skirblog

what's inside a skirl?

Here's how it happened. You remember, because you are nothing but avid students of the skirblog, so references to past posts, esp. posts from only a few weeks ago illuminate little bulbs of recognition, like when I was last goin' on about Link Wray and the Cramps and all that...

Ok, so I thought the Link Wray would do it for me, and my man, MLV (new Gearhead is out. Dig it here) made me the XLNT Link Wray CD of not 22, and certainly not 24 Link Wray tunes, but the perfect 23. And I listened and dug heavily, but something was still nagging at me, and it turns out my goo goo was low on muck of all things. Yep, seemed my green fuzz was depleted, my bones not quite rockin'; my bird, sadly not the word. Yes, I was suffering from an acute lack of Lux and Ivy, (and Nick and many fine guitarists, but most of all Bryan Gregory (d.2001, heart attack) and Kid Congo. (C'mon... "Bryan Gregory" was the best name that guy could come up with. His real name was probably Merck Montclaire and he changed it to be different...): the Cramps, and it originally took a few loud, fuzzy chords from the Kills (saw 'em Sat. night at the horrible Slims in downtown SF. My old co-hort S..Sellars Nazzal joined me, and the two of us felt a little like the Kills' parents hanging out, proud of our kids. We still rock, kids. (and we both have kids who may one day rock) And so did the Kills rock. Far from their cool cool persona, they worked at making live music. Mr. Hince was drenched in sweat from thrashing and slicing away on his magically in tune guitar. And there are few things better right now than Allison Mosshart's hair, which hides her kinda scary expressions and beautiful wailing. They put on hell of a show.), who play a few Cramps-like chords on the song, "Midnight Train" which linked me to Link Wray, but it turns out it was always the Cramps! skeletons in many of our closets, and despite myself I realized I was cravin' and nothing short of full blown Crampdom. So you may not wanna talk to me right now. Nor read me either. Cause I'm... Cramped. 

How does somebody, some blog, discuss the Cramps in the year 2008? When the Cramps have been around longer than just about any band in your life, but unlike the Tubes, The Who, Joy Division, etc. are still puttin' out records and playing shows? When everything that could possibly be written about them has been written. But we don't believe that here at skirblog, inc. We know that there are always fresh bugs under any rock...

There from the first exalted cassette tape, bequeathed upon me, I'm pretty sure by ol' G. Kostelich (get hip, y'all), consisting of: side a) Songs the Lord Taught Us; side b) Psychedelic Jungle. This lethal combo was like being issued your basic uniform and weapons at boot camp in the Culture Wars. In the early '80s, coming into punk rock, having missed the first late '70s wave, you needed certain foundations to prepare you: Ramones, Television, Germs, Suicide (who the Kills often remind me of, not literally, but there is a shared spirit there), etc. and this tape of the Cramps was one of them. The Cramps didn't necessarily shock nor rewrite reality for me.  They sounded like they'd always been there, I mean, I did after all own Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt  Kickers 12" LP, Monster Mash, which I'd purchased with my paper route money (I don't know if you want to imagine me as a paper boy. I think I did a pretty good job of it. It enabled me to buy my own first stereo, the complete Who and Deep Purple catalogues up to that point as well as some odd 7" singles like: Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein;" Hot Butter, "Popcorn;" Queen, "Killer Queen;" etc.), so it made perfect sense to me that the Cramps did what they did. There was a niche to fill and it needed attention. Listen, "Human Fly" had to be made, if not by the Cramps, then by somebody else, believe me.

This is not a far fetched notion either, as it came to light later, most of the Cramps early recordings were actually *gasp* covers. Really. "Goo Goo Muck" was a cover. "Garbage Man," (which has one of the scariest, heaviest, most evil and beautiful rhythm guitar things going on in its background...) was a cover. Some of you knew this from the beginning. Some of you, like I failed to do, took your Mark E. Smiths seriously and listened to Link Wray every Saturday.  Or were, like Lux and Ivy were purported to be, serious obscure record collectors, and knew all the novelty tunes, weird one-off's and deep, dark vinyl ephemera. You can hear what the Cramps heard, albeit a lot less scratchy I'm imagining, on the now six record collection called "Born Bad." which has culled the original songs from whence the Cramps poached, and others from whence they were merely inspired. I'll tell you this: they, the Cramps, were fucking geniuses. Just listen to the original "Rockin' Bones," by Ronnie Dawson, a very up-tempo, rockabilly number sung in falsetto, (or maybe Dawson was really a  woman.. see album cover on right), subject matter slightly morbid in a campy fun kind of way. Which is where the Cramps re-working, slowing it way down, adding the balls, the volume and the electricity, is still campy and fun, but now also kinda menacing and thrilling and like it was probably supposed to be, even though they didn't write it. Weird huh?. And its all good (bakery inc.).

And we haven't even started talking about their personae, their show, their stance, their freakin' names for gods sake. The Gearhead dude said the other day that arguably "Lux Interior" is the single best punk rock pseudonym ever thunk up, and who's gonna argue that one? Lee Ving? Jello Biafra? No one, that's who. Then you got the interesting case of Ms. Poison Ivy Rorschach, who still fascinates and mystifies, (you can spend hours, as I have done, watching and re-watching their legendary Urgh, a Music War performances and the infamous Napa State Hospital footage on yinztube, where Ivy just stands there chewing gum and looking rather disgusted at the antics of Mr. Interior as he fellates the microphone and writhes around on the floor, his nasty leather half-pants barely covering him; and she, Ivy, in glitter stretch spandex and giant hair, barely moves. But she's brandishing her guitar, and chewing gum and looking utterly bored, yet each time her hand comes down, its a whip crack of high reverb, overblown twanging, domintrix strumming, cool. Chewin' gum.), and that's all well and good (bakery, inc.) and interesting, but not as interesting fresh and ass-kicking as their music sounds to me right now. As early as 1978 they were stripping things down, eschewing bass players, as is all the rage today, and keeping things very minimal,  hitting a clean snare hard and exactly when it needed to be hit. Funny how parodic and indebited to Elvis all of it is, yet for a non-Elvis fan like myself, exists simultaneoulsy without referencing Elvis at all. 

