here ye shall find

soon.

2010-10-20T20:03:00.003-04:00

can one prevent a total nervous breakdown? by listening to a record over and over? by hiding in places no one can find you except bartenders with at least four kids? does any of it work?

it is impossible to escape from yourself.

hungry

2010-09-07T22:25:00.002-04:00

a stirring, purposeful wind swept in today, sending The Summer of Summers into those foggy ruins of time. on september 7, the annual back-to-school tuesday, a starchy jeans day, the dixon-ticonderoga national day of well-stocked pencil pouch pride, the wind blew with a force and a direction that shouted MOVE! YOU'VE BEEN LAZY TOO LONG! GET THE SAND OUT OF YOUR SHORTS AND FIND YOUR BRAIN AGAIN! well, it told me to find my brain because i haven't been using it so much lately. i've been using my liver. and my eyeballs. my mouth and lungs have done a lot of laughing and my arms and legs have done a lot of swimming, but my brain has largely been idling since june. the time for that has passed. fall is here to shake us from our slumber. the jews (and the public school system, i guess) really have it right about when to hit the reset for a new year. this is the time. if i had a shofar, i would most certainly be blowing it today.

speaking of jewish wisdom, these winds have also ushered in major bob dylan listening season. i want to live inside this song.

Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach

Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

green corn moon: a video roundup!

2010-08-24T19:57:00.001-04:00

it's the last week of summer. these are songs you should listen to.

1. wilco - outtasite (outtamind)

2. nina simone - love me or leave me

3. best coast - boyfriend

4. bread - guitar man

5. beach house - take care

now go ride your bike!

unemployment chronicles: part III

2010-08-02T23:04:00.002-04:00

august always feels like an anxious month, where i want to grab summer by the balls and say, "JUST STAY! STAY HERE! DON'T GO! WE CAN HAVE SO MUCH FUN TOGETHER!" even target started hawking school supplies in june, the bastards. i am less than one month away from going back to school. that idea is supremely gross. this summer has been, is, and continues to be one of the best i can recall and i won't be parting with it easily.

7/14 everything is terrible, which may be the greatest use of the internet to date, came to the burton theatre to present an evening of sheer genius. most notably, duane.

7/16 - cap'n jerry & the mermaids crossed international waters (the detroit river) to play our second show at the phog lounge in windsor. we played pretty terribly, got pleasantly drunk, hung out with a slew of fine canadian folks, and ended the night with the kinds of burritos fat kids dream about.

7/17 - due to our sweaty, nervous, close to disastrous performance in windsor, we spent all of saturday practicing in our dining room. our band practices typically include at least an hour spent cooking and/or eating a meal, an hour watching youtube videos, and at least one fight/walkout/cry. we will remember these times fondly in our 2023 episode of behind the music.

7/18 - our hard work paid off with a much better show at the beachland ballroom in cleveland. the sunday night crowd was sparse, but we played far better, sweated less, and had a really great response from the audience.

7/21 - my sisters & i took my mom, along with my great aunt to stratford to see the tempest. christopher plummer (le orig captain von trapp!) played prospero and i only fell asleep twice! the last time i was in stratford, i slept through the entire first act of hamlet.

7/23 - cap'n jerry & the mermaids again hit the road, this time for a short jaunt up I-75 to play churchill's in flint. flint made us finally feel like a real band. thanks, flint.

7/24 - when your weekdays and weekends blur together, saturday nights feel like as good a time as ever to get in bed at 10pm, point a fan at your face, and watch oliver!

7/25 - pulled a burton double feature - taqwacore and trash humpers. taqwacore was cool, trash humpers made me want to reorganize my collection of my little ponies until my eyes stopped bleeding.

7/26 - i hit the road early for a day trip to lake michigan. i spent the day at the beach in st. joe with my old MSU buds. i picked becca up in kalamazoo and we met nikki, ryan, and leah at the beach. i'm glad leah came because she makes me feel less self-conscious when my swim diaper sticks out of my bathing suit, too!

7/28 - i incapacitated the entire band on a practice night with a dinner of fried chicken, corn on the cob, baked redskin potatoes, and a batch of brownies that made us feel like this while we listened to the new best thing to name drop when you want to feel cool, ethiopian jazz. (listen here and feel the groove. so good!)

7/29 - took a dusk swim in lake huron with bonnie and josh. it was incredible. we had the beach to ourselves, floating, dolphin jumping, and somersaulting until we got hungry enough to eat dinner at the cracker barrel. that's pretty hungry.

7/31 - kate came to visit just in time for ye olde crofoot BBQ. the third annual BBQ was a perfect summer party. ice cold jams, hot bands, patio hangs, and a ridiculous amount of sangria. dale earnhardt jr. jr. were stupid good. (they even got stereogummed!)

8/1 - had a mighty good brunch at mae's with a band of lovely lads from cleveland who had played the BBQ. their band name had something to do with dinosaurs? after brunch, i learned how to drive a stick in bob's 2011 future corvette that is priced roughly at the total amount of money i will owe the government when i finish my master's degree. later, we tried to have a band practice and kate, amna, and i ended the night at SOUP, which was really, really awesome. i was still thinking about it when i woke up in the morning.

8/2 - today! bonnie roused me from my noontime slumber to go see despicable me in 3-muhfuggin-D. amna met us and we hung out in birmingham (translation: we walked to anthropologie and i tried not to let the beauty of faux-vintage doorknobs and expensive french dish soap make me cry). later, i made dinner and banana bread while listening to beach house on headphones (boner jams of the century, listen below) and took a nice, long bike ride just as it was getting dark.

this very sunday is our first big time show at the loving touch in ferndale. we are so excited to play our songs for our friends and neighbors and all the local yokels we know and love. you should absolutely, without a doubt, be there on sunday. there will be dancing. it'll make you feel like this:

cap'n jerry & the mermaids

sunday, august 8 - 9pm.

the loving touch in ferndale

this is where my head is at.

