tuesday, april 30, 2002
last night the question "what the hell is liz phair doing now, anyway (besides appearing in gap commercials)?" came up. answer: costarring in a romantic comedy. she's also been doing some soundtrack work and palling around with sheryl crow. no word on the followup to whitechocolatespaceegg. so there you have it. in leigh ann's words: poor little piggie, stupid dumbass frat boys!

monday, april 29, 2002
quiz that is actually fun: female or shemale?

due to cormi's high praise, i decided to join the hoboken crew in checking out jay bennett and edward burch at maxwell's saturday night. he had some nice songs, but randi and i agreed he had an attitude problem regarding his split from that highly accomplished band. there were several bitterly pointless and gratuitous references to wilco, and he flipped his hair a lot. he just came off as a bit of an ass.

also seen this weekend: dogtown and z-boys, a fascinating documentary about a group of young california surfers turned skateboarders. almost convinced me that these kids invented cool itself. the skateboarding footage is soooooooo cool. so graceful! so stylish! and on that level the film works, as a celebration of this beautiful sport/art form. of course, it was created by the very people it mythologizes, and it definitely missed a chance to comment on the explosion of sponsorship that, it's only hinted, brought about their downfall (one of them was "last seen in mexico"), but then you wouldn't have seen so much amazing skateboarding. thumbs up!

"the lords of dogtown": this spin article tells a little more about what happened when the z-boys started to grow up. looks like there are a bunch more articles here. also, photographer glen e. friedman was 13 at the time! can you imagine being that cool at 13? i cannot. he has a new book out containing the original skateboarder magazine articles and lots of his unpublished photos. i want it.

not that i ever read it anymore, but it sounds like rolling stone is going to get a lot worse.

mmm, tobey.

the gentlewoman from delaware mentions todd's onstage consulting of his cell phone as evidence of increasing rockstar-hood. ahem. i must point out that he did this extremely UNrockstarlike (scoffworthy in fact) thing in order to check how much time he had left in his set, not to see which of his many fans had called him. anyway it hardly matters, because i decided that drew, his new guitarist, is the new todd. even vanessa (lesbian, you know) blatantly checked out his ass. good times.

friday, april 26, 2002
yay wilco! yep, that's a napster shirt tweedy was wearing last night. maybe they don't make audiogalaxy t-shirts? at least he has a sense of humor though: he asked how many of us had the new album, and most people raised their hands like dutiful schoolchildren; then he asked how many had actually bought it, and when lots of hands again went up, he went "riiiiight" and revealed his support of audio file-sharing. in any case, it was a lovely show. tricia and i got right up front very easily and worshipped according to plan. we got a few new songs, lots of stuff from YHF and "summerteeth," plus the "being there" hits in the two encores, and the "california stars" singalong. so fun! and maybe i'm a heathen, but i did not notice the absence of jay bennett. they sounded just great without him. i'm guessing the setlist will be here soon. tonight: todd! whom i ran into last night, flyering and charming as usual. he is such a hard worker, that kid. and he looks like a little texas beatle with tattoos. come hear him tonight on the big stage. killer voice and cute as hell. woooo todd! forgive me, i know it's "a shame" that she died and all, as i guess it is when anybody who isn't a total schmuck dies, but lisa "left eye" lopes sure looks like an alien. her "left eye," if you will, is extremely weird. that is all.

thursday, april 25, 2002
i admit the pita is in something of a slump these days: don't worry, i'm working to rectify the situation. in the meantime, today is Random Picture Day! enjoy.

the first is the view i enjoyed from my bedroom window a year ago. the second is the view i curse every day around 7:15 when the construction workers (not cute! where is my soft-spoken curly-haired boy??) begin hammering and yelling very short distances from my formerly sleeping head. and here are a couple of signs i have lately found amusing.

