"Bear Bottom Farms"

sorry. nine years in the castro district of san francisco has given me a one-track mind.

which makes this ad hysterical. there's a farm where they're making 'em!!

This Sonic Boom

...it's
what i live for,
mostly.

they take me to the moon,
they build my cocoon,
they make me lose myself,
that sound they make, i love
the one that hits
right there.
right there.
right there.

thurston's pre-song speech:
"i belive this mic stand is from los angeles...because it's half-developed...i love you too, young man. i appreciate you spreading the love. i want to dedicate this to you and all your boyfriends."

Untitled

is it alive? can it be saved?

Lonely people in the neighborhood

this morning i went out to breakfast with my friend Mornin'Spider in oakland at noon. i needed some hash browns mixed with scrambled eggs and ketchup and that's all there was to it.

none of my diet rules are engaged at this time*.

we had to split the tab at the end on two visas. the total was $20. including tax. it's humorous that two 40 year olds would have to split a $20 breakfast bill in half with two visas. then i said, well, it's 2009, what the hell.

she agreed.

people at the cafe:
1. damon albarn/liam gallagher in mirrored aviators served us. i mean, the guy held himself like a rockstar more than he looked like damon/liam...mirrored aviators, a cafe tshirt that's a bit too small, saggy, worn-out jeans. tall, handsome. surprised that he was cordial. expected douchey.

2. woman who doesn't know her belly is huge and sticking out over her waistband and wrapped in a too-tight tshirt. jesus. she had nice lips, and she talked constantly so i noticed. but she also possessed an insecurity that created a gross, light green cloud around her. like you might choke if you got too close. like smog. she had an annoyingly habitual huh-huh-huh laugh. her "date" was also gross. longish stringy hair, look of fear in his eyes, no idea what to do with himself, he sat there with his stringy hair and some of it in a tiny, skinny, oily ponytail.

depressing.

3. and then another mirrored-aviator damon/liam shows up. can't tell if he's the same person except the clothes are different. he's wearing a long-sleeved black tshirt and gray jeans that are a little tighter the other damon/liam. same haircut as the other damon/liam. couldn't tell these two dudes apart until i saw them both at the same time. i think this might be the new ironic hipster look. they didn't even look that much younger than me. martha stewart!**

4. two sets of dorky overweight couples wishing they were thinner and not really feeling like they fit. in their clothes or in the bay area.

5. me. i fit alright. i've got the stringy hair i haven't washed in two days. i put it in braids and barret my bangs up, pull a few extra strands out and put on lip gloss. i convince myself this makes me ok to look at. but when i get in front of a mirror, i see someone who's been rid. i don't give a martha stewart** about this at the cafe. that's the nicest thing i can say about the east bay and the city versus marin county. i could never go out looking that way in marin. i might not get served and i would definitely get dirty - haha - looks.

bad, ugly, beautiful, free, constrained. which do you choose and why?

6. my friend. she fits fine. she was born in that cafe. she is pretty without trying and always clean. she doesn't get stringy hair. sometimes she can pull a nolte*** but she'd never go out half-cocked nolte like i did today.

"all the lonely people. where do they all come from."
the song is not in my head, but the words are.

i want to throw up over how many lonely people there are, and gross people and desperate people. all the people. it's nauseating.


*at this time = unmentionable loss.

**martha stewart! is a funny new curse term in boston as reported by my friend TC. i'm going to try it instead of "fuck" all the time. fuck can get ugly. i've got enough ugly right now.

***lookin' nolte is when you wake up looking like nick nolte's mug shot.

22 minutes from 43 folders guy and 5ives guy

the man, merlin mann, you know i love the man.

a totally enjoyable 20 minutes here that is seriously thought-provoking. and that's no joke! it's also hilarious. don't miss a word, and look at it too, don't just listen.

Twitter: an explanation

people don't get twitter, they're afraid to ask, they don't know what to say, they throw their hands up and proclaim that facebook is all they can handle.



i've got a collection of twitter posts flagged as fucking-a hilarious, but twitter won't let anyone who isn't logged in see them. durn.



maybe a couple of screenshots of posts will answer all of the above questions AND explain why facebook is like TV - brain cells actually die in their presence vs. twitter which requires some kind of human brain output.




twitter is like a subscription to as many hilarious one-liner magazines as you want. for free!!




it also shows you how any situation can be looked upon from a million perspectives. and points of view. if that's not the same thing.



see what i'm sayin'? funny stuff, people. laughter is the nectar of the gods. if you get thirsty there are resources in the most surprising places.



like that twitter thing people don't get.