2010-07-24T22:58:00.003-04:00

the whole world's my halo

2010-07-22T23:15:00.004-04:00

things feel good today. i got out of bed before noon (ta-da!) for a 9am band practice and it set in motion a nice little thursday. caught a matinee with lindsay and j.bro. had dinner with my parents. drank a beer on the front porch. practiced guitar. got the new frontier ruckus record in the mail. it is on the stereo right now and it is giving my ears a shoulder rub if ears had shoulders. it is a good feeling record, but not in a katrina and the waves way. more of a sad-but-ultimately-good-feeling hayden carruth farmer poem way. listening to frontier ruckus, reading andrew w.k. party tips. god, frontier ruckus just dropped a line about "m-59 salad bar restaurants." this song! this song! it is called "pontiac, the nightbrink" and i haven't fallen this in love with a song upon first listen in so, so long. this whole record just keeps getting better! i missed their record release last saturday because i was busy sulking over a missed trip to palmyra, but they are playing the magic stick on august 13. what luck!

this summer continues to be one of the finest i can recall.

lager house, here i come.

2010-07-15T10:51:00.001-04:00

the unemployment enjoyment chronicles part II

2010-07-12T16:34:00.006-04:00

the proverbial best summer ever rolls on.

june 27- had a little birthday gathering for bonnie with sparklers and wine spritzers galore!

june 29 - cap'n jerry & the mermaids second recording session. we laid down three more hot traxx which will soon grace our super 2005 myspace page!

june 30 - borden fireworks with betsy and amna. not only did i get to hear my number one fireworks jam (neil diamond - america), but the grand finale involved an UNBELIEVABLE segue from KISS' "detroit rock city" into the 1812 overture. fate also stepped into my life when the glow sword peddler dropped a glow-in-the-dark flashing light SCEPTER onto our blanket accidentally. i did not correct his error and instead proudly thrust the scepter into the sky, redeeming so many fireworks of yore when i went cross-eyed wishing for glow necklaces so badly.

july 1 - prussia @ the shack - those boys done blew my mind! their new songs are incredible and seeing them in a sweaty room of people dancing their asses off and singing along on the first day of july was the most excited i've been about music in a while. music is exciting!

july 2 - hazel park raceway fireworks, also known as the hillbilly fashion show of the YEAR. have you ever seen a more beautiful american silhouette?

july 3 - cap'n jerry & the mermaids vision quest into the deep woods of the pinckney recreation area. we waded in a creek and sang songs on a bridge and swam under a willow tree in half moon lake at dusk and ended the day wearing wet clothes to dinner and jamming until the wee hours in our living room. a most excellent day of summer days.

july 4 - last minute jaunt to kalamazoo to see prussia (again) at the boiling pot music festival. it was boiling hot and we drank beer from a truck and painted lightbulbs and bro-ed hard in the shade. michigan super-fave chris bathgate also played, along with the exquisite breathe owl breathe, who played a magical set at sunset against a sparkly backdrop of the great lakes as we watched fireworks erupt in every direction's distance. we ended the night seeing prussia (again) play another excellent set at the strutt.

Prussia from Mostly Midwest on Vimeo.

july 5 - summer temps were making the ferndale blacktop feel gummy, so we skipped town for a couple days of much needed swimming and napping and sandwich making at the cottage. lake huron was dazzling!

july 6 - got home from the cottage in time for autotune karaoke at the loving touch. did a little montell jordan and performed my regular duties as karaoke encourager. i find that if you promise people that you will cheer and dance while they sing, they will sing almost anything. everyone needs fans sometimes.

july 7 - the oppressive heat drove us to dinner & the dollar movies. how to train your dragon, not in 3D because it seems universal mall cinemark 16 cannot afford 3D technology. the movie ruled. vikings. dragons. good midweek brain rot stuff.

july 8 - said our goodbyes to adam before he heads off for his slew of mighty adventures in meghan's honor. we also got a tour of his parents' RV, which is like the jay-z yacht of RVs. i want one. bad.

july 9 - scrummagefest night 1: prussia (again) tore it up and i drank too many beers in an alley. i discovered the new BEST THING EVER. the trick to an awesome night, my friends, is leaving at one o'clock. things tend to get sloppy after one anyway and i can still get some ragin' in AND feel like a million bucks the next day. this either means i am getting old or have discovered the best party trick of them all. you decide.

july 10 - lindsay turned 28. i made a ridiculous birthday cake (pictured above). my parents came to ferndale for dinner. scrummagefest night 2 involved less booze, less dancing, more standing around, more people, more weird police doing weird police things. left early (victory is mine!) and felt like a gem on sunday morning.

july 11 - cap'n jerry & the mermaids had our first daytime practice that was far more fruitful than our usual weeknight practices that generally involve more eating and laying around than actual music playing. we play the phog lounge in windsor on friday night and we have ten songs ready to go! yahoo! our big hometown show happens august 8 at the loving touch in fabulous ferndale. RSVP and get all the info on the old facebook.

now it is monday. evening has descended and i am still in a bathrobe, with a cat snuggled next to me as i write this. i have spent the day riding my bike (not in the bathrobe, i was dressed earlier today pre-shower), plunking the guitar, and am looking forward to a mystery episode of dateline tonight to accent my entire evening of sitting down.

honey, i'm still free.

2010-06-29T00:01:00.004-04:00

the first seven days of summer have been so good to me. let's continue the trend.

1. monday, june 21. detroit fireworks from woodward & alexandrine. glitter! kaboom!

2. tuesday, june 22. cap'n jerry & the mermaids first recording sesh. listen! i think this means we are a real band now!

3. wednesday, june 23. autotune karaoke thunderstorm edition in the vernor's & this band and lots of scream-singing to aerosmith's "i don't wanna miss a thing."

4. thursday, june 24. condo swimming pool cannonball contest with the world's best pool attendant, j.bro. cranbrook campus wandering. treehouse finding. private property trespassing? oops.

5. friday, june 25. 2001: a space odyssey at the redford theatre (it will blow your mind if you prepare yourself correctly). you also will probably need to eat pizza afterwards.

6. saturday, june 26. ferndale BBQ, cold wave at the majestic cafe, dance dance sweat lodge at the CAID until the early birds were chirping.

7. sunday, june 27. bonnie's birthday jam with my parents - singing weird old songs in the living room followed by a wine spritzer and sparkler twirling pals party at our house.

today i cleaned my room and listened to ABBA and wondered if one should do a little self-analysis when every ABBA lyric starts to sound incredibly profound and personally relatable? it's just that......i mean.....i love ABBA. i think they wrote some of the best pop songs of all time. but they tend to lean toward being a little, how do you say, desperate?

maybe i am and maybe i am.

you and me, babe. how about it?