But what some people miss is that outside of the Halloween schtick, the Cramps, in their own garbled, heavily mediated (OK and medicated) way, managed to say a thing or two about... stuff.  (acutally they say: Life is short... and filled with stuff... don't know what for... I aint had enough...) and actually have a stance.  This is crazy because its subtle, and the Cramps are maybe the least subtle band ever next to KISS. Yet a song like "The Way I Walk," makes the same powerful statements about non-conformity that any of their punk contemporaries made, more in the way they play it then the way they say it. Yes the song is a cover, and is already about non-conformity, but the re-working the Cramps give it plays the theme out in the flesh. Lux and Ivy did walk the walk. Never broke character. The way the lived was just the way they lived. (Zen?)

My favorite lyric right now is from "What's Inside a Girl," oddly feminist in its way, and devotional:

Well there's some things I just can't swallow -- mama told me that girls are hollow.
Uh-uh...What's inside a girl? Something's telling me there's a whole nuther world.

I have to agree with Lux on this one. There is a whole nuther world, a universe really inside a girl, and the day I understood this, and also understood that its OK that I will never understand it, was the day things got clearer in my life.

Sound a bit zennish? Maybe. Maybe not. The Buddhists amongst you (and I know you're out there) will disagree. And agree. (we could go on like this forever). I will say that I've been dabbling in the zennastic arts of late, thanks to the wonderful women G&C (Za Goblets), who facilitated initiation rites to those less centered, myself being one of them. We got this priest, see? And he rules, ok? and he's teaching/showing us the basics. There aint a lot of complicated specs to this. Basically you try to sit still for x amont of time, and try hard not to think specific thoughts, or think thoughts about not thinking thoughts, or hear Cramps or Kills or Link Wray songs playing in your head, even when you've just come back from Kills show and their waves have been etched into your wavy folds. This is harder than it sounds. And easier. (see...)  I can tell you I may not fathom the universe inside a girl, but I do know that the skib's legs and buttox are def. not meant to sit on the floor cross legged for x amount of time. There are helpful cushions involved, all beginning with the letter z: zafus and zabutons made I believe in Zebulon and Zenda. You got your zazen sitting at your zendos and your zebras and zithers. I'm not gonna say too much about this other than its great, but I couldn't tell you why, other then what's inside a skirl? We may one day find out..

If you can't dig me you can't dig nothin'. Do you want the real thing, or are you
just talkin'? do you understand? I'm the skirblog man.

erratic ambulatory patterns

The Odd and Erratic Ambulatory Patterns of Species H. Sapiens; Genus, Homo, Observed Particular to East/West Pedestrian Corridors Formed by the Nexus “Market Street” Bisecting the Urban Core of San Francisco, California, USA - by skirblog.

In other words, people, we don’t know how to even walk down the goddamn street. And before we even try to discuss issues of a larger and more complex nature ie: politics, ethics, science, coffee, we need to take a step back and figure out why the act of walking east to west down a street, god forbid north and south, causes so many of us so much confusion, pain and ultimate failure.

Forget why we drive like we do.  Why the price of gas is $4. Why we elected, then RE-fucking elected Bush; why we let our most holy corporations invade Iraq; sell guns, cigarettes, pollution and drugs?  There’s no way we can know the reasons behind any of these things until we know why we cannot walk down the freaking streets collectively in San Francisco without bumping into each other.

There is a strong disorienting force centered at Market Street from the Embarcadero, West (sup, JP!) toward Powell.  If you traverse this route you will notice mass confusion bordering on anarchy on the sidewalks. There is no logical flow, no agreed upon lanes for walking one way or the other, no passing strategies that don’t create strange ripple effects and whorls of confusion. Abrupt stopping, turning, weaving, pivoting and requisite dynamic cell phone yammering is encouraged and liberally employed.  Erratic maneuvering is not bound by economic or racial profiles.

Oddly the phenomenon dissipates the further south of Market Street you travel.  One block parallel south on Mission St, the mayhem abates slightly, enough that more standard “rights” and “lefts” are adhered to. Breakdowns occur primarily at intersections where the addition of opposing foot traffic crossing streets is enough to throw most H.S. Sapiens subjects into either aggressive non-cooperative patterns or even more randomized scattering.

Each successive block south tends to resolve closer to the established traffic patterns we are familiar with from urban centers like New York or Philadelphia.  By the time you encounter Howard or Folsom Streets, the phenomena has evaporated by factors of 50 or more.  Here you can almost imagine a society where the lowest and most basic levels of civilization can spring forth, where people have agreed to walk together in one direction or another, albeit either wearing leather chaps or pissing themselves, yet finally some progress can be made into higher consciousness areas like:

Coffee.

High consciousness area.  I have written before on my amateurish connoisseurship of beverages: tequila, beer and coffee. I thought I might have even known something about coffee, having visited Seattle during the pre-Starbuck’s golden days; or Peet’s #1 in Berkeley’s famed gourmet ghetto. I have also been in the coffee wastelands, Pittsburgh during the pre-Starbuck invasion of 1996, dark days where Maxwell House and Folgers reigned supreme. I have been through not one, but two Café Illy home espresso machines, trading up recently to the lovely Francis Francis X5. I will cross the street and pay double to get some Peets when Starbucks is offering free lattes right in front of my face. But really, it turns out, I didn’t know nuttin’ (I was gonna say, “beans”) about coffee, until finally, as was promised and prophesized, the mythical Blue Bottle Coffee opened up in the former alley of piss and disgust, across from our poor Kronikle building down there in San Francisco.