i hadn't heard of that last theory for how 420 got started, did you? [thanks ryan] related: ha! the other night i was at the record store (purchasing the new wilco in order to support tweedy & co.; guess i will give my burned copy to my dad or somebody), and i seriously injured my flipping finger for about 10 minutes. it felt like it was sprained. from flipping cd's. it was really weird. anyway, there i found the quite the gem, something i heard a tiny bit of while riding around in kelly's car in new cumberland, pennsylvania (thanks, kelly!). i am now absolutely loving moonflower plastic by ex-gbv co-songwriter tobin sprout. "achingly pretty" indeed.

monday, april 22, 2002
by the way, bk baby was sensational on conan. i have watched it on tape no less than three (3) times. conan goes for the handshake after the performance, but ben insists on giving him a hug. he's at the knitting factory next month; don't miss it!

sunday, april 21, 2002
wonderful rolling stone review of the new wilco album, which i will be purchasing on tuesday. great writing, and totally accurate, too: i think i am going to incorporate "iridescent country" into my vocabulary. pretty sure "wibbly" is not a word, however. and then here is the new york times trying to be hip with a pretty standard article on them. i myself can't wait to worship at the feet of jeff tweedy on thursday. saved by rock and roll at brownie's last night: cropduster, miracle of 86, and the sheila divine. amy and i would have had separate boring-ass saturday nights at home had i not called her, somewhat desperate for something to do. it was nice and cool in there, not too crowded, and all of the bands were decent. long live brownie's! update: it turns out that among the many cute boys who did not talk to us all night were slatch and crew, who made the trek from rhode island. jon told me he half-recognized the purse (it's famous now!), but apparently that was not enough to make the connection. it's tragic, i know.

thursday, april 18, 2002
oh my god cormi makes me explode in giggles. "Maybe I will be able to find my lost anus at the Recher that GBV blew off my person." i mean, if you will click on "fat lady with a droopy belly" you need to be reading ryan every day. that is all i'll say about that for a while. at least i didn't use the word "props." so i met one of my contacts for a drink last night and now i have an advance copy of the upcoming gbv release, universal truths and cycles. thank you deep throat! i don't see it leaving any of my various cd players for a good long while. ben kweller on conan tonight, kids, performing the smash hit "wasted & ready," which is one of those songs that sometimes, when i'm on the train, i'll just put on "repeat 1" and play over and over: "she is a slut but x thinks it's sexeee..."

wednesday, april 17, 2002
turkey trashes video store. ah, summer in the city: time of exposed toes and, not coincidentally, perpetually dirty feet. unfortunately i think every sistah and her mother has booked already at one of these spas giving discounted pedicures. dammit. i guess i can polish my own toes as per usual, though.

tuesday, april 16, 2002
can you believe the state of that person's fingers? check out how the index finger is positively glistening. good lord. they look like .... well you know what they look like.

monday, april 15, 2002
hot freaks, part three: sometimes blogs are about nothing other than talking about your weekend. this was one of those weekends, otherwise known as the beer, bob, & bowling blowout. the short version is i was laughing my ass off all weekend long. the long version is... randi and i rolled up at pete and kelly's big-ass yellow house in new cumberland, pennsylvania, at around 5. we got out of the car and were immediately faced with the reality that we were not in new york anymore. it smelled like a brigade of horses had taken a giant dump and spread it across the land. i mean, it was thick. but it was a nice peaceful area.

we hung around the house for a bit, debating the merits of root beer beer, and then i went to the vintage store in new cumberland, pennsylvania, with my host pete, his neighbor jessica, and his best friend from superfresh before he got fired, nathan. the boys tried but failed to get "wacky" shirts for the show; i bought this purse:

we ate some vegetables, drank some beers, and then took two twenty-dollar cabs to the bowling alley, where there was a tournament taking place. we sat in the bowling alley's bar and blasted the rednecks with the random good tracks from the jukebox, including weezer and son volt. after 40 minutes, there was still another hour-and-a-half wait for a lane, so we called the two twenty-dollar cabs back to the bowling alley.

