Never Don't Go

He sniffed.
"How you feeling? Better?"
"What, with my illness? Better, yeah. Mostly it's bad in the midafternoon. I shouldn't go out tonight, but."
"Just don't drink a lot. I'm not going to drink a lot."
"Yeah I won't drink a lot."
"But that said --"
"I'm gonna drink some."

Billy Stewart vs. Pixies

So probably other people know this but I just observed that Frank Black lifted "Your daddy's rich, your mama's a pretty thing" from "Summertime."

You can hate me now, but I won't stop now.

Summertime

PuffyShoe came across this at some point in the summer of 2006. From that point it was constantly in the rotation along with "Make It Rain," "Kickstart My Heart," "Hate Love Songs," and of course the entire Hold Steady thing.

Howard Huntsberry - "Higher and Higher"

The aforementioned Ghostbusters II song. YouTube slideshow.

Oh wait here's the scene itself. "We're gonna squeeze some juice from ya, Big Apple!"



"Don't worry. She's tough. She's a harbor chick."

Slushy Funds

Since December, I believe, an envelope sat in the top drawer of my bureau. In that envelope were six hundred-dollar bills, the fruits of my efforts at a poker table in Atlantic City.

Until today, the contents of that envelope had been set aside for investment in a quarterly journal several of my friends had spoken at length about starting.

This morning I woke up and did some busywork, got in the shower, dressed, and slipped one of the hundreds out of the envelope and into my wallet. Today I invested part of that capital in a foot-long steak and cheese sandwich from Subway and some more of it in two slices of pepperoni pizza and a Coke.

----

When I lived in Tacoma one of my friends enjoyed very much the sentence "That's not my problem." One day after I had behaved badly to some of his friends (so badly, in their eyes, that they never wanted to see me again), I asked him why he couldn't stick up for me and convince them to give me another chance. "Why is it my problem, what they think of you?" he asked. I remember that after I'd asked him this favor his face lit up a little bit, as though finally an opportunity to use his favorite phrase had arisen.

The day I left for New York, he told me to call him when I got there. I have not.

----

Eliot Spitzer this week was exposed as a patron of prostitutes. I can't say I feel bad for him but I can't say I'm on the side of those that are talking him down either.

----

I can't seem to find the knit cap that fit my head, so I'm back to wearing the Mariners beanie that rides up.

----

A friend of mine, Robert, moved to Hawaii for several weeks on a ticket his ex-girlfriend had bought for him. She had thought at the time that they would move there together, probably to get married. He dumped her before they could implement that plan and eventually realized he could still use the ticket.

On his return he told everyone at the bar that they should come join him in Hawaii. "You can get a job so easily there," he said. He was an electrician.

----

"The city exploded into power and property and pleasure. Expanding only fast enough to avoid recollapse."

----

My roommate from freshman year in college sent a letter to a mutual friend in Montana the other week. The envelope was the frilly kind one uses for sending wedding invitations. Our friend's mother was delighted that my roommate might be getting married. As it turns out, though, he was just being frugal by reusing an envelope that had been sent to him some weeks prior.

----

In D.C. this weekend several friends discussed the merits of the Ghostbusters II song, the one during which the Statue of Liberty comes to life and saves New York from the flowing ooze of negativity that brought the evil demon Zul to life.

I heard that song on "Mad Money" at work today. I tried to tell my boss about Ghostbusters II but he was pretty uninterested.

----

One post I deleted had a picture of a girl that had appeared on Facebook. The caption read, "Hi! I'm cute. [...] I am also handicapped."

I had written below it, "You have a choice. Things can either be funny, or sad."

Today I slipped on a banana peel. Okay not really.

----

Remember MarioKart?

Brief Lapse

This is probably already a joke, but this is probably just a blog.

A woman stood on Wall and Broadway today holding a sign that said "You Have to Be a True Catholic to Get to Heaven." Who would want to spend eternity with a bunch of uptight assholes?

Three Things About "Modern Girls"

One is possibly true: The Strokes are old-fashioned men and Spektor is a modern girl.

One is possibly false: The song has been at times called "Postmodern Girls and Old-Fashioned Men."

One is almost definitely false: Julian Casablancas and Regina Spektor were married for a few months.

Grindhouse

Went to the grindhouse this weekend, by which I mean I saw Planet Terror and Death Proof. Both were pretty awesome and did a good job of throwing in some surprises that helped them transcend the problem of basic homage. For instance, the anachronism of the cell phones was pretty jarring, as was placing a washed-up stuntman from the 70s into present day. I even liked the transitions from one kind of film stock (is that what that is?) to another. (I've dug the motif of anachronism since Ghost Dog I think, even though its brand of anachro is different.)

It's too bad those movies are expensive and that, from what I hear, the Weinsteins were pretty pissed off because they didn't make enough in the theaters. Sorta frustrating, given that the 70s movies Tarantino and Rodriguez were "doing" had pretty low budgets, if I understand things properly.

Markups

There's a scene in A Moveable Feast where Hemingway meets a literary figure in a cafe. He describes the man as "marked for death," and even says something along the lines of "go away with your marked-for-death-ass face."

People seem to like Hemingway for his stoicism, so it's a little crazy for him to be unwilling to deal with the face of a man marked for death, particularly after the war.

Also, it's hard, having read that, not to start dividing people up into the ones that are marked for death and the ones that aren't. It's hard to know how to feel about the ones that are.