The initial buzz (oh, my! I didn’t plan that one!) on this new Blue Bottle Café, was that they somehow cajoled a cabal of secretive, high priest coffee lords in Japan to sell them one of their futuristic, mythical, halogen powered coffee siphon machines, only two of which, according to the New York Fucking Times, EXIST in the USA, the other being, you guessed it, New Fucking York, each one costing something like a billion dollars and performing coffee feats which defy the laws of gravity and thermodynamics. But that’s not what we actually learned about coffee at Blue Bottle. What we learned was we had never tasted coffee before because we ordered a cup of regular, drip, and our buds were blown, our consciousness altered and our definitions of coffee thrown into dissarray.

This drip isn’t coming outta no URN neither.  Nor air-pot, hotpot or carafe. No, it is individually ground when you pay your two dollars (and 17 cents for some reason), for it, then put into a filter and dripped, at its own pace, which is not quick or rushed, and which will be fussed over by a human barista, who oversees the dripping from start to finish, swirling and adding water when necessary. So there will be a wait, but a good wait, since you will have time to watch the various scientists work the mythic Japanese machine; or ponder the glass globules that rise next to it, which turn out to be some kind of iced coffee extractor, or something Eratosthenes used to determine the circumference of the Earth. Ahh, Eratosthenes.  After gaping at this for a spell, your coffee will be presented to you and you will not be prepared, I’m afraid, for the sensory experience you are about to have.

If you’re like me, (and god help you if you are) and love the smell of coffee, but have often been disappointed that it does not actually taste like it smells. Maybe its best that way. Maybe were not supposed to taste something so deep as coffee aroma. We wouldn't be able to handle its siren song, luring one away with wispy mocha tentacles to a perhaps unsafe place. The literal taste of coffee can certainly be wonderful, and often faintly echoes the aroma, or in tragic cases of bad coffee, outright contradicts it. Even the taste of Peets, as rich and wonderful as it can be, cannot seem to fully escape its origins as a charred product. But Blue Bottle has found the magic spot, the stopping point right before Peet’s char, the expression of the word, Mocha, the taste paralleling the smell.  Like wine it is spicy, fruity, alive. When I smell it and taste it I think of the Earth, but an Earth at a time I couldn’t possibly know of. That aint bad for a cup of joe.

Earth…

Is what I emerged from Aquarius Records the other day holding, specifically “Earth 2 - Special Low Frequency Version,” along with Sunn O)))’s “Flight of the Behemoth." This is what happens when you go into a store like Aquarius looking for Glenn Branca’s numbered symphonies and they are fresh out.  But you follow some logical moves down the bins and realize you wanna hear some guitar drone. And the drone is good, crunchy and thick. And s-l-o-w. And performed by dudes clad exclusively in druid like robes (which I hope is playful and ironic but I get the unsettled feeling that it is deadly serious...). You must be patient and listen to these bands in a different way than say, the Kills, not so much an active listening, but  an absorption of sound. The Kills, who’s new release, “Midnight Boom,” is being processed by the skir right now several thousand times in succession, is a keeper.  Oddly, my favorite tune on the thing is the “bonus track” “Midnight Train,” you can only get when you download it from iTunes, so another death knell for ye olde CD shoppe. (Expect Aquarius, where CD’s tend to be about $10 anyway, and you get their famously comprehensive descriptions, miniaturized right there on the covers, so its just like the Internet kids!  Aquarius is not afraid to take chances, we all know that, but shit, when I was browsing for guitar drone, some very nice, solid indie rock was playing in the store, reminded me of Silkworm or the Thermals maybe.  When I was paying for my Dark Metal (also nabbed the new Frank Black release), I was stunned and astounded to see REM’s new disc on the “now playing” stand.  “Has this been playing the whole time?” I asked the dude.  He just nodded sagely.  Dang, you never fucking know, do you? And I don’t even like REM, never did, and own exactly none of their music.) But the Kills bonus track starts off sounding a hell of a lot like the Cramps, which is always a good thing, then gets into a very tight rocking slot. The Kills don’t invite you in necessarily, they put up some walls, but they have some great shit to say about rock!  They are one of the truly successful “post modern” bands I can think of, and we’ll have to leave it at that for now.  Def. going to see them in May over in SF.

Cramps…

Were what I thought I heard the other day on Fourth St in Berkeley. But impossible, I thought. I’m on Fourth Street, home of Z-Gallerie, Anthropologie and lots of other stores that insist on spelling their names with “ie’s,” except our old friends, Down Home Records, where the dude was broadcasting some kind of giant Link Wray 4000 song CD comp on the people walking to and fro, most using Hummer-style, all terrain baby strollers to clear a path to the next scented candle or boutique paper shoppe.  I was stopped in my tracks (ill advised lest you want your toes amputated and your shins removed by the Hummers) and mesmerized by the kind of rockabilly, kind of punk strumming, and thought about how I sadly don’t own any Link Wray.  My only attempt to buy some Link Wray was about 20 years ago at one of Pittsburgh’s infamous used record retailers (Jerry’s, Recycler, Jims, or the one MLV (sup, Babe!) and I can’t remember the name of on Forbes nr. Criag in pre-gentrification Pittsburgh), urged on, as I often am, by Mark E. Smith who sang so earnestly about listening to Link Wray “every Saturday.” So I gets me the vinyl home and pull it out and it’s not Link Wray at all inside. It’s like the Ventures or something else… so wtf?   It only took the mearest mention of this to my long lost friend, again, sup MLV, who burned me a more manageable comp (23 songs should be enough for any sane man) of Link Wray, before I even had Limewire up and running. Thanks Link, Mike and of course Gearhead, who’s various incarnations: magazines, logo shirts and stickers, are now suddenly adorning my life.

Gear not-head.  My workhorse-like ’97 VW Jetta, the poor green one you see around town with all the Godzilla’s glued to the dashboard, and all the empty white Tic Tac cartridges scattered about, yes, the same one that I poured two bottles of brake fluid into its coolant reservoir, has just hit the 100K mile mark, no thanks to me. I’m not exactly a mechanic if you know what I mean, but I do have one of most elegantly designed and threatening looking set ups for playing my ipod over its radio.

