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tuesday, october 31, 2000 having been chosen as one of a select few to receive advance word of the new pitchfork bulletin board, i feel compelled to pass it on even though i don't usually haunt such things for more than five minutes at a time. ladies and gents: bitchpork. bill clinton: the exit interview. this piece is running in the december issue of esquire but is available in expanded form, 11 pages, on the magazine's website, much to the consternation of its subject. apparently clinton is pretty mad that it's been published ahead of time, since he says they had an agreement to hold it until after the election. naughty esquire editors reneging on their promises. but really, that'll teach the president to give big interviews to glossy mags. as I read in the howard kurtz book, it's all about give and take between the white house and the media, and esquire's sure going to get a lot more mileage out of the president before the election, before he _really_ doesn't matter anymore, and what does esquire need from the clinton white house after this? nothing. of course they don't mind burning him. bad press office, bad! then again, after reading the interview, i don't see what the big flap is. clinton comes off pretty level-headed. is anyone really going to think this thing draws attention from the gore campaign, which is now acknowledged as being a pretty poor effort all by itself? my friend christina sent this one along: what character on "sex and the city" are you?? i've never seen the show, but it seems i'm miranda, high-powered career woman. oh yeah, that's me. in the real world i would have answered "none of the above" to most, if not all, of the questions. but a quiz is a quiz.
monday, october 30, 2000 anyway, boston. holly and I did a fair amount of touristy things, including: €faneuil hall, which does have some historical significance but which is now, like so many american tourist attractions, a mall; so, inferior public transportation aside, thumbs-up for boston! but the raison d'etre for the trip came saturday night, when holly's sis tracey had a halloween party. it was fun despite the overload of awful 80s music. I was in a good mood, plus it was all about the dancing. so I rocked the boat, I did the humpty dance, I partied like it was 1999, or 1982 as the case may be. thankfully tracey's roommate, dressed and addressed as "teabag," had a mostly hip-hop playlist blaring from her computer speakers, so there were two rooms to choose from. I sought sanctuary in there when it got to be too much. the costumes were pretty fun: holly was an 80s chick, looking suitably heinous in an airbrushed, fringed t-shirt and suntan pantyhose; tracey was kelly wigglesworth from "survivor" and probably would have won the contest if there was one. "teabag" proved to be the life of the party, breakdancing, drinking straight from the punch bowl, and inexplicably wedging herself under the futon at one point. holly is baying for an update even though she was there. what else to say... didn't drink too much, huddled under my new comforter with a cute fireman, woke up to find it snowing! the trip back was nightmarish: i was stuck in the last row of the bus, the three-seater, in the middle seat. a punk kid (circa 1982, how appropriate) spent the first hour of the trip extracting from his unstowed bags various studded, metal, chained, etc. jewelry and putting them on. i swear he put on like ten belts. he did not settle down for two hours, and i'm not exaggering: he was constantly moving, getting shit from his pockets, invading my space. it was horrible. and that is the end of the story. hope it wasn't too anticlimactic for you. if you're like me and obsessed with politics lately, might i suggest checking out howard kurtz's media notes column? i just finished a rather interesting book by him about how the white house and the press manipulate the news. yesterday he wrote about how journalists are finally attacking dubya's stupidity. and he also has an online-extras thing that doesn't appear in the print version, kind of a "today's papers" style roundup of the campaign coverage.
wednesday, october 25, 2000 about that flaming lips christmas album: maybe in a couple of years. kind of old, but amusing nonetheless. japanese commercials featuring american movie stars: gaijin a go-go cafe. vanessa went gaga for it.
tuesday, october 24, 2000 also in the washington post, howard kurtz analyzes today's interpretations of the poll data from the major media sources. looks to me like al gore's running scared, and yet he refuses to let clinton help him. it's going to be a worrisome two weeks. so many good bands on this christmas album from jeepster...which brings to mind, are there any other christmas albums worth buying? what about this sleighed thing, with beck singing "little drum machine boy"? no indication on the flaming lips site if their guest-star-studded christmas album is actually happening or not. elsewhere on the holiday beat, this weekend will find me in boston for a halloween party dressed as waldo. you know, as in where's waldo? i still need the glasses, but i've got the red-and-white-striped shirt and the red-and-white-striped hat, both purchased at the astoria salvation army with master thrift-shopper linnea. with the hat (and maybe the right glasses?), i could also maybe pass as an indie-rock candy striper. heh. gotta love those hybrid costumes. (a couple of years ago i was marilyn monroe-manson, which was, uh, semi-successful.) strangely enough, the "official" waldo site, findwaldo.com, takes you to algorelovesyou.com. the vice president loves me 67 percent. the governor of texas loves me 75 percent. why do people do this?