2010-06-21T19:38:00.004-04:00

today is the first day of summer. eat a hot dog, listen to these songs, make sure you find a good spot to watch the fireworks tonight. in the last week, i have found myself saying out loud "I LOVE MY LIFE!!!" and i do. this is the soundtrack to the first day of summer at my house.

ben e. king - this magic moment

dire straits - romeo & juliet

hank williams - settin' the woods on fire

beach house - D.A.R.L.I.N.G.

TONIGHT!!!! fireworks!!! gotta go find a rooftop...

it's hard not to love detroit in the summer time.

twelve hour countdown

2010-06-16T22:57:00.010-04:00

on the eve of what may very well be the longest, raddest, most heartily anticipated summer vacation in the history of summer vacations, my feelings are best summed up by listening to this song and looking at these pictures.

this is what i hope for every single time i take a road trip. and then i hope they would hop in the backseat and move their heads in time to this buddy holly song as i cruised through the forest and they pointed out all the places they like to go fishing and hang out and scare people.

all i ever want to do is go swimming and if i had a teleportation machine, i wouldn't mind if the dial (crank? lever? button? spinner?) got stuck on this place, wherever it is.

the thing about friendship is, it's like a sugar bowl. in your kitchen. when your kitchen is messy and you left the blueberries out of the refrigerator overnight again (goddamnit), but you don't really care. because at the end of the day, friendship is what it's really all about.

welcome summer! i've been waiting up for you.

eyeballs. be good to me. please.

2010-03-10T21:24:00.005-05:00

in the last two months, my vision has gotten really blurry and i have had a ton of headaches, which i really rarely get (unless its the morning after a meeting of ye olde hundred beers club). i can't read the jeopardy clues from the elliptical machine at the gym. i had to ZOOM in my computer screen today to look at facebook. i've had the feeling that i wanted to pop my eyes out of my head, give them a good scrubbing, rinse them in a bowl of cool water and pop them back in. i figured it was due to having a year-old prescription and being lazy about remembering to put new ones in every two weeks. today, i went for an eye exam. as the optometrist did the part of the exam with the rows of letters and the old "lens one? lens two?" deal, i realized that nothing she was doing was making the letters really clear. they would get less fuzzy. but they weren't clear. at all. and it totally freaked me out. she did a bunch of looky-loo-ing in my eye with all kinds of lights and mirrors and even used an old fashioned magnifying glass at one point. then she told me that it seems that my corneas are mysteriously clouded. i couldn't get any new lenses or even a prescription because she was so "worried" about the current health of my eye. she said i needed to see an opthalmologist this week because if my cornea scars, i will never have 20/20 vision again. i had been mildly worried about it when she first starting talking, but she got really serious really fast and now i'm kind of totally nervous about it. opthalmologists are cool and all, but i. don't. have. health. insurance. and i know opthalmologists have to go to like 12+ years of med school (when i was seventeen, i wanted to be one...) so i can only imagine that they have to charge a lot of dough. but holy shit, i don't want to have blurry vision forever.

what, me? worry?

winter work bee

2010-03-04T16:01:00.004-05:00

i returned to working winter. it's less fun than not working, but it works. we've had a slew of sunny days that make for excellent morning drives to the scenic hills of auburn. this week, i am administering a state language proficiency assessment, which requires me to explain to five-year-olds how to fill out standardized test bubbles (ridiculous!) and assure sixth graders that a test given only to non-native english speakers is not inherently racist. (is it?). my only complaint is that i wish my classroom had a window. the soundtrack to my testing and driving has been, almost exclusively, john prine. on our october time machine trip to indiana, my parents played this record in the car and man, it is good. and saaaaaaad. there's one part of one song where the drum and keyboard goes duh-d-duh duh-d-duh and i could listen to it on repeat forever. i want to make a song prominently featuring this drum and keyboard sound.

what's not to love about a guy who decided to wear a canadian tuxedo AND sit on a haystack on his debut album cover? in the liner notes, kris kristofferson writes a testimonial about discovering prine as a singing mailman at an open mic night in chicago. now, may i remind you that kris kristofferson also was said to have delivered his song, "sunday morning coming down," to johnny cash via a helicopter landing in his front yard. either kris kristofferson is the coolest m-f-er of all time, or kind of a liar. alas, he was in big top pee wee, so i'm going to go with coolest m-f-er of all time. sidebar, this is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time.

this is the best news i've heard all month.

it is no mystery that i am partial to beards that pluck guitars and sing sad songs, but i really like this song and this feller's hat. reminds me of a certain hat we used to keep in our living room for special times. where is that hat!?!?

yes.

that's all. this weekend is the metro times blowout, so i will be in hamtramck tonight and tomorrow night and probably saturday night. see you there?

cool, bye.

sweet sweet totally sweet

2010-02-22T23:25:00.005-05:00

midwinter break 2010: how much fun can i have in a week? this much.

friday 2/12 - midnight sledding @ martin road park.

saturday 2/13 - women: a night of art & culture @ the crofoot.

this was a most excellent night. the crofoot felt like a totally different place! the giant dress made the ballroom so dreamy and there was sweet stuff in every nook and cranny throughout the building. nice work, gals. there are some great photos and videos from the event here, including a totally badass photo of my basement roller skating rat! cool! also, if i may toot my own horn, the wonder twins from the metro times also loved my rat house diorama! double cool! a totally great night.

sunday 2/14 - the cold wave/FAWN @ the loving touch

this was the scene of a ferndale valentine's love fest of wall-to-wall good vibes, neighbors, buds, and beers. lots of beers. i danced so much that i was sore the next day. so like three songs? OLD. the night culminated in a living room full of dudes rolling around the floor laughing at prank phone calls until 4am. and thus it became the best valentine's day ever.

monday 2/15 - third worst hangover of my life. my first night on the town in korea '07 still reigns supreme and new year's day in berlin '09 claims the #2 spot. as a 25-year-old lady, i think i need to maybe act a little less like this guy.

tuesday 2/16 - i have no recollection of anything i may have done or not done on tuesday. whooooooooa!

wednesday 2/17 - chris bathgate/white pines/strand of oaks @ the elbow room in ypsilanti.

