been kind of an ordeal, but things are coming along. I think we're done with eight songs? We have two more to record live, then we've got to master them all, and then I think we turn famous? I think? I'm not sure how it works. I think it would've worked that way when I was in Strictly Platonic, but I moved to Oakland instead of finishing that record.
Y'know, Too Drunk To Cut?
It's probably for the best we didn't blow up all famous with that punk gem.
I made this great REM comp and you know what rules? That song Electrolite. Michael Stipe was like, "I was trying to think of the word for those phosphorescent slimy ocean animals, and it seemed like it should be 'electrolite,' even though it's not. Also, it's about driving over Los Angeles on Mulholland Drive and it's also about the end of the 20th Century."
Which is interesting, because I can say all those things about the Angela Chase song "Shut Up."
PLUS y'know what's annoying? When KRS-One is on an REM song and they're like, "You can talk through the whole song, but you only get two bars at the end to rap, and then we are fading out."
( 'This Fear Thing:' A Pretentiously Titled REM Comp, in case you're curious. ) |
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[Jul. 2nd, 2009|06:45 pm] |
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Oh, um, also, we're going to be on Pirate Cat Radio again in ... about two hours? 8:30 or so, West Coast time. Not sure what we're going to talk about, and I don't think we've mastered anything recently, so god knows what it'll be like, but you can hear my mellifluous voice talkin some kind of shit. If you want. |
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[Jul. 1st, 2009|07:20 pm] |
Some folks collect Remains of the Day lunchboxes; I collect editions of JT Leroy books. (Sue me about it. Whatever.) BUT! This seems to exist, in some kind of form, because people have written a couple of reviews of it. Maybe Last Gasp made up advance reader's copies? I sleuthed up the fact that it was announced and then canceled, so I feel a little bit stuck. I can't get ahold of a copy, and it's making me feel a kind of desperation I usually reserve for... I don't know, Christmas or something. Call me Veruca.
(Also: officially: I'm a lot more interested in the JT Leroy hoax and the way it's situated/talked about culturally than I am invested in feeling betrayed. I'm like, really? You read Sarah and thought that had something to do with some kind of actual reality? You are stupid and deserve to feel betrayed.
Uh, no offense.) |
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[Jun. 28th, 2009|09:37 pm] |
1. I feel so complicated about the crew of 18-year-old dykes who just came through the bookstore in rainbow headbands that said Smirnoff, talking about last night's poker game and buying Chuck Palahniuk books. So complicated!
2. I just figured this out, told Alex and posted it to twitter, but since I don't want to do the thing where my livejournal tells you what I said on twitter every day, I'm going to tell you here, too: I figured out that Pride really is gay Christmas because I feel so disappointed, empty, and ashamed of our collective consumerism. |
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[Jun. 27th, 2009|10:28 am] |
Yesterday I got to hold Jenna's iPhone for a minute, so naturally I updated her facebook status a bunch of times. This is the story I told:
-I found a turtle!
-I named my turtle Phillip.
-I think Phillip is sad! How do you tell if a turtle is sad?
-Never mind, he is fine. I fed my turtle a little bug.
-Phillip threw up the little bug!
-I miss my turtle.
-Phillip ate the little bug again.
I wish *I* had an iPhone. |
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[Jun. 24th, 2009|07:41 pm] |
Thank you for your advice about pasta machines! This picture was on the desktop of the main computer at the book store. I don't know where it's from and it is not safe for your work.
( Sir! A message from Batman! ) |
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| arcane information request |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|07:18 pm] |
Okay, say you just got married(ish), and some folks gave you and your girlfriend some gift certificates to Amazon. Can you think of a good reason for you not to spend some of those gift certificates on this specific pasta maker machine? It's a little bit more than the gift certificate is worth, but I've had pasta machine ownership fantasies for at least a dozen years, at this point.
Um, you have. Hypothetical you has had these fantasies. |
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[Jun. 19th, 2009|03:25 pm] |
Also at the show last night I was at the bar waiting to buy a beer and these two girls came up beside me and one immediately started loudly yelling at me: "What do you weigh? What do you weigh?"
I was like, Oh god, and said, "I don't know."
She was shocked. "Every woman knows what she weighs," she yelled at me, her mouth very wide.
"Um, I don't," I said. "Knowing what I weigh makes me feel fucked up. I'd rather just not know."
"Let me lift you up and guess!"
I look at the bartender, who's doing a shot with somebody down at the end of the bar.
"No," I say.
"Come on! Let me! Okay," she says, "let me just guess what you weigh. I think..."
"I don't want to know," I said. "Please don't."
"130!" she yelled. "145!"
Man, I thought, last time I accidentally found out what I weighed, it was way more than that. Thinking about that made me start to feel bad. "Please stop," I said. The bartender showed up and took my order. "I really don't want to know what I weigh."
Then the second girl spoke for the first time: "Yeah! I don't know what I weigh either! Finding out that number gives you a number to obsess over and that doesn't do anything except make you feel shitty- plus I can just tell I've put on weight when my clothes are too tight, and then I need to stop eating for a while."
I guess she's never told her friend about this?
"Let me pick you up," the first girl demanded again. |
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[Jun. 19th, 2009|01:28 pm] |
I started feeling fluey early in the day yesterday, but we were playing a show. On the way to the city I stopped at the Goodwill store to see if I could find a dress to wear while we played the show- I was wearing an a-shirt and jeans, and I was fine with that because we were playing with the Lipstick Conspiracy, who I'd never seen before but who are notorious for fantastic outfits, so it seemed like if I dressed up I'd just look like a scrawny little sister or something so I decided to butch out. I thought having a sweet new dress to wear might help with the pukiness! They wouldn't give me change for the meter at Goodwill without buying anything, though, so I didn't find anything, picked up Sonya and Alicia, had Sonya drive, and got to the bar, where I started drinking. Obvs. Alex and Ellie came and then I started fixating on the idea of throwing up: it would be awesome if I threw up during the drum solo in "So!" Or the last verse of "Get Up," where there is no guitar.
"Get up off the floor, motherfucker," I'd sing, and then vomit, and then continue "because it's not about you any more."
I even drank a shot of whiskey (showily) after the second song, but I didn't throw up.
Also, we tried to do the Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover that we can kind of do, but we completely trainwrecked in the middle of the first chorus, Sonya gave me the finger, and then we played our last song, "Byline."
So it was a good night, even though the show itself was a goddam fiasco. I asked Alex, "Could you tell that I was really angry the whole time?" and she was like, "Yes." |
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[Jun. 17th, 2009|03:09 pm] |
Wow, I guess I just posted a thing in the ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) transgender community that got over 400 500 600 800 replies? That's a lot.
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[Jun. 15th, 2009|10:48 am] |
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I would like to read about the Trans Health Conference that just happened, please! It was the first one in five years I couldn't get to, and even though I always spend the whole time tired and grumpy and jaded I still wish I had been there. |
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