Things that make ya go, Huh?

(click to enlarge)


found this in the Point Reyes Light classifieds under "announcements."

very small paper for a very small town with apparently large opinions and vocabularies to match.

hilarious.
"That neurotics and retards will most likely accelerate their disorders..."

A Sacrilege

Found in a Walmart in Maine.

I can barely believe it. If Kurt hadn't already killed himself, he'd be doing it now. Jesus!

Missing Jim

Some of the most important, fascinating and lovely live performances I've ever seen were by Jim Carroll, and they were readings. Every now and then his silence gets stuck in my teeth and I have to google him to make sure I didn't miss something very tragic - like the end of his life.

In the mid- to late-90s, I attended his readings year after year. I miss him so much. He was "working on a novel" back then, and his site is still saying the same thing ten years later. Not that it shouldn't take ten years to write a book...

His last reading was...well, I started getting worried then. He looked so thin, like he might just disappear. I think this is why I'm afraid he'll just disappear and no one will know.

He'd be the only master capable of it. Even though that's what Andy Warhol wanted, he kept himself too much in the spotlight. About death, Andy once said "I'd rather disappear than die...I'd like to come back as a ring on Elizabeth Taylor's finger." But I digress.

One of the first times I attended a reading, Jim presented 8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain. Someone stole my cd of him reading it...I guess that proves how long ago I last saw him and how long ago he produced and published any poetry. I found this downloadable mp3 of him reading; look at 36 minutes, 49 seconds for the Cobain poem.

8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain
1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance

Pills and powders only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift

Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns

Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust
In timeless illusion

2/
The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right thru
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverberating
In your mind

And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding

From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving

And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds

3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings

Your will could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration

4/
Here's synchronicity for you:

Your music's tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you

I listened then...
It was all there!
Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light
Until you hit solid rock

The drill bit broke
and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassible in time,
As time itself stopped.

And the walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging

The world outside was blank
It's every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect

7/
But Kurt...
Didn't the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
make you think twice?
That's what I don't understand,
because it's kept me alive, above any wounds

8/
If only you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Roma...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellini or Raphael's Portraits

Perhaps inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms
Where it all began...

No matter that you felt betrayed by her

That is always the cost
As Frank said,
Of a young artist's remorseless passion

Which starts out as a kiss
And follows like a curse

Jab

a recent sort-of fight with guy:

lou: i want a piece of john lurie's art and daniel johnston's art before they die.

[both are in the danger zone]

guy: really? lurie is of way greater value. his art is much better than johnston's.
lou: what? i don't think so! i think if you only looked at some of johnston's art you might think that - a lot of it is underdeveloped and messy - but there are some like the one i posted that are way better than lurie's.

[keep in mind, john lurie owns a MUCH bigger piece of my heart]

guy: i don't think so. well, whatever.
lou: i want both. you don't want both?
guy: (silent)

so, things are really looking up around here! and don't think i'm kiddin'!

CHECK!

ps. looking back on this argument, i would say that guy won and i think i was wrong on this one. see lurie art below.

New Wild Things Trailer

I don't know what it is about these trailers but it's soft and fuzzy for sure.
Sweet.

"Vacation, All I Ever Wanted"

One day in Ithaca
I got a paranoid fear last night while talking with my friends. We were discussing the recent loss of a friend to the streets and whether or not he’ll return. I told them about how my dad, who was homeless at times, told me about living on the inside and living on the outside and how he wanted to live on the outside, “the inside, no way…I can’t live on the inside. I don’t want to!” I explained to my friends that the pull to live on the outside after so many years is so compelling that my dad did it even though it separated him from the only person who he loved and who loved him – his daughter.

My friend, E. sighed heavily and said, “I think it’s time for some comedy.” And he put on a trippy adult animation. I went outside to where guy was smoking and told him my feelings. I told him that I had “turned Christopher Walken in Annie Hall on them (our friends).” He said I should tell E. that, that that is one of his favorite movie scenes.

“Turning Christopher Walken in Annie Hall” is when I say too much, when suddenly something very sad and horrible to imagine comes out of my mouth, but I don’t feel bad when I say it. I say it matter-of-fact, but it takes other people down a bad road, a sad road and suddenly and they don’t like it. This is what Christopher Walken’s character does to great effect when speaking with Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall.