Also a source of numeric pride is the skirblog itself, having just surpassed the 35,000th page view, and it only took four years or so. Yes a miniscule number compared to a lot of blogs and sites and free porn, etc., and factoring out Gina and Courtney and now MLV and his gang, and those good souls still in the ‘burgh (sup, Sam!), I can’t fathom who else is reading this. Don’t be afraid to write in to adore, laud, praise or correct, chastise or flame, so I’ll know you’re out there.

Fire.

If you did not like Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited, and many of you did not, you at least have to thank the guy for putting the Stone’s “Playing with Fire” back into our heads and hearts.  I liked the film, didn’t nec. LUV it on first viewing as with his two middle masterpieces, Tenenbaums and Rushmore; but remembered how well Life Aquatic improved on subsequent viewings. For Darjeeling, I watched it again the next day, thanks to my new best friend, Pay Per View. (Here’s a phenomena that needs exploration: Why would a person who enjoys watching movies at home, enjoys the ease and selection of Netflix, REFUSE to go and put a DVD into the gotdamn machine to watch it?  DVDs will be sitting there, while hours are spent flipping through the awful cable channels watching whatever comes on, Ultraviolet for the 11th time (LOVE YOU MILLA!); various halfs and parts of movies you’ve seen over and over again, when three unwatched DVDs sit right there glaring at you from their Netflix envelopes? It can’t be simple laziness can it? I mean, I am lazy, but do get off the couch to go to the bathroom, get iced tea, check my blog numbers, eat pistachio nuts, why wouldn’t I pop in the damn disc? But I won’t. And when I finally admitted this out loud to myself and others, I was happy. I cancelled Netflix because a system exists for people like me, people who only want to watch a movie they happen to find AT THE TIME, not one they’ve pre-planned to see, and that’s Pay Per View. Suddenly I wanted to see Darjeeling, so after I was sure I exhausted all the cable channels of potential Milla Jovavich sightings, I scrolled up to Pay Per View and ordered some Darjeeling even though this entails the use of a totally separate and counter-intuitive remote, that more often than not I have to get up off my ass to get out of the drawer, the same drawer which holds the unwatched DVDs. So any social psychologists out there want to comment on this, please do).

I am an unapologetic Wes Anderson apologist. I can only apologize for not seeing Darjeeling Limited in the theater. I do find things of value in his films, do extra work that I may not do for another filmmaker, as I did with Darjeeling, which Anderson himself calls “probably his least loved film.”  One reason for this “less love” I’ve discovered, is the departure it takes setting most of the action in the “real world” of India.  His other, more loved films are set in imaginary worlds, where whimsy and eccentricity make sense and have emotional weight: the alterno-schools of Rushmore; the alterno-New York of Tenenbaums the alterno-seas of Life Aquatic. But Darjeeling is set in a "real" India, and this seems to cause a disjunction between the quirkiness of the actors, who normally thrive in the alterno-worlds, and their flat connection to the real setting. It just doesn’t have the magic.  Yet Darjeeling leaves real India a few times, and those are its best scenes: the flashback to NY when the brothers try to retrieve their dead father’s car; the Monastery where their mother is hiding; and in the short prequel film, The Hotel Chevalier set in an alterno-French hotel. These are short visions of the characters in their natural habitats, where they thrive. Unfortunately when they’re taken out and put on a real train in real India, there is a noticeable letdown.

There is though a great scene in the monastery where the sons are reunited with their elusive mother. They sit in a circle while the Stones song, “Play With Fire” fires up as the camera pans to each character.  If you watch that scene a few times you start to wonder if the whole movie wasn’t in fact based on the lyrics to this song, and an imagined family that would have sprung from the lyrical one.  Multiple viewings also gives you a jones for the Stones, a jones you haven’t had in many, many years.  This spawned a fairly serious Stones jag that dominated my car and ipod for over a week. The result was the knowledge that right now in my life, my five favorite (apologies to the new, “Mr. Five,” Lavellablog) Stones songs are:

1.    Play with Fire
2.    Jigsaw Puzzle
3.    Monkey Man
4.    Parachute Woman
5.    Stray Cat Blues

That the majority of these come from Beggar’s Banquet says something, but other than that Beggar’s Banquet is my favorite Stones album I couldn’t tell you.

Back in childhood, the list would have read:

1.    Honky Tonk Woman
2.    Sympathy for the Devil
3.    Brown Sugar
4.    Satisfaction
5.    19th Nervous Breakdown / Get off of my Cloud (tie)

So a personal growth/change of character is encoded in the Stones songs, as it is in the film Darjeeling.

As I get up to get more pistachio nuts I realize that while its good to find an already shelled nut, say at the bottom of the bowl, it’s much better to crack one yourself before it. It just tastes better that way, and the reason why, is the answer to all my questions here.

i don't like this version of the matrix

I woke up the other day (redundant, unless this is posthumous...) and thought: "I don't like this version of the Matrix." The world was seeming weird, pre-fab, on a pointless loop, most people unhappy, their creativity, higher purposes and spirits locked into mundane rat races, 9-5 type jobs, and stresses and concerns that add up to what? Really,  they need to reboot the matrix asap, the damn thing!  And when I start feeling Matrix-y and dark, and when old, panicky feelings of doom and anxiety start bubbling up, and when my blood runs cold as Bart runs beneath the Bay, and I cry during re-runs of M*A*S*H, I had to admit that the ol' depression was sneaking back into my life. Seems friend Lexapro, which had been doing me right for about 1.5 years now, was leaving me in the lurch.. "Just take more," was everybody's answer, and that will be the new catch phrase for the '08s -- "just take more." True, I was taking what is considered a low dose of the stuff, so why not up the sucker?  But I worried that I was just throwing meds at the problem and was
now in a cycle of addiction that would never end.  When would I emerge clean and bright and living in ZION? But those are a depressed's thoughts. So yeah, I increased and am here in the transition.

