i had a dream where i was swimming with sharks and broke the rules. one of the sharks sank its teeth into my forearm and wouldn't let go. i continued to swim with it for a while, until a hot guy saved me. fucking hollywood endings. so unrealistic.

little matt launched twenty-forty zine. looks pretty sweet. one of these days i will write something for it just to get him off my back. goddammit matt! i give!

randi and i got our strokes summerstage tickets on presale. rock!

the weekend's highlight was either dinner at the tiny, fabulous venezuelan restaurant caracas or getting my face licked by birthday-boy stu. the rest was low-key, watching-movies, getting-crafty stuff. it felt like i was living in queens again. on the upside, i do now have a beer-can cuff that you will all be jealous of. friends, please save your empties if you want one. oh and i watched the finale of that show. it was dumb. but i like cosmos. the end.

oh my god. easily the grossest short story ever. by chuck palahniuk, the one that made people vomit at readings. ew. ew. ew. if you choose to read it, i definitely suggest cleansing your palate with some cute little kittens afterward.

yesterday i got a check for $13.86 as my part of the "music consumers are fucked" settlement. i might put it toward a purchase of that awesome scissor sisters cd, since it's import-only (i.e. way expensive). their shit makes me want to throw a party. right. now!

new thermals album this spring. that is wooh.

when will the february birthdays stop? ever? this policy is starting to get annoying. and yet. happy, uh, 29th, i think, to scott goss, the coolest thing to ever come out of slower lower delaware.

franz ferdinand at bowery last night went kind of like this: yes. yes! yesss!! i was kind of put off by the 80s-ness of their debut, which i just listened to properly for the first time yesterday. i actually found it pretty annoying in a stellastarr kind of way. the cheesy disco beats are still there live, but they somehow won me over. grittier...rockier...crazier. and they just sound really good. waaaay better than the rapture, kids. and you want to dance!! so you do! and they're weirdo brits, kind of like if gareth from "the office" had a band. i made andy take pics but he has not come through yet. little matt wrote me this morning:

here is a photo from last night. thank GOD i have photos to prove to myself that i was there because i recall zero of the show. i just remember there being a lot of girls screaming and some brit wanker asking me if i worked for a magazine (no clue why) and that i should stop taking photos. and then when i provided him with some sass, he responded 'don't go there.' wanker.

cat: was the show good?

yes, little matt. it was fookin' great. check this mp3.

word nerds will like this: word spy. [via fimoculous]

white-boy trumpeter can dance! (please click. please.) [thanks tammy]

monthlong residencies, i guess, can be hit or miss. in the case of the french kicks last night: miss. they were all right, but just all right. they played like 90 percent new songs and even switched lead singers at one point. which is so not wooh. i like the lead singer's cute little waist and need to see it at all times. the post-show ray's pizza, however, was totally wooh. french kicks photo by little matt. oh! and while i may still be unable to help the persistent googler who needs information on the "adorable bartender at southpaw," i can say that the poor man's jordan catalano does still work at the mercury.

aw, ken from old 97s, looking cooler and cooler with each passing year, has a little tour diary. he's a great writer. here he describes the scene after rhett hurls in a garbage can before an encore: "Rhett wipes his mouth and hustles back onstage, wooing the young ladies with some love song, the stench of humanity lingering on his lips." it's really too bad ken is already married. cause i would so marry him.

the hold steady in suits? wha? i thought they hated irony....

things to remember: don't eat change; don't shake it like a polaroid picture.

i totally forgot to shout out my brothers' respective birthdays. ooops. happy happy, boys. i've been feeling a little out of sorts lately, not much to say. so today i'm gonna break it down nice 'n' easy style:

recommended:
ryan's new, bordering-on-hot (!) pictures on his pro blog. no shit!

walking around in your own private music-world, remembering, of course, to emerge for consumer transactions. helps avoid catcalls and idiots. fuck society.

the wrens' meadowlands. so pretty. i knew i would love it on first listen. listen. love.

not recommended:
obsessing over the little white bumps beneath the surface of your upper lip that are not turning into anything at all. did one of you fuckers give me a slow-developing kissing disease? or is this like that time i went to the doctor concerned about the clusters of white bumps at the back of my tongue and she congratulated me on discovering my tastebuds at the age of 27 (true story)? only time will tell.

watching "leaving las vegas" on valentine's day. still v. v. depressing.

norah jones. on principle.

happy birthday to holly. one more year and she is big 3-0. last year i wrote a touching tribute on the pita. this year she just gets her damn picture slapped up.

love these valentines (see above). these too. i wish i'd known about them when i was making cards for old people at clare's "oooh aren't we volunteer-y" party the other night. i bet some old people retain their sense of irony, don't you? i hope that when i am old and alone and in a home, people send me cards that are edgy.

drove with a shark attached to his leg.

who is a better interview, elizabeth spiers or this stapler? you decide.

subway rule #30: do not jump onto the tracks to get your cell phone! a) they never clean the tracks, b) you'll never be able to hoist yourself back up, c) think of the poor subway driver who has to watch you die, and d) you can get a new cell phone for like thirty bucks! what possible reason could you have for doing that? you're just going to delete that guy's number in a week, anyway.

travis morrison posted another new mp3.

barbie and ken are breaking up. um.

yesterday was amy's birthday. isn't she hot? happy birthday amy!