upon returning to chez bothum, there was an impromptu performance by terminal lunchbox. the crowd went wild.

then randi decided to play rock star. she was pretty good at it, i'd say.

saturday afternoon we spent recovering from friday night, with nathan suffering from what he called "one of his spells" and what the rest of us call "a major hangover." poor nathan did not get to eat his beloved monte cristo. here he is with his sandwich, just before getting up and rapidly exiting the new cumberland diner.

by the time we got to the recher theater, though, we were recharged and ready to rock. we bounced around a lot and i could tell that pretty much everybody was in concert nirvana. i have to say, the new songs seem a bit sludgy, but a few of them (the hit singles, i suppose) are very fun. i still adore nate farley. those boys are such showmen. the new drummer kept standing on his drum stool at the beginning of songs and doing this raven dance. i waited till the encore, when i was enmeshed in the mosh pit, to bust out the cam, with appropriately blurry results.

upon returning to the hotel, we were very loud and hotel security did not approve. ryan was his usual anti-PC self. here he is doing one of his "bits" with a handy prop. we laughed and felt ashamed.

other fun facts:
¥ on the way to the show, nathan told me that he thought i looked the lead singer of sleater-kinney. i loved that!
¥ there were several spectacular feats of gymnastics pulled off. pete slid on wet concrete outside the club (i don't recall why), i crashed into the living room wall after attempting to mimic bob doing a high kick, and kelly fell out of her rock and roll chair during the terminal lunchbox performance. randi and cormi did the horizontal pogo. heheh, just kidding.
¥ my newly purchased purse suffered some serious abuse during the show. (note to self: do not bring unproven vintage items to raucous rock shows.) however, a few well-placed safety pins and it's good to go. also during the show, one of the pins fell out of my watch, causing it to flap around on my wrist. i searched the area afterwards, and instead of stealing someone else's clothing, found it in about five seconds, lying there on the beer-soaked floor. (note to self: karma is a sham.) the watch is now fixed.
¥ after the show some kid handing out flyers outside declared it "off the hook." i don't think people who say "off the hook" attend gbv shows, do you? pete nonetheless agreed and told him it had been a fine occasion for "man love."

i'm having a bit of the old post-gbv letdown. but before i could even finish this update, i learned that they will be back in nyc in just four weeks: may 14, irving plaza, with my morning jacket. boy oh boy i'm getting tired already.

thursday, april 11, 2002
i can't stop laughing today. today is chatting with friends, cackling maniacally, email madness, gbv radio, and thinking about my new "screenplay" idea. insane amounts of rockenroll is good for the disposition. it feels like i'm a student again: energy through drainedness! i think this is going to be my job from now on. yup. seeing lots of rock, that is my job. this copyediting thing is just for kicks.

show last night was amazing, if i forgot to mention it. concert nirvana. looks like amy is officially converted, too.

indestructible sandwiches: up to 3 years shelf-life. nasty!

check out this person's amazing photography: cre8ive1.net. love that used jello-shots pic. updated weekly.

*******

dude. it is 3:30 a.m. and i really need an egg sandwich. i just had a long conversation on the train with a purportedly palestinian gentleman who was outraged at the arrest of a homeless dude and eventually tried to get my phone number. what the hell is up with that? uh, so, gbv rocked my world again tonight. i had several "moments" with nate farley this time. we understand each other. also, i shamefully stole someone's seven-dollar old navy jacket in the name of trying to find amy's, which she lost while immersed within a real live mosh pit. i acutally did find her tokyo version, but i decided to keep the old navy number. i would like to point out that neither amy nor vanessa tried to dissaude me from this course of action. i guess i am going to pay for this eventually. karma and what-have-you. ooops! in the meantime i have a new jacket. how ya like me now???