monday, october 23, 2000 free albums! i don't get them nearly as often as i used to, or should. because the copy and research departments here are on a different floor than the rest of the editorial staff (we really are the black sheep), we miss out on many of the freebies, which are usually placed in a basket in the upstairs bathroom. but today i wanted to avoid someone who was on their way to the elevator, and took a detour to the ladies'. i came out with the latest harvey danger, whose big hit was that song "flagpole sitta" (i don't even know how it goes, but i remember it being constantly referenced as ubiquitous a couple of summers ago, so i'm sure i've heard it), but who get a pretty good writeup from allmusic, and who also thank death cab for cutie in their liner notes, for whatever that's worth; and also the new one from the the twilight singers, a side project of greg dulli of the afghan whigs. well so much for my grand cmj plans. saw death cab, and yes they were very good: their hooky, atmospheric pop warmed my soul. but i was ready to be rocked and thus was crushed when holly and i got to cb's and saw the "ass ponys cancelled" sign on the door. really, really disappointing. saturday i was resigned to nobody wanting to go see les savy fav with me, so i stayed out shopping in astoria till like 7, and was too tired at that point to venture out, though holly, to her credit, was willing (of course, she lives like two blocks from the merc, while i would have to be on the subway for 45 minutes...). sunday i actually had tickets for randi and i, but she bailed, and everyone else wanted to watch the game, and i didn't feel like going alone, so i burned a figure of randi in effigy while watching my yankees easily put away game 2. (just kidding randi.)
friday, october 20, 2000 after that we head over to cb's lounge for some ass ponys action. you may wish to read what others have said about their albums. holly, i know you are very busy, but you may want to check out the lead singer of the band, in his own words, explaining where they're at. possibly also of interest: chuck cleaver weighs in, along with many others, on what's your worst memory of playing with yo la tengo? ... randi, hold tight! your links are coming right up! saturday i really want to go see les savy fav at the mercury lounge but am having trouble convincing people they should join me. we shall see how that goes. any takers? sunday randi and i will be heading to the bowery ballroom for cinerama, which is basically the wedding present but poppier. read up on their bio, if you are so inclined, and especially if you are randi, because there will be a quiz later. other bands are higher on the marquee, including bettie serveert and luna, but dammit, i just don't have the time to scare up any links. in the grand, fucked-up scientific tradition of stinky meat (and indeed, stinky feet!), the spark has launched the fat project. they're paying 2 people $4000 each to gain 30 pounds in 30 days. pretty ridiculous, but not really as good as stinky meat 2 or stinky feet, the latter of which i read today and left me quivering with gleeful revulsion. my stomach actually hurts from laughing. even more mind-blowing than that, though, was watching bush on letterman last night. i don't know if gore got the same treatment, but it was quite shocking. good lord, dave just lit into him after some brief opening funnies. he just pounded away with letterman-rhythmed questions, oh so i'm-the-man-on-the-street-and-i-want-to-know-what's-going-on, demanding answers on the death penalty, the middle east, and the environment, and actually -- imagine this, folks -- asking follow-up questions! it was surreal. poor bush was a bit bewildered, methinks, or maybe nervous laughter is just, like, how he relates to people. his "jokes"? lame. for instance, consider the following exchange. letterman: "do you really believe al gore is going to save the planet?" bush: "not really" [erupts into laughter]. uh, not even close. and there was a bit of a gaffe when dave asked about exactly how bad the pollution in texas was, and bush replied, "well, we got a lotta cars. it's a big city." but my absolute favorite part came during a discussion of what bush would do the attack on the u.s. ship in yemen if he were the leader of the free world, and bush said in a few different ways that "there would be consequences." letterman, riffing on an answer dubya had given regarding the death penalty (which everyone knows by now he regards as a "a very serious bizness" despite his smirks on the topic during the last debate), sliced into him with "would that be retribution or due process, then?" BURN! it was great. letterman should have moderated those damn debates. hey wait a minute, i just thought of something: letterman for president!