folky jams sound especially good on wednesdays when you don't have to go to work in the morning.

thursday 2/18 - nope, don't remember what i did on thursday either. but i bet it was really fun or involved sleeping all day. which is fun to me.

friday 2/19 - day trip to port huron to look at the frozen lake + st. vincent @ the crofoot

the lake looked like another planet - frozen solid and endless. we walked out on the ice, drove to the cottage, my mom pretended to play a stick like a flute, and bonnie pretended to be a unicorn.

st. vincent was SO good. SO, SO good. ugh, she just rules! "your lips are red" was a killer jam and she played a cover of "these days" that sounded sadder than nico. i saw pepi ginsberg play phonotropic next door and she was so awesome! i bought her record and then lost it, along with my phone, which i later found. the record is still lost. things got a little crazytown rage rage in pontiac after the show and i did not see ferndale again until five o'clock. yowza!

saturday 2/20 - on saturday, i slept all day. andrea came over and we played some music together. JAM. then adam came over and we watched the terrible new version of the amityville horror whilst sipping mugs of michigan cream ale.

sunday 2/21 - wilco @ wharton center, east lansing!

despite a milquetoast crowd full of adjunt faculty and 19-year-old couples excited for a night out of the dorms, wilco warmed the cockels of my heart as always. a good set, old songs and new songs and they even played "candyfloss," which i love a whole lot. i bought a sweet poster, too.

monday 2/22 - vacation bonus jonas snow day!!!!! i cleaned the basement and shoveled the driveway and bought groceries on this tenth day of not working. it was superb.

tomorrow, it's back to work! but there are many awesome things on the horizon as we head into the winter home stretch.

2/26 pauly D @ the crofoot. i think i'm going to sell airbrushed t-shirts and start fights outside so he feels comfortable.

3/3-6 blowout

3/12 joanna newsom + bowerbirds @ calvin college, grand rapids

3/20 partypartypartytime

4/1 beach house @ pike room

4/2 - 4/11 ROAD TRIP

see you soon, spring. thanks for ruling, midwinter break. you're the best. see you next year.

videos for a snow day

2010-02-22T20:07:00.003-05:00

bowerbirds - northern lights

this song and this video remind me of going to saugatuck at the end of last summer to visit amna and anthony at ox-bow. we took canoes out and climbed over sand dunes and sat on the shore of lake michigan and laughed for a really long time. summer is coming. it will be bicycle weather before we know it. spring begins in less than a month! bonnie and i are going to see bowerbirds when they open for joanna newsom at calvin college in a few weeks. i saw them at the pike room last summer and they were just as magical as this video suggests.

beach house - take care. (<--click on it to watch the video) i physically cannot stop listening to beach house. i have a feeling they will be on repeat for the rest of the winter and then some. they are playing at the pike room on april 1, the eve of a much-anticipated road trip to florida & coastal georgia with kate. man, there is a lot of good stuff coming up.

bon iver - daytripping

why? because i can. and because if you are a bon iver nerd and watch this entire video, you will see a shot of bon iver + grizzly bear watching band of horses. this collection of humans are responsible for a large majority of my favorite songs. "this song does fuckin' rule so hard." - bon iver, re: band of horses' "the funeral." you are correct, sir. you are entirely correct. and there are few other ways to describe just how hard that song does rule. brosbrosbrosbrosbros.

learn how to hang

2010-02-20T20:59:00.003-05:00

david vandervelde - learn how to hang.

song = sick.

(download from secretly canadian)

album cover = SO sick!

let this jam remind you that spring is only a month away!

valentine

2010-02-14T13:16:00.008-05:00

here are some lovely things to read and look at on valentine's day.

With That Moon Language
Everyone you see, you say to them, 'Love me.'
Of course you do not do this out loud,
otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still, though,
think about this,
this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world
is dying to hear?

-Hafiz

Ditty of First Desire
In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
a heart.

And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.

(Soul,
turn oranged colored.
Soul, turn the color of love.)

In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.

And at the evenings end
I wanted to be my voice
A nightingale.

Soul,
turn orange colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.

-Federico Garcia Lorca

Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine, Love

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky's questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

-Pablo Neruda

Green Mountain Idyll

Honey I’d split your kindling

clean & bright

& fine

if you was mine

baby baby

I’d taken to you like my silky hen

my bluetick bitch my sooey sow

my chipmunk my finchbird

& my woodmouse

if you was living at my house

I’d mulch your strawberries & cultivate

your potato patch

all summer long

& then in winter

come thirty below and the steel-busting weather

I’d tune your distributor & adjust

your carburetor

if me & you was together

be it sunshine be it gloom

summer or the mean mud season

honey I’d kiss you

every morningtime

& evenings I’d hurry

to get shut of the barn chores early

& then in the dark of the night

I’d stand at the top of the stairs & hold the light

for you for you

if you’d sleep in my room

& when old crazy come down the mountain after you

with his big white pecker in his hand

you would only holler

& from the sugar house

the mow the stable

or wherever I’m at

I’d come god I’d come running to you

like a turpentined cat

only in our bed

honey

no hurting

but like as if it was

git- music

or new-baked bread

I’d fuck so easy

sweet-talking & full of love

if you was just my daisy

& my dove

-Hayden Carruth

cass mccombs - you saved my life

edward sharpe & the magnetic zeros - home

the beatles - all you need is love

keep hope alive, fellow singletons! happy valentine's day!

daisy's hall of shame

2010-02-14T12:29:00.001-05:00

part one:

part two:

lastly:

more things about television.

2010-01-31T20:57:00.002-05:00

thoughts on the 2010 grammy awards:

-lady gaga, while i applaud your willingness to look like a monster most of the time, i think you need to work on your shock methods. what would really shock people is if you wore a pretty dress and just sang a song. instead of getting elton john all sooty (?) and performing a dueling pianos act while a team of chimney sweeps dance in the background. i am so confused.

-beyonce totally rules. melding "you oughta know" into "if i were a boy"? KILLER. i wish more people would reference early alanis morrissette hits in televised performances featuring an army of dancers in riot gear. i'd watch more tv if this were the case.

-pink needs to get soaking wet on a flying trapeze to be even sort of interesting.

