i'm promising myself i'll have this all put together by 4:30... can do...
what's been happening eh?
first...
anniversary!
lindsay and i celebrate our one year anniversary this monday the 12th!
i love her. she loves me. pretty good deal eh? we're registered at the mayan theatre and little india if you'd like to get us anything... kidding. just buy us some white cheddar stuff to put on popcorn. that'll make us very happy... or give us new jobs. that'd be great too.
second...
ENGLAND/WALES is imminent! i'm sure she'd rather me have a picture of puffins above, but we're staying in cardiff across the river from millennium stadium (where they play rugby, football and maybe hang witches), and while it's not quite Anfield...
...i've done my research and found that this stadium is a bigger deal... plus... liverpool lost to fucking chelsea in the UEFA championship... and i'm welsh anyway so i suppose i'm predisposed to this sort of fare anyway... i'm talking out my ass... looking at sports arenas is the last thing i'm probably excited about regarding this trip... i'll leave it at that and you can expect an update regarding our full itinerary as we get closer to the date. let's just say, we're fucking excited as... balls. like... ogre balls. anyway... two weeks... wales, england, london, hostels, hooligans, brains beer, sheep, coasts, car rides, small mountains, lonsdale, radiohead/mgmt, plane rides, mayhem. june. done and done.
also... speaking of traveling...
anyone for the world cup in 2010? it's in south africa. do it.
youTUBE is such a regular part of daily life for most everyone anymore that i decline to mention the most ridiculous shit i come across... still... the most recent thing i've found to be of note (that isn't 'old greg', 'the whitest kids you know', 'unforgivable' or asians playing nintendo songs) is this.
justice, like them or not, still makes great videos. makes you want to time travel, start a gang and set fire to cars... or maybe just watch 'the warriors'. check out their videos for
'D.A.N.C.E.' and 'we are your friends'.
ignoring the above, lindsay makes great mixtapes, AND SO CAN YOU! let me make this a formal invitation to everyone out there to make me mixtapes and shtuff however and whenever you may see fit. i want them shits. give. i envisioned this elaborate birthday scheme for the 26th b-day where i would be somewhere and ask that friends not buy me drinks or shirts that read 'i hate condoms'... but instead... provide a twelve song mix cassette of your favourite hits. needless to say, it didn't happen. i'm lazy.
go see only thunder any chance you get. that's it.
also!
i need to get the thursday the 15th off. architects from kcmo @ larimer. sigh... and then may 22nd for tokyo police club! don't fuck this up longman.
oh and dear, did you realize that on the tokyo police club myspace they make a reference to the end of back to future? umm... because... they do. validated.
that being said... i still don't like the hold steady or tv on the radio... sorry. had to get it out.
switching gears...
dad had sudden surgery for an inflamed appendix this week... brief scare, but as is with all things longman related, you can't really kill any of us... yadda yadda... made of metal, will never die.
brother gets married this fall in cambridge, MA... i'm excited to finally see the east coast... i don't get out much. still, being a brother in-law is great and whatever... but i want to be an uncle.
oh, what else...
taibbi has a new book coming... read an excerpt here.
rufus wainwright's cover of 'across the universe' is better than the original.
i missed both radiohead's basement performance on vh1 and the duke spirit on conan this month. my better half recorded the mighty duke spirit, but if anyone has radiohead tivo'd or knows where i can see it... well, you know.
in an earlier version of this i yakked about some bullshit regarding the purpose of writing and some other garbage... it's been summarized thusly...
"if anything, it's great practice for a two week trip you're taking that involves a self-affirmed vow that you should take account of such a journey day by day with pen and paper. shit like this happens very seldom in a life such as mine, and i'm upset enough about those times in my life that... weren't accounted for. i don't think there's a life after this one and i think i should spend the majority of my latter years annoying my neighbors with the accolades of my youth."
and then i included a picture of tetsuo from akira... weird.
moving on...
denver '08. my feelings regarding the convention are lukewarm at best. let's hope pete's can get tickets to the daily show through coors or something dumb like that. i've heard that they're ('they' being coors) spending a lot of money to make sure that only coors products are available in a seven-mile radius or something equally as retarded.
other than that, looks like obama will outlast hillary, which is intendedly a way of saying that he will never be seen as emerging victorious over his opponent. shouldn't be his problem, but will be. let's hope he's not full of shit... let's hope he's been speaking softly whilst carrying a fucking railroad tie behind his back.