this i like: elizabeth spiers on the marc jacobs show.

this too: two-twenty on the things around their house that inspire them, fashion-wise.

also jami talking about how being drunk is "special." heeeee.

here's a great bad review of "america's sweetheart. meanwhile this one says there are flashes of goodness but it still pretty much sucks. and neil strauss actually likes it.

why are poodle haircuts so weird? [via the morning news]

it appears that my camera is not fully dead after all, as evidenced by this picture of a small corner of my desk. it is, however, mostly dead.

i listened to a bit of the courtney love solo debut in the megastore today. total utter suckfest. horrifying. what the fuck happened? i mean, "malibu" was a really good song. is she, like, on drugs or something?

howard dean, crackhead, said he was "unaware of making this decision" (to stay in the race) before announcing it. he likes to let choices "incubate unconsciously for a long time before i actually make a formal decision." dude is crazy!

this looks really very cool: ladies & gentlemen, a magazine and a record featuring interviews with bob pollard and craig finn, short stories and essays and illustrations by other cool people, and exclusive songs by the hold steady, iron & wine, the wrens, and more. designed by the aesthetic apparatus guys.

i love how the kangaroo in andy's australia pics looks like a woman.

kempa.com is updating daily! no joke!

pazz 'n' jop. i am relieved to see that werde did not vote for anything as weird as avril lavigne at #1, as he did last year.

i forgot to mention krucoff's baby, the young manhattanite interview series. it is good.

finally, if anyone wants to see further pictures of bar-crawling, there are more here.

crawling can be beautiful. okay, there was not much beauty attached to this particular event. i just wanted to use that line. but the bar crawl in suburban pa. (organized by old review boss jimmy p. miller) was medium to high fun. we all went to planet crazy, and then some of us got on a shuttle bus and ended up in seriously out of control city. it was good times, though. cormi has pics and inside jokes, and i'm sure randi will soon enough. also let it be publicly noted that holly norton's boyfriend mark is officially the shit for being the designated driver and putting up with all of us. more of my pics are here.

so after three years my hardy elph has finally died. E18 were its final words. what does one do with a dead camera? anyway, i want to compile a list of good replacements. i want something small and good. i'll probably get another canon, but i want to know what else is out there. if you have a digital camera that you like, can you let me know?

this is the reason i love the early rounds of american idol. if you missed it, please check out the audition of this deluded engineering student doing "she bangs."

"Although the second head is only partially developed, its mouth moves when Rebeca is being breast-fed."

i will link to cormi's suspiciously positive old 97s review despite the fact that it has a hideous misspelling in the headline. i do this because it does contain reference to "panties mcgee" and the infamous panties-throwing incident. also, cormi is now doing a "professional" blog for the news journal. strange but true. please note the humorously stepford wife-esque picture.

ridiculously great photos of gbv.

wow. i had predicted gap, but it looks like that long-under-construction store at orchard and houston will be an american apparel, they of the superlong-sleeved t-shirts. [thanks neighbor]

at the age of 16, randi decided, for 16-year-old reasons, that she wanted to become a vegetarian. yesterday, for reasons known only to her, randi decided she wanted to eat a cheeseburger, with zero regard for the poor moocow who had to die so that she might eat. so of course cindy a. and i insisted we go to corner bistro for their beautifully roly-poly burgers. happily, there were no gastrointestinal ramifications. congrats on your entry to the civilized carnivorous world, randi! here she is wiping the cow blood off her chin:

with valentine's day approaching, someone needs to buy me the shit bitch bear, lest i feel alone and unloved. [via uffish thoughts]

you get 20 percent off if you preorder your ted leo "dirty old town" dvd, featuring live footage from this summer's coney island performance.

following up on the other gross thing from last week, here is a clearer picture of the two-headed baby. now even grosser! [thanks ultragrrrl]

i could make a whole day's pita of hilarious and interesting shit found on the ok go blog. a small sampling:

¥ government experiment with drugs shows what happens when an artist is given LSD
¥ subversive cross-stitch
¥ from the things my girlfriend and i have argued about guy, angry bed positions

despite recent bad-sounding news, bloomberg and co. do not want to tear down the high line. so it's safe for now. happy exploring. and if you don't know what i'm talking about, see november 10.

the hold steady rocked a packed house at northsix saturday night. i took too many blurry pictures and later lost my camera battery. how did that happen? because you are all probably sick of hearing me talk about how much i love this band, i will leave it to out-of-town guest pam, aka Best Houseguest Ever. i asked pam if she'd liked the hold steady and she replied that, oh my god, they were her new favorite band. i asked why, wanting to make sure she wasn't just humoring me. and she said, "dude, i was mesmerized by the lead singer's words. and then i realized that there was this kickass rock and roll happening!" i'd say that is on the money...thanks pam! later she asked me where she could get the cd. guess we do have a convert! it'll be out on french kiss in march. labelmates les savy fav were awesome as usual. little matt has pictures. here's one of his that didn't make it on his site:

bill werde's extra tidbits that did not make it in his wired story about the nintendo-song cover band rivals the story itself for entertainment value. plus, he uses the word "desktoppiness"!

al franken bodyslams anti-dean heckler to the ground in the name of free speech. [via the awesome infrangible]

following up on last week's whale story, which captured the complete fascination of at least holly p., here we have a picture of the splattered insides.