-FILL UP MY CUP! MAZEL TOV! i truly love this black eyed peas' song. without a drop of irony. i like it even more when it is performed with a team of robot dancers and with fergie ferg wearing a tin foil visor. i can only assume she learned how to make tin foil visors when she was addicted to meth.

-aaaaaaaand kings of leon just won record of the year for the song "use somebody," which happens to be a hot dog turd of a song. as could be expected, they mentioned getting drunk twice in their acceptance speech. hillbillies.

-t-pain and several others are all singing live and all of their auto-tuned voices are overlapping and a huge fat lady is dancing with them and now slash is playing a guitar solo and there are so many spotlights and this is beginning to look like one of the scenes that the dude is forced to watch in a clockwork orange. horrifying!

-there's no way you could do anything but love taylor swift. and witchy old stevie nicks, who reminds me of a weird substitute teacher i had in middle school art class, who said weird things over my shoulder while i painted a turtle shell on two paper plates stapled together with googly eyes on top.

-michael jackson's "earth song." it's like 3-D fern gully! with celine dion! and usher! it feels cheap that the michael jackson tribute is mostly a tribute to the environment. beyonce is freaking out in the front row WITH 3-d glasses on! rihanna is looking dead serious with 3-d glasses on! please, please more audience pans!!! i need to imagine what all these celebrities looked like during the avatar boning scene! they should have just show our michael jackson tribute video. far more tasteful. (video)

-holy shit! prince and paris jackson! wearing ruffly michael jackson outfits! they kind of talk like aliens! how sweet, joe jackson wrote them a script!

-richie sambora is so fucking gross. he looks like a bloated soccer mom who buys mike's hard lemonade for her teenage son and his friends and then hits on them in the basement. omg they are totally singing the song that spawned THE richie sambora dance. i believe it is called, "who says you can't go home?" betsy, i need to see you do this dance sometime soon. it's been WAY too long.

-when upcoming artists include dave matthews band, maxwell, and mary j. blige, it's time for me to turn off the TV and go to bed. even if it's only 10:30.

music is serious.

2010-01-23T00:29:00.001-05:00

now i lace my wine with ginger
just let my evenings pass
they pass
they pass
they pass
they pass
they pass.

give 'er a go

2010-01-21T20:04:00.003-05:00

pat sajak should not be on jeopardy. nothing about his presence here is right. get your huge teddy ruxpin head out of here and back to your giant glittery garage of a set, strewn with RVs and elaborate beach scenes and fake palm trees. kick his ass, celia hodes! man, i miss when i was right in the middle of watching seasons 1-3 of weeds. why can't that show just exist forever for me to watch, but in the form it was pre-season 5 when it kind of jumped the shark with nancy botwin married to the mayor of tijuana.

:::MOST DRAMATIC FINAL JEOP SONG OF ALL TIME SHIT SHIT SHIT GO CELIA:::

this question is so easy.

charlie brown!?!?!?!
NOOOOOOOOO!!! CELIAAAAAAAAAAA?!? YOU!?!? NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

that asshole. that asshole just made $55,000 on jeopardy. it better be going to vietnam veterans. i'm watching you, sajak.

today in second grade news: chaz, who uses the idioms of an old woodsman already anyway told me, "i am never having kids. NO WAY! I'm just going to live out in the woods with bears." christian, sitting across from him said, "yeah, we'll be too busy playing basketball." then i listened to the entire class absentmindedly singing along to taylor swift's song, "you belong with me," as they glued words like EVAPORATION and LIQUID to hand drawn posters of the water cycle. hearing second grade boys with tiny soprano voices sing that song made me wheeze laugh so hard, i had to hide in the cubbies to compose myself. they were listening to the song on repeat and this stanza never failed to bring a tear to my eye when i heard tiny 7-year-old voices sing it with gluesticks in hand.

she wears high heels

i wear t-shirts

she's cheer captain and i'm in the bleachers

dreaming about the day when you wake up

and find that what you're looking for has been here the whole time

if you could see that i'm the one who understands you

been here all along,

so why can't you see?

you belong with meeee-eee-heee

this weak ass office recap episode didn't get me until it turned into a jim and pam montage to the tune of "sing."

i told you i only started writing here again so i could post stream-of-consciousness rambles while i watch television. i don't know what else you would possibly expect.

there is no need to read any of this

2010-01-19T21:17:00.002-05:00

i'm back! mostly because i need a place to write about my tuesday night, which at present consists of eating pretzels for dinner and being bummed to discover that untamed heart is already half over on WGN. this movie is such an epic bummer. and i will watch it each and every time it finds its way to my television. it's got all the essentials to any great cinematic romance - heart defects! attempted rape! pipe beatings! accidental death! rosie perez!

school started again. it is slightly less enjoyable than the second half of untamed heart. everything in all my classes feels awfully redundant and i'm ready to just do my internship and get a job and spend my days hanging sad 70s posters of native american sayings and anti-drug propaganda in my sunny, corner office.

st. vincent made an exceptional record. it is called actor. i like to listen to it in my car really, really loud. especially this song.

in the last week, i have ordered an extraordinary number of items from the internet. these items include a shelf, dollhouse lights, freaks and geeks on DVD, jason boesel's new solo album, dry shampoo because i don't like to shower in the winter, school books, and tickets to see wilco, st. vincent, and joanna newsom.

december 27

2009-12-27T18:48:00.004-05:00

sunday december 27, 2009. 6pm. the moment i finally got bored with christmas break. and as is usually the case, bored leads to sad in a hurry, so to fight the progression i am putting these three christmas gifts to good use.

1. dreamy anthropologie apron from mom and dad

2. immersion blender - birthday gift from mom and dad

3. six pack of bell's winter white ale - purchased using christmas $ from aunt nancy

goal: not drinking too many beers to complete two delicious pots of homemade chicken noodle soup and split pea soup. here's hoping.

fun and stuff and things

2009-12-15T18:07:00.001-05:00

oh man. i am greatly looking forward to this.

november, in short.