wednesday, april 10, 2002

geebeevee! geebeevee! two songs in, jami turned to me and said, "they are SO much better than the white stripes." oh, the rock. it is so beautiful. and i had a "moment" with tim tobias, whom i love even though pete says he looks like a "retarded pig." he's always laughing on stage! how can you not fall in love with that?! so all in all it was a great night, the perfect cure for a crappy couple of days. today i'm hurtin' a little, but that's all right. it's the price you pay.

patricia cunningham is the Pita Reader of the Day, Week even, because she is giving me her extra wilco ticket. happily (for me), her husband (bruuuuuuce! yeah!!) is flying out to bangladesh that night. this must be an example of ticket karma being a true thing: i give my extra white stripes ticket to metascene fred; a few days later, i get in on a similarly hot ticket. hey, by the way, tricia is trying to unload a couple of tickets to nick cave at the beacon. neko case may or may not be opening. drop a line if you want 'em.

did you know courtney love is a big bulletin-board crackhead? check it out, here she is ranting about the hives and, uh, some other music-biz stuff. i have no idea what she's talking about half the time. she also refers to puddle of mudd as "puddle of frodo." i giggle every time i think of it.

nice little critiques of the various women's/fashion magazines. ouch! gotta love sharp criticism. so much better than a bumper sticker. (okay, like two people are going to get that. sorry.) thanks be to leanne for the link.

tuesday, april 9, 2002
37 record-store clerks feared dead in yo la tengo concert disaster. senseless hipster carnage!

it's true: i want to cuddle with ben kweller.

apparently i myself am too cool for school. i was called out on my semiobnoxious white stripes comments by two people so far. yeah, well, at least cormi appreciated my bitchiness.

tonight i'm going to the first of THREE gbv shows this week. i realize that i am insane. but here is a little history if you need it. i don't believe that the warsaw kicks people out for taking pictures, so i hauled ass to b&h at lunch and picked up a new charger (having given up hope of ever finding the old one) along with a new battery, because why not. goodbye ninety bucks! but i'm sure it will all be worth it. looking forward to taking pictures again....

monday, april 8, 2002
i liked the white stripes. i did. they were good. jack howled his way through an hourlong set, and meg sure can bang those drums. but you know, i see a lot of rock shows. i am not necessarily going to be bowled over by every single one. some people were upset by this reaction, which was apparently shared by some others in the crowd. this poor clueless phish-dancing kid came to our weirdly spacious area and began asking why everyone had to be so critical and why they weren't dancing. they he started whining, "it's the fuckin' white stripes, maaaan! we should get this whole place goin'!" he was pretty amusing. i also have this issue, as you may have noticed, with rock stars who demand better audience reaction. you are performing for us, not vice versa. at one point jack white said after a song, "i think about 10 percent of you were clapping. guess everybody's too cool for school." which, like, fuck you jack white. this is new york. we are tough, and we have heard rock music before. suck it up and play. impress us and maybe you'll get the treatment you think you so richly deserve. also, reader, please note that jack white was seen later that evening wearing a bowler hat.

that said, they did rock. (i think they can retire that "jolene" cover now, however. and after meg's turn at the mic, i think we all know why jack doesn't let her sing.) the modern age has some excellent pictures. afterward leigh ann (who always keeps me out having fun until at least 4 a.m.) and jami and fred and i partied with the rock stars and wannabes at 2A. oh, and i met gideon yago, who is apparently friends with todd. i decided to amuse myself and fuck with him a little: "so, gideon, that's a pretty unusual name." he was nice to me anyway.

friday, april 5, 2002
peter buck acquitted of throwing yogurt, and all that other wild stuff he didn't deny doing on a british airways flight under the influence of 15 glasses of wine and a sleeping pill. crazy rock stars.