thursday, october 19, 2000 like fresh, i mostly agree with this point-by-point analysis of why you should not vote for nader. breaking news: there is a giant inflatable RAT wiggling its claws outside my office building at 1700 broadway, which happens to be directly across the street from the ed sullivan theater, home of the david letterman show. the occasion: dubya's on tonight. a crowd of about 100 are standing around with signs curiously unhoisted, not doing much chanting either. (instead there seems to be a sort of "we're having a pretty good time here" vibe, which is kind of strange, but also common, i think, for a protest.) i could only read one of the signs. it said "george w. bush, union buster." ah. of course, i still have no idea what they actually mean by that, but i guess i get the general idea. checked out open letters in a while? i think it was on hiatus for a while, but it's back. or maybe it's just still there. anyway: today's letter is from a high-powered (bitchy?) VH1 producer about receiving a misdirected, unflattering email. there's also a pretty good one from a record-store clerk about selling "kid a". no more rage! zach de la rocha finally realizes that being a cog in the corporate-rock machine "has undermined our artistic and political ideal." or, as us against them points out, so he would have you believe. silly me.
wednesday, october 18, 2000 or how about this: US writer quits after negative review is spiked. a shame, but good for her. if that is not enough, there are many fine weblogs over there in the "try these" column. have a taste, why don't you?
tuesday, october 17, 2000 novix media is officially done. of course, i learned unofficially several days ago, from jami, whose own story is way more entertaining. once again: yes, it's certainly a good thing i didn't go work for them. meanwhile, ironminds continues with their pro bono journalism. did you know that alaska is having a referendum on whether to legalize pot, no medicinal excuse necessary? my favorite part of the story refers to a pamphlet put out by some hemp-loving group in alaska: A marijuana-smoking group is "more likely to talk of politics, art, music and comparable topics as the children play nearby," it argues. "Adults intoxicated by marijuana still behave like grownups. They enjoy the youngsters and can help care for the babies." And, it adds, "men using marijuana are more respectful, thoughtful, charitable and less foolhardy than when drunk." good story about a group of "ewoks" who live in trees to prevent logging in an oregon forest. disgusting, sick, possibly depraved...and yet also highly original and hilariously funny. i don't really know why. follow the saga of stinky meat and stinky meat II. thanks to brutha steve for the heads-up.
monday, october 16, 2000 fun! the dubya virtual magnetic poetry page! from something called, ha, the adam clymer fan club. [via usr/bin/girl] when is a pita not a pita? when it's on angelfire: amy has some great photos on her sparkly new site. i like especially the ones of the lower east side and chinatown. check 'em out! i'll take political bloopers not committed by george w. bush for $200, alex.
friday, october 13, 2000 r.i.p. urbanfetch. i hope this means huge discounts on the last remaining inventory. well there is a sale. but you have to place a $60 minimum order. i did not win a tivo. *pouts* salon has a very interesting interview with darren aronofsky, director, i'm sure you know, of requiem for a dream, which he calls here a "punk movie where the audience is a mosh pit of emotion" and "a roller coaster that smashes into a brick wall." a review of wednesday's radiohead show, with a pretty odious metaphor as the starting point. fan reviews and (really awful) pictures here.
thursday, october 12, 2000 oh my. bride stung to death by scorpion hidden in her wig. (people just keep sending me the weird news, i can't help it. this one from trish -- thanks trish!) if you're not a big weblog reader you might not know about the tivo giveaway. all the cool kids are winning them. they're giving away 10 per day, and all you have to do is write an original essay under 250 words that strikes them funny. i submitted mine yesterday, and am crossing my fingers. lord knows i can't continue to live with choices like "freaks and geeks" vs. "buffy." or, if i don't win, i guess i can. rhett miller, serial ladykiller: i apologize to all those who hate me swooning over him, but everyone i took with me to see rhett last night fell in love. that is all i'll say about it. dressed this time in an l.a. raiders t-shirt, he delivered tunes new and old, consulting his powerpuff girls notebook for his carefully plotted setlist ("i have a plan," he explained patiently to people shouting out song titles). he was mindful not to repeat more than a couple of songs from the last time he played, a week and a half ago. we did get a gem of a song called, i think, "designs on you," which will be on the the new old 97s record (out in march, to be followed by the ranchero brothers record) and which rhett wrote to try to win the heart of the engaged hairdresser who worked next to his hairdresser (!). we also got a version of, uh, that "america" song (?) with altered lyrics in some grand folk tradition: "oh eeeee-rica....oh erica....come spend some time with meeee..." great stuff. and i will not start talking about how cute he is again, but let me just say that the head bobbing is akin to that of those hula girls or tomahawk-choppers people attach to their car dashboards. it is, as randi says, as if he has no bones. it is...adorable. and also another endearing trait is the way he stumbles backwards after completing songs, as if the force of them knocks him back. he's quite the stage presence. i mean, the way he plowed through "four-leaf clover".... a charmer with the between-song banter, too: he thanked us for being apolitical and not watching the debates, for being not cool and not going to radiohead, and for being anti-jock and not watching the baseball. he closed the encore with "timebomb," again complaining that the bush campaign is using it in some of its rallies. anyway, he said he'd probably be back in november, and said he thinks he makes enough money to live here now, so you can expect further raves from me. cause i just can't get enough. the fabulous jami attenberg tells me that she and her muscular calves have had success with boots at john fluevog, who seems to have some very cool (and also some very crazy) shoes.