2009-11-29T16:46:00.002-05:00

i quit writing things here because there are so many other more interesting things to read on the internet. and books! totally, books. really. with the finals and research paper season upon us, it is time for me to write again. a ten page psychopathology research paper looms above my head, but all i want to do is sleep and cook and listen to a.a. bondy. this morning i made chili, corncakes, and four tiny loaves of banana bread. dear santa, i want a normal, human- sized loaf pan for christmas. and an immersion blender. they should make a wishbook for twentysomethings, so we could flip through pages of kitchen gadgets, DVD box sets of shows on expensive cable channels we can't afford, new tires for our used cars, ten dollar ikea lamps, and circle them and secretly leave them on our parents' kitchen counters. this would, however, end one of my favorite post-christmas games, "what did YOU get from land's end for christmas?!" i already circled these puppies in the catalog at my mom and dad's. nerdy, comfortable, and shearling-lined, a-thank you.

my glorious five day thanksgiving weekend is coming to an end and i am sad to see it go. i am fairly certain that i have slept more in the last five days than i have in the last five weeks combined. last night? THIRTEEN HOURS. november has been a good month - friends, hangouts, bands, and a 24-hour trip to chicago. what have i done? now in photos!

kate came to visit and i took her to belle isle (and scared her with a driving tour of northeast detroit on the ride home).

we saw spinto band.

we went to SUPERTARGET (my own midwestern mecca).

i saw j. tillman. pedal steel boner.

i saw devendra banhart at the (awkward) ark. he is magical.

i found a korean restaurant that has KARAOKE in troy. holy shit. if it's a noraebang situation, i will die.

i saw zoos of berlin play a live score to an imax movie about the alps. it was kind of totally mind-blowing in a way that is hard to describe.

i took the double-decker megabus to chicago.

i set out on my own, self-guided nerd tour of what was once the grounds of the 1893 world's fair in chicago (read devil and the white city and join the nerdery with me!). the museum of science and industry was once the palace of fine arts. the osaka garden on the wooded island still stands. let's just say i did a lot of walking around, listening to wilco and thinking about ferris wheels. the osaka garden was really, really beautiful and serene.

i went to an open house at the old-town school of folk music in lincoln square and was electrified by the love and energy of people cramming tiny rooms with banjos, guitars, accordions, dulcimers, and any other acoustic instrument you could think of. i sang gillian welch songs in a room full of strangers and left with a smile on my face.

i saw elvis perkins in dearland (and a.a. bondy as a total surprise bonus! score!)

i saw camera obscura on friday night and hearing songs from the impact days of east lansing made me really happy.

oh, sweet scottish twee!

now it is 6pm and i am still in my pajamas, watching true life: i have a summer share, in preparation for thursday night's TV premiere of the year. JERSEY SHORE. an entire television series about my favorite subset of the population other than amish teens on rumspringa.

i. can't. wait.

on friday, i turn twenty-five. plans aren't definite, but will likely include karaoke to the max. (dino's?) saturday is noel night in midtown, which i am totally psyched for. petting zoo, free admission to all the museums, planetarium shows about winter skies, frontier ruckus at the MOCAD, what more could be desired out of a december saturday? SEEYOUTHERE.

so that's that. november in a nutshell. look out, here comes DECEMBER!!!

toltec halloween

2009-10-29T23:52:00.002-04:00

first this.

then this.

sweaty, sweaty, sweaty.

today i was really happy to hear the monster mash on the radio in the car.

i am falling asleep sitting up.

averaging five hours of sleep a night, eight hours of work and three hours of school a day.

i need to make a headdress sometime in the next 36 hours.

build

2009-10-14T19:08:00.003-04:00

you rest-stops in the midnight

are like friends i've worn to bone

i only notice that you're glowing

when i'm feeling so ever alone

drunken with the children now

too many times to complain

trustful was the mouth i turned into a lustful sopping hole but now it's nothing but a bathtub drain.

-frontier ruckus, the latter days

2009-10-04T22:35:00.001-04:00

dark dark dark.
better. better better.

flat affect.

2009-10-04T19:49:00.009-04:00

i got a new camera. my little pink sony bit the bullet on our vacation to the u.p. and it was time to find a new one. i took a few photos with it, all out of the window of my car on the way to school last week.

hamlin/rochester road.

fisher building.

grand boulevard.

my living room.

things have happened in the last month, but i have no desire to type about any of them. i'm trying to stick to ink. ink keeps me honest. enough typing, time to go to ann arbor on a school night to see WHY? this is why?

hostile indians, we named our summer camp for you

2009-10-01T21:52:00.003-04:00

hodge podge

2009-09-17T20:32:00.006-04:00

here are many things to consider that do not go together in any way other than the way they are arranged in my brain. i've been feeling like one foggy doggy lately - the onslaught of work and school at the end of an easy, breezy summer vacation has jumbled up my head to the point of convincing myself that i must have some sort of brain rot disease. i couldn't remember anything. i missed my exit on the way to work two days in a row. as luck would have it, in my tuesday night psychopathology class, we learned that forgetfulness and brain fog can be early indicators of brain tumors, HIV, and early-onset alzheimer's disease (which can occur as young as twenty-five...) naturally, i assumed it was the dreaded brain rot and i would not live to see my master's degree. after a good, solid sleep last night for the first time all week, i'm feeling more like myself. my head is not so foggy. no brain rot. the spartans are playing football on my television (and winning!), the ferndale DIY street fair is happening just a few blocks away at this very moment (i will be returning later tonight! last night was great!), and fall officially begins this week (boots! sweaters! cider!).

the news:

j tillman is coming to the crofoot on november 10.

spinto band is coming to the crofoot on november 6.

crofoot halloween lineup is most excellent!

(fake) weezer! talking heads! devo! velvet underground! rage against the machine!

i can't wait. this year, i vow not to get so juiced that i lose my camera. i don't know how last year's patio dance party with wolfman mac to "thriller" will possibly be topped, but we sure can try. i hope whoever stole my camera from the bathroom that night has the photo of lindsay as mozart cheek to cheek with wolfman mac as her desktop background.

here is prussia. they will be playing as velvet underground. they rule!