To help I thought I'd take a trip into the Matrix within the Matrix: good ol TiVo. Got all my Daily Show's (killer) and Lost (psychedelic) and I also noticed VH1 was running what they called "Classic 120 Minutes," the old "alternative" video show from back in the day at MTV, that I used to waste countless (well, two, really) sleepless hours on Sunday nights jacked into back, way back when. That should be a fun jaunt down memory lane eh? Probably won't make me cry either, but ya never know.
"Alternative" in quotes because it was supposed to contain videos which weren't mainstream enough for the regular MTV; radical stuff like U2, the Cure, the Knack!  But in truth, 120 Minutes was not all that different from regular MTV when it started: you sat though hours of dreck (U2, the Cure, the Knack!) to see one or two cool videos.  Oh, if only we had Tivo back then. Or Lexapro for that matter. Think of the hours of our lives given back to us.

Things did not start well. First video off the block was Blind Lemon's "No Rain," featuring that poor, dancing bee girl, and that poor, lead singer guy. This wasn't "alternative" back when it used to air (every 15 minutes or so), but I guess in 2008 it is now considered freaky.  In any case it sure was bad. Nuff said. Then came an unfortunate mélange of truly pedestrian gack: 10,000 Maniacs, Madness, the Cure, the Church, Green Day, Human League and Tori Amos; then a video that seemed to start out promising, "Black Sunshine" by White Zombie, (crazy typewriter typing, Iggy Pop narrating) but quickly devolved into ugliness and repetition, the main ugliness supplied by having to look at Rob Zombie in his youth, while the song began to sound just like guys across the street running a leaf blower for 20 minutes. And I used to LIKE that kind of thing!  I sped through that nonsense and saw by Tivo's time line that I was just about through the first hour. A write-off to be sure, thank god it was only about 6 minutes of my life this time around.

At this point and completely out of nowhere, Wire, of all bands, appeared on screen. I was jazzed. Wire! I don't think I'd ever seen a video by them before, and I braced myself for something truly amazing, I mean Wire! the Ur band, one of the progenitors. My serotonin dripped and surged.  But my joy turned quickly sour as Wire became Madness and mugged their way through Eardrum Buzz, a tune from their, I don't know, Madness Period?  Jee-zus it was bad, and I spit, ptoo, ptoo, the nasty taste outta my mouth, and thought that the evil machine architects of the Matrix had done this on purpose, had inserted this bogus Wire video into the equation to sully what had once been good. And I despaired.  But, for naught! because the Wire was just a cruel, false teaser of sorts, right on its heels at 0:55 min, came the unmistakable opening kraangs of Joy Division's, "Love will Tear Us Apart."  I held my breath. After the Wire, what was this gonna be? Some kind of crappy compilation of stills and album cover shots strung together?  No, it was fukkin Joy Division playing Love Will Tear Us Apart in a room. Straight up. No fancy cuttin' and editin. Just the Joy and the Division. I don't think I'd ever seen this video before.  It was professionally done. Ian was wearing the big white Vox up high on his chest and played it gently once or twice. Steve Morris was impressive, I mean the dude at such a young age really set a difficult task for himself trying to drum like a drum machine on every song. Images of Sumner were fleeting as he pecked on a keyboard.  It ended, as all Joy Division songs do, with a touch of melancholy and "what ifs."  But triumphant none the less, and I pressed (Tivo) onward.

Hour two tried to pull a similar Wire false hope stunt right off the bat, but I was on to them now.  The words, "Damned" appeared, but on screen was some version of Dave Vanian, all dressed in an elaborate romantic cowboy getup singing "Alone Again Or" which I googled was an Arthur Lee, Love cover. Uh, to be nice and cause it was the Damned, or parts of the Damned, I'll just say it was embarrassing and leave it at that.

Then came that famous duet between Iggy Pop and Kate Pierson from the B52's. Wha?  Were they like dating or something? I sure hope so cause there can't be too many other explanations for the existence of this video. And again things looked quite dire. A turn came at exactly 1:34 with a surprise art video, Cracker's excellent, "Low."  Yes, you heard me, Cracker and excellent.  This song anyway. Remember them? I don't really. It was one of the dudes from Camper Van Beethoven.  "Low" is shot in black and white is edited like some real professional shit, while also containing gratuitous Sandra Bernhardt as some kind of weird, disheveled  boxing chick who eventually knocks the stuffing out of David Lowery. Its a cool song and for some reason it all works. Check it out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jywZEjSiCBM

A short interlude then occurred with the lovely, "Save it for Later," by the English Beat, and it would be damn hard to ruin that song no matter what enormously inane video you shoot for it, even though they gave it the ol' college try. Time was grinding down and it looked like there would be no Pixies (although skirb was treated to the "Loud Quiet Loud" Pixies doc. over at Milvia Manor this week, complete with stereophonic sound and more pixels or dots or lines than I've even seen gathered on one screen before.  The doc follows their reunion tour of '04 and paints them as mostly old, overweight, (gratuitous Frank Black topless shots aplenty!) dysfunctional, non-communicative people who know how to play the same songs together on stage. Def. check it out.), no Screaming Trees or Urge Overkill, no The Cynics (Pgh's own, who were rumored to have a video in the files over at MTV, never to be seen).  But only more drek, The The; bad period Tubes (breaks my heart) and yet another Madness number!!  But they know me now, the machine squid programmers in Matrix land. They let the bar sink awfully low, they will bring the clouds before they let the sun shine.  So I waited.  Then  finally came something with some teeth, and they happened to be attached to the shiny bald head of one Sinead O'Connor.

"Emperor's New Clothes," was the song, and I didn't believe my reaction either, not being one to wax ecstatic about Ms. O'Connor in public, I've harbored an on-going respect for her and affinity for her first couple albums, forced as I was to listen to her, ad nauseam, when I first met F, it was tough love. I grew to like her stuff. This video was a remarkable piece of work: First shot of empty stage, then Sinead pacing around like a caged animal (said F), but it was apt, Sinead bald, lovely and nervous, getting ready to read us the riot act of "Emperor's New Clothes."  The video is a study in contradictions. Sinead is both very graceful and incredible awkward in this video, affecting swan-like movements of her hands and neck, yet dancing around like a drunk with shoeboxes for shoes; she's very femininely beautiful, shaved head and all, but also very masculine looking at times, neck bulging and ugly; she's confrontational, approaching the camera undaunted, and demure looking away with those fluttering eyes; she evokes power but not really sexuality. Watch it again and again here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlPCl6aF5VA

Shit, I miss ol' Sinead O'Connor, is what it boiled down to. Iconoclastic, in her own world, and you can't deny the voice. You don't believe me? Listen to Mandinka.

