A Musical Eulogy for my Dead iPod

::: The Redwalls, "Thank You" :::

this made me laugh so hard: white dudes rapping about their lazy sunday, heavily featuring magnolia cupcakes and "the chronicles of narnia." so so good. thank you ryan. i got that link from cormipants, who also linked to this awesome picture of an upside-down christmas tree with santa heads attached. there is a story about why. best news story i have read in some time.

ipod update #4: shuffle dead. apparently i have some sort of ipod-killing radiation in my body. wtf.

also: i am having a SALE at the shop. rejoice! rock-show bracelets are now marked down to $15. order now, get it there by christmas! do it!

i must say, i went to the most perfect holiday party ever the other night. it was the great jones holiday party. here is why it was best ever: first of all, it was at great jones, which is pretty much one of the best restaurants in the city. i ate the following: two hunks of ham, a bunch of brussels sprouts, a chicken breast, a pile of pureed sweet potatoes, a small cookie. all delicious. they had a keg, too. and oakley hall played a ROLLICKING good set. i hadn't seen them in too long. it made me miss juli and will. and also the crowd was half older people and half young people, with a smattering of cute boys. and best of all, everybody was friendly. it was how a party should be. yay jami for inviting me! (i definitely missed juli and will, though.)

::: Oakley Hall, "Eyes, Lock & Steel" ::: and a couple more. go, download, enjoy.

shut up rhett! we get it! you loooooooove erica. yay for you! go make another baby or something.

i forgot to link to this hilarious are you a hipster? quiz. apparently i am a hipster! who knew??

monday, 7:22 pm: at gym, ipod freezes during ted leo song. will not turn off or play music, just shows the song when it froze. abort second half of workout.

tuesday, 9:15 am: ipod fine. jenny lewis rules.

6:00 pm: leave work, forget to eject ipod before unplugging. songs are erased (even though i have done this plenty of times before).

6:50 pm: get home, reset to factory settings (i.e. officially erase), and load a few albums on.

7:15 pm: go to gym, rock out to hold steady and american edit, no problems.

11:30 pm: spend hour-plus loading albums on.

12:45 am: eject ipod properly, notice ominous apple screen, discover soul-killing "0 songs." attempt desperately, unsuccessfully to restore factory settings again. get "unexpected error occurred." also get messages insisting "disk contains no volumes that mac os x can read." attempt to initialize too scary; abort.

1:22 am: go to bed hoping ipod will magically fix itself overnight.

wednesday, 9:07 am: ipod not fine. get file error message ON IPOD: "http://www.apple.com/support/ipod"

7:29 pm: shane at the genius bar at the apple soho store, after falsely giving me hope that my ipod could simply be "reset," asks "so how much were you looking for an excuse to buy a new ipod?" shane subsequently pronounces ipod "beyond."

RIP cat's ipod, 8/16/04-12/14/05

::: Need New Body, "Popfest" ::: this was the last song my ipod played. a moment of silence, please.

santacon was excellent fun! a little cold. i do believe i declared that i looked "the cutest i have ever looked." we all did, really. holly and mark (hawaiian santa) and their friend kevin came up from philly and joined me (stripey santa) and michael (white trash santa) and brian (disco santa) and -- very briefly -- myrna (got-wasted-too-fast santa). didn't take too many pics cause i was too busy having fun. favorite comment of the day, from an elderly black woman: "i need to get away from you freaks." crazy white people strike again! here are a couple of fun videos: santas at the new york stock exchange (note the crowd-surfing santa), and santa snowball fight.

the new (leaked) cat power is killing me right now, by the way. i never got into her before, but it's pretty much as promised...

::: Cat Power, "The Greatest" :::

today is guided by voices day in new york city, y'all. a year ago i spent a weekend watching gbv, my all-time favorite band, three nights in a row. the world, frankly, is not the same without this band in it. luckily i have the dvd of the electrifying conclusion to help me through these hard times. of note: i am totally in one of the last shots, having apparently lingered on the floor after the band had left the stage. i am dressed smartly in a black-and-white wrap dress, chatting up a handsome texas boy. this boy, mitchell, later had the huge bottle of champagne that was onstage for the band fed-exed to his home. from chicago. check it if you have it. smoke 'em if you got 'em.

what else did i do this weekend besides watch that dvd? let's see, i went to gail's birthday at the 11th street bar, got slightly bored and started taking pictures...

...ditched the blonde and got bangs (whoa), courtesy of my longtime stylist, margie, who just opened her own salon, tease, on rivington, next to schiller's....

...and went shopping for santacon gear with brian, who got an advance taste of the craziness that will ensue this saturday when he wore his santa wig and beard home to bushwick. here is some video of brian fluffing up his santa beard, and here is brian one year ago today fucking with a mechanical santa outside a bar after the last nyc gbv show, and here are some more pics. we are getting insanely excited for santacon over here....

oh yeah, and i downloaded the new strokes album. it leaked it its entirely, finally. it's...suspicious. and yet potentially brilliant. is all i will say for now.

i revealed last week that i have thrust myself into the realm of internet dating. oh, the humanity, people. i am wrestling with whether it is okay to excerpt some of the hugely entertaining responses i've received on some of these sites. perhaps, then, it is advance karmic payback that the funniest and most entertaining of the dating sites, consumating, heir to the throne of the now-really-sucky nerve.com, has incorrectly interpreted my birthdate and declared me 30 years old a good 23 days before my time. unacceptable, ben. fix it! in the meantime, folks, feel free to buy me presents. my wishlist is quite up-to-date, should you be feeling awesome.

finally, peeps, i have a little revenge. a couple of weeks ago, in a moment of vulnerability (read: extreme hungover-ness), i was lead to believe that my friend ryan cormier had injured his foot in a freak polo-playing accident. he claimed to have hit his own foot with the mallet, while playing polo. ryan is not the kind of person to be playing polo, for reasons i can't fully articulate. and yet i bought it. it was too good of a story not to believe, the best cormi has ever told, arguably. when i learned it was not true, i felt like someone had told me santa claus does not exist. and yet, though he does not play polo, ryan DOES apparently ride big clown bikes. heh.