“Sometimes…when I’m…driving…late at night, I imagine…smashing into….the oncoming headlights…” It freaks Woody out, just as I feel I freak others out with unintentional storytelling from the horrors of my life. I guess because I only recently realized that I have had horrors in my life. Bad things have happened that I thought were normal human happenings until therapy. Then I see the cringe on my audience’s face and I realize, yes, I just did another Walken.

I woke up this morning with a start. Guy had just gone to the bathroom and come back into bed, then I woke, and jumped. I was having a horrible dream. I don’t remember at which point I was awakened. I dream pretty weird and horrible stuff every night, but I don’t usually recall anything, much less the short novel I remembered this morning. I forced myself out of bed after telling guy about it. I have to keep my eyes closed when I tell a story like this, a dream, or it will fade faster. I realized when I was done that I needed to write this one down. This one was important. It’s about loss of family to horrible human monsters.

My friend D. is inside doing her morning yoga. She seems to made of a nice, solid, stretchy rubber band. Her movements are so smooth and specific, there can be no other explanation.



Upstate New York, Ithaca in particular reminds me of the South. I am often reminded of the South on the East Coast. They share the similar humidity (there is less in Ithaca), similar overgrown, beautiful, shade-making trees on my friends’ street just like Grandmama and Grandaddy’s in Louisiana…and there is a stillness in the air that I suppose is simply the result of not living at least within a half hour of the ocean, the way I have most of my life. The air is still and soft. I can hear the birds this way. Time is slower. Sounds are tighter. They are kept together. I feel safe. I feel happy. I wonder if all people should just stay in the place they were born, if memories of the beginning of life are good, then they should just stay there. If all childhood memories that are good are from that place, then the answer seems very obvious. Stay there. I sit in the stillness of the air of the Yanks – the very enemy of the Southerners – little do they know they share the same air…and I feel complete, happy, at peace, lacking in struggle, with memories so deep I can cry in seconds at the thought…I sit and I feel almost at home. Almost in Louisiana. And I wonder if that’s where I should be.

It’s where I came from. It’s where my ancestors from Ireland, Scotland and England emigrated to. No one deviated until my mom and me. Everyone in our family history came over from the Isles and moved to Louisiana, and stayed there.

Has travel, flying, etc. made it too easy for us to leave our homeland, maybe something we were never meant to do. Or at least, should return to? I think I’m deciding that I want to return there more often anyway, if not permanently someday.

And I wonder why I feel so isolated, lost and different from my adopted California family and the deepest sadness it brings me.

Event: Nervous Breakdown - The Database

but jesus...

at least I'm not on some internet list.
or am i?

Everyone, and Daniel Johnston touring. Devil, too?

CRAZY BOY DOES GOOD
Never thought I'd see that. Hope no one lets him fly his own plane here. I've also found one may still acquire his art. Whoa! I want, I don't care anymore. (below)



NEW VENUE
I don't like "new." Not many do. I especially do not like "new" mixed with my "music shows." Saw my favorite band ever Sunday night. Got lost on the way to their East Bay (Beast in pig latin, for a reason) venue and missed five songs. 20 years playing in the City means the Beast show threw a major wrench in my well-oiled system. The theater held the sound too, like it tried to keep it to itself, up front, just above the guitars, not letting any escape into the audience into the big air, up above...no no no. The sound was kept local. This is no way to build a room with guitars. This is no way to build with sound.

Not to mention the chatter! Good god in heaven!! There was so much chatter...that's why I can barely remember a single song, or getting carried away. Unprecedented people having major discussions while Thurston wailed. To my right, to my left, right in front, the chatter never ended. GRRRRRR!



Two things: I could be this depressed (not leaving bed until an hour ago) because of the show and the disappointing circumstances and how much I was especially Looking Forward to the Show...or because I'm mental, and should stop arguing with the world about it.

Someone asked me how Sonic Youth was...all I could say was "Cross The Breeze" ripped.

"Cross the Breeze ripped."


(photo by SFDavidz)


IN CO.
Meanwhile my buddy, the Kid just saw/heard/felt his favorite music in the world - PHISH - at Red Rocks. The pictures he sent show him in front of the front row with a head fulla acid (slightly swollen). He took this picture of Trey Anastasio. He said his third eye got wide...I am envious.



My third eye got stepped on.

Coming up: in one month, WEEN in LA and in that same month, I will attempt to see the Youth in either Santa Barbara or Los Angeles. The whole Youth the whole Time. Following is the Butthole Surfers in October.

it's a full summer...who am I to complain? oh, that's right, ME!
(anhedoniac?).