wednesday, october 11, 2000 the tall boots conspiracy: recently i endured the indignity of trying on a couple of pairs of tall boots and not being able to zip them all the way up. i have discussed this situation with others, and it seems it is not an uncommon problem, even among thin girls. how timely, then, this new york observer piece, peppered with funny, true stories about boot-stretching machines and salespeople who have to get the pliers when customers get stuck. i am now looking for a maybe not-quite-so-high boot, semi-chunky, possibly lace-up but above all cool-looking boots. if you know of such a beast, or the downtown store where they must certainly reside, please do whisper it in my ear. wow. woman bites off rapist's tongue. the kicker? it's going to be used as evidence. how'd you like to be on *that* jury? [via metafilter] the post interviews rhett miller, playing tonight at fez. he says the new album is going to be "a little more rockin'," and that he's considering moving to new york! thanks to randi for the link.
tuesday, october 10, 2000 i'm glad *somebody* is reviewing the new cinerama album. good stuff! isn't everybody just so sad that phish has broken up? couple survives a triple dose of suicide! guess it just wasn't their time.... continuing with the weird news, we have a seven-year-old girl who had a nail stuck in her throat for five years! how pissed am i at ticketmaster? of course, i had no reasonable expectation of getting radiohead tickets. but i did manage to find two tickets online and enter my credit info, press the send button, waiting...waiting...no confirmation yet...waiting...waiting..."error. too much time elapsed between your order and confirmation. please go back and try again." argghhhhh!!! of course, by that time they were "unable to fulfill my exact request." bastards. at least i have rhett. [if you have an extra, though, let me know!] jack rabid on radiohead. says ed o'brien: "working with a lot of keyboards and computers was really interesting for us, just going in, and smoking a lot of weed..." hmmmm.
monday, october 9, 2000 yes, it's true, radiohead will be playing nyc's roseland ballroom on wednesday. tickets go on sale tomorrow at 9, and will be impossible to get, since the toronto and l.a. shows sold out faster than god. only followmearound.com reports the important info that there will be a two ticket per person limit, and they'll set you back $32.50 each. i will try my hardest to get them, though that hardest only means jumping online and crossing my fingers. i'm just not willing to sleep out on 52nd street all night as i'm sure hundreds of kids will do. no big deal if i don't get 'em; i don't really like the new album (yet?) and i already had plans to go see rhett miller again on wednesday. and if i do get them? no offense to rhett, but this is obviously going to be an event concert. also, the spin cover story on radiohead is online now, but it doesn't contain anything that wasn't in the magazine, though the print version did imply that it would, with promises of the "unedited" transcript of an email interview with thom. i read someone trash the story elsewhere, but it seems obvious to me that the writer, zev borow (who readers of the eggers book may recognize), did his best to do an interview with this notoriously press-hating band, and is refreshingly honest about the result.
friday, october 6, 2000 apparently somebody thinks the olsen twins have the lifestyle appeal of oprah or martha stewart. somebody is deluded. i mean, a magazine called "mary-kate and ashley"? for six bucks a pop?? an 18-year-old canadian man wearing a pirate costume jumped off the empire state building, and didn't even make it to the sidewalk. freakish things happen in this city, yes they do: man dies after being punched in the face.
