Let's talk about cars

lately i've been entertaining myself on the road with a game of "male or female?" the way you play is pick out a car near you and decide if it's male or female. surprisingly, it's really obvious which cars are which. there are a few crossovers. i guess these would be gay cars. it's fun to personify past that too. try to imagine cars as people.

my car is definitely a girl. guy's is gay. it's a lesbian. i try to avoid judging obvious cars like really big ones. they are almost always male. except for the hummer h3. i think that one's a girl. the VW golf or gti is a guy. they're not even man cars, they're guy cars. like indie guy, not WWF. i don't think i could ever drive one. i'd start to feel like a guy. the toyota camry, my least favorite car in all the world, is a person who wears a lot of beige. the BMW X5 is another example of a girl car that's kind of tough but with feminine curves. guy thinks maybe it's a lipstick lesbian. those 1970s ford trucks are male. they are the scarecrow from wizard of oz. it's no coincidence that mini-vans are the car of choice for moms. they are female post-giving birth. they have wide hips. the passat is a modern male who decorates with mid-century bent wood furniture. jaguars are males. they're high-profile executives. CEOs. the VW bug is a sorority girl on her way to the beach. most slanted cars are male. which is strange, because they have curves, like the camaro. mini coopers are male. for some reason they have a gay rep. i don't see that. to me, they're like preppy prepschool guys. very straight, just young and mobile. porsches of all kinds are male, but 1970s porsche 911s are punk rockers while porsche carreras are rapists. so that's tricky.

The Ditty Bops

alright, i have to post this. i've had it as a tab in my firefox browser for three days.

it's one of my favorite sites ever. read "our story."

they sound good too!

If i was dying, do you think the make-a-wish foundation would let me play in here?

Finally, an explanation

i can't believe it.
hallelujah!

Put the gun down, James Frey, and step slowly away

that guy. he is soooo ballsy for putting people on as much as he did with his first book, the memoir A Million Little Pieces. shamed for embarrassing his new pal Oprah when The Smoking Gun broke the story that major plot points were in fact fiction, he sort of disappeared for a while. i happened to be visiting his site fairly often around then, and read his version of the debacle before it broke to mainstream press. he did not react well, and he did not know TSG had such a strong case. how embarrassing. in the statement he made on his site, he did not stand up and say, "sorry, i used bad judgement. is it any surprise?" or something. instead he acted defensively and swore, "The Smoking Gun just wants to take me down." YIKES. bad move. then the next time i check his site, it's down with no explanation, and has been ever since. Until now.

while i wish he'd been a man about his scam, i love his books. i even saw him read from AMLP in a bookstore in the ferry building. that was a weird experience. he wasn't a very good reader, he droned, and he seemed paranoid. anyway, it doesn't really matter what's real or not real in his books. they feel incredibly, painfully real. fortunately when i read AMLP and his second book, My Friend Leonard, the sequel, i didn't know or guess even that there was a possibility some of it was made up. My Friend Leonard was especially effective. i cried buckets over two scenes in the book. like, i kept crying after i put it down. for a while. that's pretty powerful writing.

there is one problem with him. while i can accept that he lied about his stories, and even that he lied to his fans before he knew he was found out, i have a hard time with the fact that when he claimed he was a torturned soul wrongly rotting in jail...he was actually a fraternity brother.

it comes as no surprise at all at all that his new book Bright Shiny Morning, due June 1st, is labeled "Fiction."

i just hope it's as good as the first two. who cares where it came from.

"Not in a formulist context"

found this artist while doing a picture search on "head with wings". Her drawings are pretty interesting (wait, how do i know it's a her? a feeling). delicate but not lazy, although the subject matter is a little cliche, there are still some pieces that aren't. also, great use of color. anyway. i'm looking for more information and i find her statement. i take a breath and hope for the best. seldom are statements anything other than a total upchuck of pretentiousness, but i'm willing. this is what i get.

These works explore inherent and contradictory characteristics of drawing as a medium, an activity, and a means to other ends. Intimate, immediate, investigative, irresolute and indeterminate aspects of drawing invade and intersect with each other, complicating and enriching those impulses and gestures that manifest themselves in marks. I refer to marks not in a formalist context but with socio-political terrain in mind. Whose traces are erased, whose stains remain, whose tales do we imagine while gazing at these remains?

seriously.

Head With Wings

two things about head. (unavoidable joke here - got one?)

1. guy has started teasing me about smelling "like head." he's talking about my unemployment practice of washing my hair every other day rather than every day. there's a smell. and it's head. very funny.

2. i had the roof down on the car all day. it was a sun-splashed drive into the city. god, this is such a gorgeous place to live. anyway, right when i got on the freeway, "Head With Wings" by morphine came up on ipod party shuffle. i glanced in the rearview mirror. yes, my hair was spraying out around my head on both sides. yes, it looked like i had a Head With Wings.

2a. one more story here. this is called perfect timing. on the day i got my license and sat behind the wheel of my car by myself for the first time, i plugged my ipod in and put it on party shuffle. yes, Beck's Golden Age came on with, yes, that beautiful first line that goes "Put your hands on the wheel, may the golden age begin." and the way he sings...you can just feel all the beautiful possibilities of the world spreading out in front of you and, like you can almost see the road turning gold. i'm sure there are more of those perfect timing moments, but that's all i got right now.

2b. i never want to live without a convertible in my life. better than vitamins.

off to wash my head!

Simply beautiful

just discovered this guy (curiously his website is the name of a Spoon song).

beautiful work. i might need to purchase the one pictured here.

and i don't loathe Death Cab for Cutie anymore. they really really rock live. guy loves them. when i was first getting to know him, that fact that he loves this sort of whiney wussie singing (ben gibbard), resulted in a check mark in the con column on my guy-file.

but not for long.

i was wrong. their live show really illustrated their awesome rock intensity to the max jack.