jami and i went to see the mendoza line last night at brownie's. it was the first of Three Rock Shows in Six Days. which is such a grand occasion that we're going to write a book about it. oh yes we are, just you wait and see! anyway the bands were all pretty good. the chick singer of the mendoza line made the cardinal mistake in my book of wishing aloud that more of the audience would dance. but then she shut up and they continued playing their folky twangy pop. (side note: i heard one dude asking the slide guitar player what kind of music they played, as if he couldn't wait 30 seconds and find out, and he said "a little bit rock, a little bit bob dylan.") i don't know if i reached Concert Nirvana at any point, but it was a good time. we talked to a couple of guys who had a bunch of toys they'd won at beauty bar. "fun pads," darth vader kites, and ramen noodles, they just kept producing them for our approval. they were nice but did not give us any of their booty. ahem. the red and the black opened and played enjoyable chapel-hill-style indie rock; knife in the water played slow, spaced-out alt-country, i guess. yay for bands that don't suck.

i am getting some seriously mixed reports on the current white stripes tour. here is what several people have had to say about 'em:

¥ ryan: does anyone have the cure for having your testicles blown out of your ears?"
¥ nathan: "I managed to reach 'Concert Nirvana' at several points during the show."
¥ slatch: "White Stripes showed up. I'll give them that."
¥ pete bothum (via email, b/c he lacks a blog, poor kid): "The Stripes were good but not great. And the poseur factor -- the kids onhand who I'm sure believe the Stripes have somehow reinvented the Rock and Roll Wheel by recycling Zeppelin and AC/DC riffs -- they just killed the show."

so. i'll be the tiebreaker. i myself have been listening to their first album for the past couple days, and it is, as the shy record store dude informed me last summer when i was trying to decide between it and de stijl, "pretty raw." i like it. so many songs have that thumping backbeat. i suspect it would be great workout music.

by the way, the aforementioned nathan is a new, belated addition to the almighty sidebar and a worthy read. he has finally brought back the What Sam Is Wearing feature, which chronicles the attire of the resident office hipster in his washington d.c. polling firm. it's great. i'm still waiting for the return of CD's Listened To On The Way to Work though.

the also-aforementioned pete bothum tells us the story of the new gbv drummer, who is living his rock & roll dream. dude woke up every day at 8 a.m. for a month in order to learn the 60 songs necessary to tour with the band.

and just for a dose of reality as it exists in certain other parts of the world, here's a documentary filmmaker who was on the scene during the israeli invasion of ramallah answering questions about what it was like and the situation in general.

thursday, april 4, 2002
great gossip: Weary Stroke punched a record company exec who wanted the band to play a show. "it got a little weird," said Ugly Stroke. i'll say.

oh yeeee-ah, manhattan is the new brooklyn! tell your friends!

tuesday, april 2, 2002
d-plan drummer: "Sittin' in the back, watching all the butts dancing in front of me, thats the reward." how fun! [via the modern age]

a member of older-brother-affiliated death-metal band god forbid is quoted in this story all about the osbournes. man, they are just so wacky, aren't they? saying f*** all the time and having those funny english accents? i find the show entertaining too, but let's face it: it ain't exactly revolutionary. there's a reason why it's on after the real world. and plus, do you realize they get to veto anything that might be the tiniest bit less than charming? that said, i'll be tuning in tonight at 10:30 just like all y'all to see whether the cops take ozzy downtown for hefting a huge brick through his neighbors' window last week.

monday, april 1, 2002
played some rousing tennis in nueva jersey this weekend. members of my family kept calling me "naturally talented" even as some of my shots sailed into the fence. and so, with the weather on the brink of turning truly springlike, i want to play in the city. do you realize you have to have a $50 permit to play tennis here? anyway, i'm checking out the east river park scene this weekend to see how crazy it is. (maybe i'll even snap some pictures, if i find my battery charger before then. its loss is depressing me. i can't believe i had NO pictures on the pita the entire month of march.) in the meantime, is there anyone else besides betsy who wants to play?

former bazaar editor weighs in on the "the tyranny of skinny" in the fashion world. she also fake-apologizes to renee zellweger for pulling her bridget jones-era cover because she was too fat. um, if you call her overweight, it doesn't really count.