Prussia - Supreme Being from SINGLE . BARREL . DETROIT on Vimeo.

in the weekend section of the detroit free press on thursday, there was an article entitled, "five questions with matthew followill." don't get me started. they play the palace of auburn hills on tuesday. why? this is why. in addition to finding a new favorite band, it seems i also need to get a life.

i saw cave singers at the magic stick last sunday. they were totally awesome. they remind me of a folkier, stompier band of horses. sad, drunk, intense, americana nature music. music for hootenannies.

i've been thinking a lot about japan lately. i'd really like to go there. soon. i really don't want to wait until grad school is done to have another adventure. i want to go back to korea, too. perhaps i could spend another fall teaching there and adventure in the spring... i've only been at my job a week and i know that i want this to be my last year. it's a good job, i'm happy to have it. but adventure is calling! when i was cleaning in a book closet at school this week, a box of origami cranes dumped on my head. and a teacher found an old box of foreign language books that she thought were mine. when i opened it, a korean dictionary was right on top of the box. maybe i'm just hungry for signs, but it felt like one. and i'll take it.

msu has a new commercial. nick drake! if i hadn't already graduated, i would be sold on this school solely for their use of this song in a commercial.

time for DIY! adieu!

video round up: back to school edition

2009-09-11T20:07:00.003-04:00

if you are like me, your eyes may need a rest from the glut of syllabi, future dates of midterms and finals, and the cloud of papers-to-be that will be hovering overhead until mid-december. or. you are ready for it to be fall but it's still kind of hot and you need something to distract you from the fact that the neighbor kids are still outside yelling all the time (didn't school start?). if you meet any or none or all of these criteria, here are some videos you might enjoy.

1. first aid kit - true believer

these teenaged swedish sisters captured my heart when i first saw their simply brutal cover of fleet foxes' tiger mountain peasant song (video). then i saw this cover. (video) then i realized they are a real band and have real songs of their own! why not throw in this one for good measure. (video).

2. elvis perkins - chains chains chains

elvis perkins always sneaks up on me. his songs are just so good. sad. he writes these joyful dirges that just blow my mind. he's playing at a new venue in chicago in november and i can hear the megabus calling my name already. his la blogotheque video from long ago still rules. edit: just bought a roundtrip ticket to chicago on megabus for $2.50!!! now i just need a place to stay.

3. the war on drugs - needle in your eye

this band rules. they are from philadelphia. i haven't been able to stop listening to their album wagonwheel blues since i went to visit kate in june. they just sound so right on all the time.

4. jens lekman - sipping on the sweet nectar

this video is so ridiculous. i always imagined a video like the intro to fantasy island (video) to this song. this is a close second. jens lekman, you kill me. WHY HAVEN'T I SEEN THIS?!?!

i'm going to holland (michigan) in the morning to see amna & anthony! lake michigan! thrifting! YES!

the war on drugs - buenos aires beach

2009-09-06T17:17:00.005-04:00

i am not writing this from my phone. i am writing it from my parents house. they are not home. i came over to see them and they are not here! so i laid on their couch and caught up on the first three episodes of the new season of project runway. i feared the new season would be icky after making the move to lifetime, but so far so good. no "i beat bulimia" challenges guest judged by tracey gold, no mention of domestic violence yet, though i'm still awaiting an special cameo by delta burke. my early favorites are:

1. nicolas - vaguely european, kind of sassy, gives lots of high fives.

2. logan - he's a babe. with a ponytail.

3. althea - makes really cool stuff, plus she's from the midwest

august came and went as it usually does. with little to no brain activity and a few car rides. the sisters and i spent a week in the U.P. collecting driftwood, hunting for crawdads, and waking up to this view every morning.

kate's family has a house on little bay de noc and they were kind enough to let us stay there. and kate came out, too! we cheated the gods of camping by eating cheese dip from a crockpot and watching DVDs at night. we picked wild blueberries in the hiawatha national forest and looked for bears. we did not find any. but we did see two coyotes! the blueberry forest was otherworldly. there was electric green moss covering most of the ground, soft and springy enough that i wanted to curl up and go to sleep on it. there were huge, cartoony mushrooms and handfuls of tiny blueberries covering the ground. it was so beautiful. my camera went all wonky when we got there, so i was only able to snap this picture. it was eleven times more beautiful than this picture suggests.

when i got home from the northlands, amna was home from berlin!!! me and the entire state of michigan are so happy to have her. she's out making art in the woods for the next few weeks and i am going to hunt her down this very saturday. i'm still looking for a hotel for saturday night for under a hundred bucks. saugatuck is expensive!

somewhere in the last few weeks, i worked as a movie extra for two days. it was a total trip. aspiring actors are a subset of the population that i never would imagine to be quite as ridiculous as they really are. a few were really nice, but the rest were BEYOND delusional. one guy was a total asshole who had his movie career path planned (goal: to work with tyler perry) after his ONLY paid acting job is playing a dragon at the renaissance festival this summer.......that is the absolute truth, no exaggeration. the first day, i met josh lucas in the hair and makeup trailer within being on the set for a half hour. he was a nice dude, i walked in the background of a street scene that took three takes, and that was the highlight of the next twelve hours that i spent sitting in a large catering tent doing absolutely nothing at all. a week later, i got called back to play a hooker being booked at a police station. i raided bonnie's closet, was ratted and pink-lipsticked out in hair and makeup, donned the most HEINOUS outfit i've ever worn, and mime-fought with a cop-extra at the old detroit police HQ for a good ten takes. then i sat in a holding room for eight hours talking to the other extras about aaliyah and the time before the microwave. movie sets are kind of exciting and really, really, excruciatingly boring at the same time. should you happen to see little murder sometime next year, look for me!

yesterday, i took bonnie and lindsay to meet amna and anthony in east lansing for a day of grand rivering, thrifting, and charlie kang-ing. to be in that town with my buds again was downright magical. the fun of being young and goofing off all the time is encapsulated in that town in an almost mystical way. as soon as i'm there, i can only really care about drinking slurpees and singing songs in the car with my friends and having fun. i guess that's the majority of what i care about everywhere i go, but especially there. i got this bonerific embroidered bag at urban outfitters on super clearance because the pull on the zipper was missing. i like to stare at it and pet it.

tonight is the last real night of summer vacation. i am listening to songs and reading emails from years ago and laughing at lines like "bomb threats are so 1998." (kate hall, 2007).

everything starts again on tuesday. full-time work. nine credits of grad school. but fun things are coming, too. fall semester awaits!

9/12 saugatuck!

9/18-20 DIY street fair in ferndale!

9/26 grizzly bear @ michigan theater!