Remember when she ripped the pope photo on SNL? I do since we just had Easter, god bless her.  I was also wondering, to digress, why Easter came so early this year,  foolishly thinking that Easter, like Xmas is on a fixed date right?  None of my Catholic family or friends knew why the date moves around.  I mean, there was a day Christ was born, right? Christmas? Shouldn't there also be a day that Christ rose?  O' silly Jew, the date of Easter is anything but simple, turns out, its fraught with centuries of ecclesiastical in-fighting, Jew-baiting, and crazy mathematical, astronomical and ecumenical tweaking and revision. Nowadays we like to think that Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first new moon after Spring Equinox. Which is why it changes, since the moon don't give a shit about our Julian Calendar. (See Cat Power, "The Moon"). The cool thing is that Easter won't be this early for about another 250 years or so. And it hasn't been this early for almost that long. Cool also because its so fucking silly, so cosmically silly. What date? What event? What calendar? 120 minutes is now six minutes.  Take two pills instead of one. And wait for a better version of the Matrix.

beloved complainer

I feel like its been a pretty boring couple of weeks (no offense to those of you I’ve encountered, you were all fascinating, really. Its me, honestly…) Actually it is me. I’m bored. Just what I hate to hear my kid say. "How can you be bored?" I always answer like my parents before me. With a  room full of fun stuff and most of it ignored... Same with me. Tons to do, but the ennui.  Not that I haven’t seen some good DVDs and some good TV and hey, I’m actually reading a good book right now! Maybe it’s the rain. Seriously, I mean forget about discussing Saul Bellow's  Humboldts Gift, right? Pulitzer, NAY Nobel Prize be damned, I'm like half way through it. No, its my newfound love of white Tic Tacs that's on my mind. Ever since the teeth yanking of last month, I have been loathe to chew gum. And there were several occasions when I liked to chew gum, esp. whilst driving, and after work, walking to the ferry, and of course on the ferry. Some gum. But since the yanking, my teeth configuration feels off – the three new spaces in my mouth don’t seem right, and chewing gum makes the feeling worse. Make sense? Now I’m also a bit of a toothpick man. Yup. I likes to have me a toothpick around, this actually from my root canal of last year. Remember that! Ah, what a blog that was, I’m still getting comments about it: my root canal. Sigh. Well the canal left a sizable gap in the upper quadrant of me fool gulliver and a toothpick is almost always needed. And of course its well known: the ladies love a guy chomping on a toothpick.  Yep, I'm cool.

I don’t know how I got onto the white Tic Tacs. First I was drawn to the green Tic Tacs, spearmint, which are 100% vile, and wintergreen, which aren’t bad. And they’ve got like watermelon and lime and why would anyone want the white ones? How old school is that? But there I was in my favorite store, Longs Drugs, who often only have one version of something you may want, and this time it was the white Tic Tacs. So whatta you gonna do? But imagine my delight at the pleasure of the white Tic Tac – Their initial smooth vanilla flavor, dissolving quickly into peppermint! Its almost too much pleasure for such a little thing. Soon the empty Tic Tac cartridges were stacking up. What to do with them? Sculpture? Obsessive collecting? Hmm. Haven’t quite decided yet. Even the kid seemed to want them for a spell, but soon realized they are good for nothing. But full, they are good for everything. One or two at a time, sometimes three in extreme situations, but never four.

Remember that “Hair Cuts” sign from the other week? Well here’s another sign from my local walking area that deserves our attention: "Tapioca Dring" This is funny, but also kinda sad as well. Obviously a lot of effort was put into the sign, and it is a beautiful rendition of the vibrancy of tapioca drinks. And its easy to make fun of people’s bad spelling. I’ve been in this restaurant, and the dude who runs it is super nice. Probably too nice, and has a propensity for professionally made, misspelled signs (like "Daily's Special..."), but this one is a little weird in its incorrectness. And again, a little sad.

Speaking of typos. And don’t we love 'em, huh? I should mention two classics that came over the death wires of late:  (they didn’t get published, we caught them, but where’s the fun in that?) one notice asked for donations in the person’s name be made to the “American Mean Association.” I’m assuming they meant the American Heart Association, but talk about Freudian slips, when whoever was typing that out…
And this one which got a place on our infamous “wall of shame:” a man was noted as the decedent's “beloved complainer.” Beloved complainer! We knew they meant "companion," but really.  I said that had that been my notice, it would have been correct. Me, beloved complainer. And charter member of the American Mean Association...

I will complain about a few movies I’ve seen on the tube lately. First, The Number 23, with Jim Carey. Don’t want to expend too many electrons on it, other than to say if you spend the second half of your movie literally having the characters explain the first half, then you’ve failed on all levels.
Then there was a strange film called The Story of Us, which did have a lot going for it in some ways, good cast: Bruce Willis, Rob Reiner (who directed), Paul Reiser, and Michelle Pfeiffer, and a couple of good lines from Reiner and Reiser (“ei” rules when it comes to Jewish comedy…) but I have to ask of a film like this, which chronicles the nastiness of a marriage gone bad, and does so with great writing and acting and realism: why is this "entertaining?" Why the fuck do we want to see it? It is so depressing, and if it isn’t done artfully (like We Don’t Live Here Anymore), and is going more for comedy, then I have to ask, why?  Paul Reiser, as a (gasp) loud mouthed Jewish agent even says to his client, looking down from his glass tower: “see all those people down there? They all know they’re going to die. That’s why they’re so picky about their entertainment.” I agree. Carl Reiner gets off the two best shots however in his dumbass advice to the sinking Bruce Willis: 1) “There is no ass.”  The legs just thicken at their tops, what we think of as the ass, is purely a construct of language and perception. Deep right? And when asked about the longevity of his relationship, said 2) “Hate fades.”
We’ll see.