he's going to need it. food is about to get pretty expensive.
in other unrelated news...
more about Radiohead... catching those up to speed that went to stars or kraftwerk the night they 'played' on conan. here's what happened:
the 'appearance' was reduced to a (maybe) live broadcast of them playing 'house of cards' in some studio somewhere in london only after they explained the inconvenience of playing one show in new york via airplane... gas prices... a plane ride across the pond is equal to a year's usage of gas for your car... or emissions or something... blah blah... makes me feel pretty guilty for paying upwards of $1,200 just to go over the atlantic to see them in june. anyway... jokes. fair enough. cheers. see you in two months... smartass.
i read fictional children's stories about atheism. i am... enlightened. still, i've yet to finish this little 'bathroom' book called the atheist's bible... it's a good place to start in case hitchens or dawkins scares the figurative hell out of you... in addition, someone go see ben stein's movie for me... i'm more interested in stuff like this. maybe i'll finally get into ellen page when she's uhh... acting her age. broken social scene did the score. i think...
i also feel like the only person on the planet to have seen 'funny games'... which was very good.
i want some buddyhead crap (and blood brothers tees before they run out), but i have this feeling that their merch/apparel/whatever people suck at what they do or don't do... and that i would have just been making a donation. still, who doesn't want to support a stupid LA label with a shirt that has a coffin with an American flag on it. their blog sucks... and HAS sucked since they stopped doing their 'best of/worst of' and continued to observe NIN and TOOL as the culmination of music as it... is.
i'm really obsessed with 8 bit nintendo theme songs.
it's bad.
really bad....
i don't understand this. really... i don't. it's a source of comfort... far from the point of understanding... so yeah... bad. it's bad. it's the nostalgic/cathartic thing that seems to thrive between/with my brother and i... pathetic? kind of.
let's just say that the top two are the bubble man theme song from mega man 2 and the kid icarus theme song... as you might have received reference to above... is that even proper grammar? who knows.
i spilled maker's mark on my blackberry the other night tenderizing the bar. it was fine by morning (like most things you 'spill' whiskey on), but for awhile there it was pretty wasted. makes me finally understand one of the funnier lines i've ever heard through a friend, "jaegermeister ate my computer mouse".
and that's it. more on travel and politics in the semi-near future. england is all i think about and the daily show may be bad for america. read music, speak spanish.
* * * * *
and here you go... shit i've been... well...
no age - eraser EP
i'm all for simplicity. still, even from a minimalistic standpoint, the music still has to be uhh... marginal at best. i'm sure there's some stand outs among various albums and shit, but who fucking cares? throwaway soundtrack for films you have to be reminded you saw in the first place. ech.
foals - antidotes
being from oxford is a plus. tapping makes my head swim. thick accents work too. being in norway when i take the wife to the UK makes no sense to me. that aside, i think it's a rare accomplishment in this day and age (and by that i mean the past five years) to make something danceable that isn't dance music. except the saxophone. really. tie it all together, put a bow on it, and well... well done lads.
menomena - friend and foe
horns are dumb... and not necessary... while this is a bad association, it reminds me (in a very roundabout way) of george michael's 'careless whisper'... that can't be good. that aside, many favorites found inside. 'wet and rusting' is worth it even if the other songs were all crap, which, they're not.
meneguar - strangers in our house
"one arm is broke and the other needs a break." makes you never want to listen to anything that wasn't 'produced' on a four-track ever again. melody isn't dead, it just went home to brooklyn and broke up. sad.
gang of four - entertainment!
essential listening for anyone who still thinks sexual intercourse is pretty cool.
neon blonde - chandeliers in the savannah
neon blonde - headlines
no one wants to dance to this. of all the blood brothers offshoots, this may be the wackest. all of this stuff sounds like b-sides. but b-sides to what? who the fuck likes b-sides? i start wondering what i'm doing with my life when i listen to this for too long. the piano parts come off like elton john at times... if elton john blew a bag of asses and never wrote 'crocodile rock'. johnny's probably stoked his wife still has a clothing company.
dirty projectors - rise above
i know he's done other stuff. i'm sure rollins is stoked, but no guy... no. there's a line between doing something creative and wasting everyone's time. you're on one side of it. interesting in theory, boring and overbearing when introduced through headphones. this is a lose-lose.
nick cave and the bad seeds - dig, lazarus, dig!!!