Ways of marking things for death:

-Buying Crayola brand death marker (non-washable, toxic)
-Using a laser site
-Blogging

I Worry

That they're getting their little bums dirty.

Brutal

Bumcakes: what's your quote from?
Sent at 11:27 PM on Sunday
me: lifter puller song called "nassau coliseum"
Bumcakes: I'm always worried about professors or someone seeing my quote
me: hehe
i don't have those
and i just let it fly anyway
freedom of speech, bro
Bumcakes: yeah.
although that quote is pretty brutal
me: yeah
i felt kinda brutal when i put it up

Coughin Up That New York City Cool

and we all woke up at the airport
in the arcade on the western concourse
that's when she said that we should do this all over
she wipes the blood from her mouth with her shoulder
said i could use a little diet cola
or maybe just a little lifter puller

Circumstances led me to DC this weekend. The city is much the same as it ever was. I'll be back at the helm of this behemoth after the tack is complete.

La Vie Continue

Guys? ... Guys?

Sitemeter sticker has once again fallen off. Only this time, it's taken all the viewers with it.

According to its calculations, no one even visits the ideelz factory by accident anymore! Surely there is some kind of conspiracy afoot here.

Okay time to go for a jog.

Keep in touch baby!

Jolene

A couple years ago in DC I still thought I could sing and play guitar. One song, Dolly Parton's "Jolene," inspired me. I learned the melody and sat around going do mi, do mi, etc., trying to learn to sing with my mouth open and my throat open, but I don't even have one octave's worth of range out there. So I gave up guitar and singing and moved to Tacoma.



Parton feels old-school in that she cracks actual funny jokes, she gets up there and smiles real big for everyone and tries to give some joy back to the people watching. She performed at the Oscars or the Grammies a while ago. I think the song was about God and love. Anyway, Dolly Parton is real.

Prior to that flirtation with the idea of performing, I'd repeatedly listened to another song named "Jolene," by Cake. Cake is a band no one is supposed to actually like. The horns and the lead singer's delivery feel cheap most of the time, and the humor in their music probably doesn't grab people. "The Distance" probably turned a lot of people off.

Anyway, a woman I was crushing on who was from Philadelphia and a fucked-up family sent me the mp3 of Cake performing Jolene live. The girl was into coke, I think. She at least had been a member of the "coke set," a group of Georgetown kids who were rich and existential enough to party hard and try to fuck themselves up enough that they would somehow squash their sense of privilege. This group may or may not have actually done coke and may have existed more in my imagination than anywhere else; I never went to any of their parties. Okay, all I know for sure is she was a member of the Cake set.

But anyway the girl, who was also petite and French and looked like she needed a friend, got me into "Jolene" and I've always grudgingly respected Cake as a result. In the live version, the singer tells the lighting guy to turn off all the lights and instructs everyone to hum along with him during a breakdown. You believe, listening in, that the audience is with him. It's easy enough, he asks them to sing "oohs," and I think he picks three notes in a row, do re mi, so even the worst singers can get in on the game.

Later, he does a James Brown thing too where he yells for the horns and guitar to come back.

So yeah, here's Cake's "Jolene." Not the live version that I fell hard for but you might still get the idea.



Eventually, the French chick stopped wearing short skirts and cut her hair. She took a gig as a bicycle messenger and may have become a lesbian -- she at least started reading Mexican anarcho-feminism, and she participated in the hunger strike to help get Georgetown's cleaning crews a living wage. To protest the war in Iraq she joined a tent city in the main square on campus.

I hate to press the point too hard to the paper but it's fun to think that it's the same Jolene that Dolly and Cake are singing about. They both sort of love her but they can't get her to behave.

Clean Up, Go Home

One of my favorite scenes is from Heat, when De Niro catches Ashley Judd in the motel room and tells her to give it one last shot with Val Kilmer. He says "Clean up, go home." And then he says it again.

It's mean but De Niro's trying to do the right thing.

I Made a LOLcats

These people make it easy.

Forward, March!

It's March now.

Muska in 'Fulfill the Dream'

I think, by the way, that the rail he boardslides into the bank is in Ocean Beach, San Francisco. I think also that I stayed at a friend's apartment that was like 100 yards from that spot.

Sometime right around 1998, Chad Muska became more than just a gnarly skater. For several years after 1998, Chad Muska became God to millions of young teenagers worldwide.

Muska liked Rap music and did kickflips in skateparks while wearing a backpack and toting a ghetto blaster. When he first set out, these gimmicks didn't look like gimmicks so much as antics. Antics of a young man who knew he had charisma and talent and who could blow people away with his skating.

After "Fulfill The Dream," Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and the complete explosion of Shorty's Skateboards, the tide turned. People started hating Muska. Muska stopped skating and started making music. When he did film a trick, the footage reeked of half-stepping.

Transworld's "Videoradio," which documented the C1rca team's Euro tour, market the peak of Muska ridic, when hundreds of kids mobbed the dude at a demo and he couldn't even move.

Amid the hype and backlash, people forgot a simple thing about Muska. He had, at one point, made a seven-minute part in a video that was crucial to skateboarding's cultural self-awareness. He starts out just ollieing over things as he rolls through streets, skating the way everyday people skate. He ollies three massive sets of stairs. He destroys everything.

It'd be too bad if no one took time to remember that before this,



there was this.

These Shoulders Hold Up So Much

Dan Feehan has a story to tell about Dick Cheney. It is a very good story.