Music? It’s still the Kills people. Argh. I’m latched on and cannot latch off. Me and the kiddo were spending about ten hours over that Barnes and Noble the other day, so he could buy some books, so his eyeballs wouldn’t totally distend from his sockets from Halo 3, and dangle pendulously to and fro. He likes books. Sometimes. Esp. if they have cartoons liberally interspersed among the words, oh yes, graphic novels, I believe they’re called. Some of the ones he likes now are Japanese, although a major publisher of these books, Viz Media, I’m gonna say now, I have a grudge against. Seems I interviewed with them several years ago for some kind of copy editing job. And even though said job was about 20 steps below the level of work I should be doing, I thought it would be a fun company to work for, and certainly better than where I was at the time, where things were BAD

So I secure an interview, which in itself ain't easy these days, but it goes swimmingly, they show me around, all very nice, ask a lot of questions, give me a copy test, seem genuinely interested. Then, you guess it, nothing. Now we’ve all seen this millions of times, right? It shouldn’t even warrant the pixels here its so common. But something about this really bothered me, more than the others. And believe me, I’ve been rejected by PLENTY of jobs, some of them I really wanted. No, this was mysterious. About three of the managers there gave me their business cards, so when I didn’t hear back, even after I’d sent courteous emails thanking them, and inquiring after their health, and then, after waiting the appropriate time, called and left messages, never to be put through, never to get a response. I finally made the plea: hey, really, I have no hard feelings if you don’t want to hire me, believe me I, more than most, understand. But since I came down and met you and spent the better part of a day filling out forms, and talking, and testing, I was kind of wondering what happened. Just a word, "you suck," or "we decided we hated you," or anything would put this to bed for me, or maybe you could advize my humble self so that I know why I was knocking on the wrong door. That's it. 10 seconds of your life. We'll move on. But nothing. Their silence was deafening. Viz Media! Write it down. Look for their books. They’re EVIL! Something was said. Some back room info was passed down to them from Employer X. They were so horrified, nay, MORTIFIED by whatever they learned about me, they tried to go on as if I never existed! What was it Viz Media? Sufficient time as passed, you can tell me now: did I spell “manga” as “mango?” Did I edit from right to left? What?

So needless to say I wasn’t spending my (son’s) hard earned cash on any Viz Media products. (Oooh, I know that hurts you to read that Viz. Sorry its come down to that.) We did get some manga, but from a rival company. Also some books with a lot of words in them. Then I was passing by the giant magazine rotunda, and who’s lovely faces did I see archly looking back at me from the “Women’s Interest” section? You guess it, The Kills. There on the cover of something called “Nylon” magazine. I looked at the kid. He looked at me. “don’t do it, dad,” he said, but I was compelled. “It’s the Kills!” Plus this mag was only about $5, instead of the $19 most magazines seem to be these days.  And pretty nice article on them too. A bunch of pix, and a decent interview. Nylon seems to be largely about British fashion and music, and I have been carefully studying it. I know what makeup Alison Mosshart used on the photo shoot. I know that Hince dates Kate Moss. Sheet, I thought they were a couple. All kinds of stuff that shouldn't matter if you like their music. Pretty.

Speaking of books containing lots of words, I return, out of less boredom now, to Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift. Why? Well, its been laying around the house for a while now. Who knows how long really. I don’t know where it came from or why. But I, like so many I know right now, have been afflicted by this weird, “I can’t read anything” bug. So many people aren’t finishing what they pick up to read, or are just sick of reading books, that I wonder, is it some kind of epidemic? I go through this often. And when it gets really bad, and I’ve put down three of the books I just bought, cause they just aren’t doing it for me, and I’ve read Nylon Magazine cover to cover, and there aint’ shit on TV ‘cept Lost (don’t get me started…) and I’m wandering around looking at the books I didn’t just purge during the last purge, and grab a handful of weird shit like William Blake and Laurence Sterne and Saul Bellow and toss around and examine Humboldt’s Gift!  I've seen it before, I’ve opened it up many times and not gotten further than page one. But you’ve got to be ready for the book and the book’s got to be ready for you, right?  So Humboldt fucking rules. You want a book that rules the Earth? This is it. I’m only about half way through, and Pulitzer and Nobel prize aside, it might end up sucking, right? So I’ll check back with you in a bit on that one.

Until then its just me, your beloved complainer saying "goodbye," "hate fades," and of course, "there is no ass."

skirblama

Skirblama

Some dude in the NY Times letters the other day had it right: Obama and Clinton are not “divisive” to Democrats as the gasp media wants them to be. Quite the opposite: we, for the first time in forever, are experiencing an “embarrassment of riches” and would probably be just as happy to vote for one as the other when it comes down to it. I know that I, after I’d voted for Obama in my very old school polling place up in Oaktown (you had to draw a line from the front part of an arrow to the back, thereby completing the arrow on a piece of paper, which was then fed into a “vote-a-matic” machine to be somehow manipulated in George Bush’s favor somewhere. Way less tech, by the way, then the giant voting machines we used to vote on back in the ‘burg circa 1980. I left the church (always voting in a church… ) actually feeling good! Good about my vote! I can’t remember the last time that happened.

Why Obama for skirblog?  Its not that I’m anti Clinton. I will even admit to liking Bill Clinton, something that the millions who elected, then re-elected the dude are reluctant to do anymore, and I still like him. I’m not as crazy about Hilary, but I do believe that a woman should run this country.  All countries really.  Unfortunately Hilary disappoints mightily about the freakin’ war, she hems and haws about timetables and coalitions and all the bullshit we’re already hearing, none of which is gonna do a goddamn thing (see how I’ve switched to the rhetoric of political blogging?)  Obama, on the other hand, has come right out and said the war is not working and will not work and he will bring our troops home. Imagine that, a candidate coming out and saying something. Sheet. We need to end this bullshit war immed.