thursday, october 5, 2000 boy have i had some weird songs in my head lately. right now, apropos of nothing that i can identify, it's i'll tumble 4 ya. i'll tuuuuumble for yeeeewww! gotta love headlines with question marks at the end: radiohead to play roseland in nyc? gene simmons of KISS to produce sitcom. just thought you should know. do you wonder if ralph nader has a sense of humor? yes? well he's going to be on the daily show tonight. no? he's also going to be on charlie rose. and i've linked it before, but the late-night tv page is bookmark-worthy. after the debates, abc news fact-checks the candidates' claims. useful, but not quite as far-reaching as i would have liked. [via fresh] b! obsessive! b! e! obsessive! check the cmj schedule every day so you can figure out what you can and can't attend (though i have no idea how often it's updated or how accurate it is). ass ponys vs. pernice brothers vs. dismemberment plan, oh the heartache.
wednesday, october 4, 2000 i didn't think it would, but this interview with director karyn kusama has made me want to go see girlfight. interview with hubert selby, jr., who has led a very interesting life, it seems, and has perhaps the most desolate worldview ever. in case you haven't been paying attention, he wrote the novel requiem for a dream before darren aronofsky turned it into a gut-wrenching movie. it opens this weekend in new york only, and its performance this weekend will determine subsequent distribution, so everyone must go see it and bring friends.
tuesday, october 3, 2000 evan dando is still crazy. yes, he's still alive. so, for that matter, is dave pirner, who's working on both a solo album and a new soul asylum album. hey man, i like buffy as much as the next hipster, and yes it is a smart, underrated show blah blah blah, but "the only show on television in which both the characters and the dialogue remind us of the way real teenagers interact"? as if! kids do not speak in quips, one after another, like that. nor do they wear pink leather pants like buffy did in the disappointing season premiere. i like the stylized gloss of the show, but it's just as artificial as something like "melrose place." so i was just cruising ticketweb to see if there were any CMJ shows i needed to pick up tickets for (and indeed there are) when what do i see but this, at CBGB? it seems that everybody's favorite death-metal band, god forbid, has a bunch of nyc shows coming up! way to go, paul! i repeat: rhett miller is a golden god, and i would marry him today if he asked me. absolutely. without question. i caught his show at fez saturday night and it was amazing. just a boy and his acoustic guitar and his beautiful songs and beautiful voice. he played a good mix of old ones and new and wonderful material from the next old 97's album, which i later found out is coming out in march. we were sitting immediately to the right of the stage, flush up against the stage actually, which turned out to be lucky because rhett felt sorry for us and came over toward the end of his set and asked if there was anything we wanted to hear. *swoon* i hopefully blurted out "salome" before i remembered that "curtain calls" is actually my new favorite old 97's song. he seemed pleased by the request though, and told the crowd good-naturedly that if we all wanted to slit our wrists by the end, "it's her fault" (smiling at me!). after the show, nate and i went backstage (a closet-size room where rhett and a bunch of people were sitting around on couches) and introduced ourselves, nate needing to drop the ol' professional affiliation of course. rhett stood up and shook our hands and was all-around cool. even after he found out i worked for harper's bazaar and not harper's (he even knew the distinction was text vs. pictures), he launched into a story about how ryan adams from whiskeytown, his "nemesis," has a ritual whenever he flies anywhere: he always has to have a copy of harper's along with a coke and something else or he gets very upset. we had a laugh over it, me and my buddy rhett did. did i mention he's adorable? he was wearing a grey t-shirt with a picture of a beer mug on it and the word "frosty." so cute. i thanked him for playing "salome," we chatted a bit more, i made my exit. after all, there was a bunch of people sitting around and me standing there in the middle of this tiny room monopolizing the guest of honor. i left a very happy girl. i'm sure you're all relieved, as am i, that jury duty is over. after we reheard most of the testimony monday, one of the holdouts changed her vote; we then battered away at the lone dissenter until he caved. i like to think that my tiny voice had some hand in that. you see this guy was saying that "off the record" he believed the defendant was guilty, but that the prosecution hadn't proved their case. when i could get a word in edgewise, i kept trying to make him see that as the finder of fact, if he believed the guy was guilty then his "reasonable doubt" was purely theoretical and therefore not reasonable, that if he thought the guy was guilty then the prosecution _had_ proved their case. it was very satisfying when he finally relented. i won't bore you with the particulars; suffice it to say that it involved tainted evidence and lazy cops, but it never should have taken that long to convict the guy, who was clearly guilty. if you want a more interesting crime story, read this one about a crooked LAPD cop. also in the times magazine is an overwrought but still insightful piece about radiohead, "the" post-rock band. |
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