god, you're old. the great argument here is that grandpa is inconsistent. why there is no real thread between grinderman, the birthday party and the bad seeds doesn't bug me. but looking at nocturama? lyre? abattoir blues? some of this stuff reminds me of certain hold steady records that i don't own. christ. "night of the lotus eaters" and "lie down here" works. at the same time, he might've lost his goddamn mind. only gave this a listen or two the other day, so who knows. also, i like using lazarus in metaphors from time to time and i have no idea why he'd be digging anything. verdict? this is kind of fucked. maybe he knows he could track a homeless man throwing nails at a trash can and people will still buy his 'music'. in that case, bravo. you've made it.
slaraffenland - private cinema
instant excitement! available in combo packages of two! easily accessible and makes for a great summertime fling! until the horns arrive. or woodwinds. or both. fuck. still! this has wonderful written all over it in big red marker. just came to denver. i suck. every time i come back to listening to this stuff i feel like i've discovered fire all over again.
antioch arrow - in love with jetts
antioch arrow - the lady is a cat
sluts. prizes. this is like the alphabet in that, after a certain point, it should not have to be explained. you're either on board or you speak in binary.
head wound city - s/t
"It's kind of like if Alien and Predator started a band instead of fighting each other." supergroups burn the earth. good to see some of the kids are keeping busy if nothing else.
logh - every time a bell rings, an angel gets it's wings
logh - north
there's enough eerie elliott smith moments throughout both of these that make me want to know what that word up there even means. in a word, pleasant.
wolfmother - s/t
stupid. for the record, every time i hear 'woman' i want to cut my dick off.
burning airlines - mission: control!
so much is derived from these desert island, must-haves anymore that you kind of cringe for the next time you hear "i don't know, sounds like burning airlines," coming out of your mouth. buy/steal. own/protect. keep/defend.
mgmt - oracular spectacular
skepticism abounds with stuff like this for me because it's too good, too soon, too fast. still, that's their problem, not mine. "I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars." best big thing i've heard of since muse. woo-saa.
silkworm - italian platinum
"and i know i love means i hope you don't survive the night." good... and then still, you've been warned... some of these songs are god-fucking-awful and by that i mean... it's "holy-shit-hit-me-in-the-dick-with-a-brick" bad.
lcd soundsystem - s/t
DAFT PUNK IS PLAYING AT MY HOUSE.... AT MY HOUSE... ... good enough for me. didn't they play with gogol bordello this past summer or something? at red rocks even? have you seen wrist cutters? gold. 'when there-iz tre-ap. set-upfer-yu...' get it? you don't? i know right?
saviours - into abadon
eh. that's right, eh. i would go see them... provided they came with someone, but as an advocate for shit that makes my boner come alive and frighten kids i have to say, that didn't happen.
ratatat - s/t
like a cold bowl of good soup. nothing really all that amazing. still fun in moderation. still kisses with saliva. for fans of nintendo and music that makes use of the electric guitar. could really do without some of the stupid sound bites at the beginning of most songs. no one cares. just start the song.
cat-a-tac - past lies and former lives
they're boring. that's the hype i've heard. and i've heard them. believe the hype. believe me though. blah. remember crossfire? that game ruled. it wasn't so much a game but marbles for pre-teens who had a penchant for guns. honorable mention: hungry, hungry hippos.
lightning bolt - hypermagic mountain
set up a camera and play this shit for a room full of blind people armed with handguns to see the most violent movie ever made. garbage. reminds of this time when a guy looked me in the eye and told me to "go fuck myself."
gorgoroth - ad majorem sathanas gloriam
holy fuck. on my birthday four years ago, during a live broadcast concert in Kraków, Poland, the band displayed sheep heads on stakes, a bloodbath of 80 liters of sheep's blood, satanic symbols, and four naked crucified models on stage. i was not in poland at the time.
the kooks - konk
i kind of want to beat whoever mentioned this band to me with a big, big flashlight. i know the names of their families, am fueled by bloodlust and cannot be killed except in a ritualistic fashion... like in a horror movie.
braid - frame & canvas
as solid as a good shit. as soft as your boner in a tube sock. something that makes me think about road trips, blow jobs, your first pair of store-bought shoes, freshly mown grass, old arcade games and all things that are good.
nausea - lie cycle
never lived in new york. some dude joined choking victim. sweet. soon to be a patch on crusts everywhere. yup. fuck reagan. over it. why is this on here?