You don’t usually see the skirblog getting’ political, so I will stop.  But wanna hear a great anti-war song from an unlikely source? Then dig out your old Sabbath and give “War Pigs” a whirl. Damn. War Pigs! Here’s where I will admit that I gained my re-appreciation for the song only playing my son’s Guitar Hero game on the XBox 360. This game does, in fact, rock, is more fun when you’re drunk (which is why son rarely plays it) and has made me nostalgic for actually playing the goddamn bass again. Anyone want to start a band? But War Pigs came up for slaughter by me on the false guitar, and while I was mangling the song and getting’ booed by the audience, and worse, getting a crappy score, I paid attention to the lyrics and was really struck by the passion there. Where are all the dark metal, anti-war songs anymore?

I wasn’t the biggest Sabbath fan back in the day, but I didn’t dislike them either. But I’ll tell you who I am the biggest fan of these days: The Kills. I did mention them last post, but at the time wasn’t in the full blown ape shit thralls about them as I am now. I mean Fiery Furnaces type ape shit thralls. Or Deerhoof.  The album, “No Wow,” which came out all the way back in ’05, totally passed me by. Unfortunate for me then, but fortunate for me now. So its all good (Bakery, Inc.) (There is a bakery out here called “the It’s All Good Bakery, Inc., (home of the 7UP Lemon Pound Cake) so I’ve vowed that everytime somebody says, “its all good,” I will immed. follow with “Bakery, Inc.”) The Kills is sex music. Very tense, wrong, raw, buildup and release, also melodic and sweet, bitchy and sassy. What's not to love? It doesn’t hurt matters that the two people involved are good looking and stylish. To put it in kind of juvenile terms, they’re cool. I know I know, but damn it they are. They pose, they’re posers for sure, but when it comes down to it, they also walk the walk, Look at me I’m gushing. It also doesn’t hurt that Alison Mosshart is very attractive and intriguing in a kind of rock star, damaged way. Its hard to get a fix on her, as she seems to hide behind her hair a lot and be constantly photographed out of focus or in fleeting images. I just grabbed a copy of their even earlier release, “Keep on your Mean Side,” and it fukkin’ rules as well. Debating whether to go see them or not on Valentine’s Day in SF. Envisioning a kind of crowded, hot and nasty scene. Still debating. And find myself looking forward to March or April when they say they’re releasing their new one. The two videos for it are way stupid. Check ‘em out.

On a rare movie-going night I treated myself to “I’m not There,” the Todd Haynes semi bio sorta graphical fiction-y Bob Dyan film that’s been nominated for various awards, etc. I was intrigued by its kind of cubist idea of showing the many sides of Bob Dylan’s personality at once by splitting him into different actors, of different ages, genders and races, and also rearranging the sequence of “Dylans” in time, remixing them, etc. Haynes has been known as a detail-freak, a meticulous filmmaker, from his past work like “Far from Heaven,” which was very concerned with getting sets and costumes and film stock and everything it was trying to do right. “I’m not There” has similar concerns and is a very complex and complicated film. A hell of a lot of care and craft that went into it. I mean people still wet themselves thinking about Peter Jackson and “Lord of the Rings,” but I think a film like “I’m not There” is even harder to pull off if you look at all the time periods and evocations it tries to present, in as much detail and  correctness as “Far from Heaven, all with live actors, sets, not so much CGI. Unless I’m wrong.  On a weird, cameo side-note, I was literally taken aback by the sudden presence of Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth in the film. Like, what the f is she doing here? And not only that but she was kind of scary looking, all giant and amplified and not too attractive really, I'm sorry to so superficially say cause I like Kim Gordon, I really do, and think she's attractive (expecially with a bass slung around her) and interesting etc, but she is the oldest Youth I think, unless Renaldo's got her beat. They both are lookin' not young, while Steve Shelly and of course Thurston seem to look unnaturally young. Maybe its the kid hair cuts? But anyway they’re still sonic, so who cares?

What else can I tell you? Lost is back. I now watch something on tv again. And you will have to suffer my Lost theories. I’ve got a couple going right now, and I want to tell you that I formulate my Lost theories without consulting any outside Lost web effluvia. I just watch the shows and ponder. So the big “flash forward” from the end of last season messed everybody up real good. But then it hit me, Jack’s beard that is. And I immediately thought of the great old Star Trek episode, “Mirror Mirror” (and no, I don’t know these episode titles by heart, I have to look them up…) where the crew, due to a transporter malfunction (my favorite plot device) swaps places with their exact “opposites” from an alternate dimension, or better, an evil alternate dimension where peace is war, the Federation is the Empire, and Spock has a beard. Why does Spock have a beard? Because being the logical fellow he is, and not human – usually a plus, its harder to tell who is who. Spock exists more in shades of gray, being more advanced that he is, unlike humans, who try so hard to act civilized, but in the “mirror” easily revert back to snorting, lustful, power made animals. Or is it visa versa? So Spock gets a beard so we can tell which Spock is who. Whom? The trope has been satirized often, including the name of the prog rock band, “Spock’s Beard,” and notably on Futurama when the evil robot Bender gets a tiny, magnetic goatee. So here we are in Lost, in the future when they are back in LA. Yet Jack, inexplicably, has this giant beard. Why? Just cause he’s becoming a drunk, and letting himself go? I don’t think so. I think this signifies Jack is “home” in LA, but its not the right version of LA he should be in. In this LA Jack is a drunk, his dad is still alive and he has a beard. The island of Lost, among other things, may be some kind of portal between dimensions. Other clue? Well in the first scene of the new season, Hurley drives his car through a stack of Papayas in the “Papaya District” of LA, so says the background newscaster that Jack is watching on TV. The Papaya District? Is there such a place in LA? I no think so. Jack needs to get back to the island so he can get back to his real Los Angeles, where he is good… and shaven. Bakery Inc.