10/3 east lansing mini-reunion!

10/9-10/10 feast of the hunters moon! (the first drinkard family road trip in years. my dad is renting a mini-van. we are staying at a hotel. PARTY!)

10/16 wilco @ hill auditorium!

10/31 HALLOWEEN!

11/6 spinto band @ pike room!

12/4 my 25th birthday. i'm pulling for lazer tag to commemorate a quarter century of life.

2009-08-24T19:51:00.001-04:00

late summer makes me feel so lazy in the evening. this couch is long enough for serious lounging. time to pump the bike tires, select good jams, and cruise ferndale until it gets dark.

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2009-08-17T15:50:00.001-04:00

i am in northern michigan. this is proof.

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2009-08-16T18:47:00.001-04:00

"wanna do a little grassin'?" -my dad. a direct quote in reference to an after dinner bluegrass jam sesh.

2009-08-16T18:43:00.001-04:00

mr. white, king of cats. also, kind of an asshole.

goldheart mountaintop queen

2009-08-15T15:15:00.003-04:00

this song popped up on a genius playlist that itunes concocted today, while i sit on the couch running out of indoor activities (crossword. newspaper. ikea catalog. novel. guitar restring. etc) to keep the woodward dream cruise out of my consciousness. i forgot how much i like this song, all 105 seconds of it. probably my favorite guided by voices song.

original:

even babies love it:

2009-08-14T17:09:00.001-04:00

this is sean. he taught me the concept of a wish chip. when the chip is folded over on itself, it is considered a wish chip. here he is seen making a wish on a bbq ruffle. wish away!

2009-08-11T15:03:00.001-04:00

it's tuesday and i'm back here. thisistheplace.

six hundred thirty-three

2009-08-11T01:06:00.005-04:00

i've been feeling a little foggy in the brain lately. i took a trip up to the old cottage for the weekend to wash my head out in lake huron. i've been home for a little more than 24 hours and i already want to be back there, in the lake, staring at the sun under water. i might go back tomorrow. i also finished reading the wind up bird chronicle while i was there. it was long. not my favorite murakami, but i love his other books so much that i feel the need to be a nerd completist.

since this is the last week of camp, i am happily shirking any and all responsibility. i spent today's pool time floating in the deep end by myself, watching planes cross the sky. it seems that oak park lies directly in the flight path of every plane beginning its descent into metro airport. i could watch it all day. this, on the other hand, makes me feel panicky and desperately concerned that it is largely impossible to make it to every single place on earth in a lifetime. this is not the first time this thought has totally freaked me out.

i stumbled upon an album of photos from november 07 on facebook, belonging to a chap that came along on a saturday hiking trip to korea's most famous national park. i've had so many dreams about this place and this day since then. it was just so surreal and beautiful and strange and wonderful that every sight and smell of that day has been etched into my brain hardcore. to see these photos of myself on this day, 633 days later (iPhoto told me when i loaded the photos) feels like finding photos of something you only dreamed about. it's weird. and awesome.

it was just as cold as this picture suggests.

it felt like we were at the edge of the earth.

where there are no stairs, you just climb.

this photo was taken at the summit of ulsan-bawi as the wind came whipping off the sea of japan, knocking this tiny korean woman over. she dove for me (probably noting my sturdy midwestern frame) and held me tight, screaming in korean. lightheaded from a combination of altitude and rice wine, all i could do was laugh and laugh.

look at my mouth. i am screaming! in my memory, i was laughing and she was terrified but it seems to be the other way around. my dreams have changed the story!

i have had so many dreams of these fountains alone! ah! to see them again is a feeling i can't put a word on. this photo makes me so happy. this photo is korea and i don't know why.

i went to korea because i felt like i was running out of stories, out of new ideas, out of adventures. i'm starting to feel that way again. this time i cannot simply pack a suitcase and hop a plane. i have a job, grad school, a lease, car payments. i need to find a new source of adventure, a new well of stories, songs, ideas, inspiration. i hope i find it soon.

ps - thanks for the photos, anton! these were such a treat to find.

mobile

2009-08-10T18:49:00.003-04:00

my favorite shore.

huron song

2009-08-07T09:36:00.001-04:00

to the sweet sea!

it's august now

2009-08-06T21:44:00.000-04:00

2009-07-28T16:28:00.001-04:00

Left work early to make my debut at the new Target @ 12 and Dequindre. IT IS MARVELOUS!

betsy, don't read this.

2009-07-25T00:52:00.003-04:00

uh, remember this guy?

i saw a fiftysomething man at historic fort wayne a few weeks ago wearing these pants to commemorate his dead chihuahuas. two weeks later, police were called to investigate a strange odor from a house in dearborn, where a 56-year-old man was living in filth with 112 live chihuahuas. he also had 150 dead chihuahuas in freezers in his basement.

IS IT THE SAME GUY???

her goal in life was to be an echo.

2009-07-22T18:58:00.009-04:00

oh, this is a fact

that you need to know

oh oh oh oh

wilco

wilco will love you, baby.

wilco (the song)

bull black nova

you are my face

i am trying to break your heart

a shot in the arm

one wing

handshake drugs

a magazine called sunset

deeper down

jesus, etc.

in a future age

impossible germany

i'll fight

summerteeth

sonny feeling

hate it here

can't stand it

walken

i'm the man who loves you

hummingbird

-----------------------------

poor places

reservations

spiders(kidsmoke)

-----------------------------

you never know

heavy metal drummer

california stars

red eyed and blue

i got you (at the end of the century)

hoodoo voodoo

kingpin

i'm a wheel

i don't even know how to say how brutally awesome wilco were last night. you know when you watch videos of crowds at concerts in the UK and they are dancing and singing and waving flags around and completely and totally invested in the music that is being performed? it felt like that. i scooted into the royal oak music theater just as the house lights went down and wheedled my way up to a spot toward the front. sold-out. packed. royal oak dads in cowboy shirts as far as the eye could see. from the opening chords of "wilco (the song)," it was ON. it had been a while since i'd been to a sold-out show in a room bigger than the magic stick (lots of no-fun hipsters with folded arms and uninterested stares lately...), so i was totally wowed with how responsive and enthusiastic the crowd was. everybody in that room just absolutely LOVED wilco. their regulation set was insane. tons of songs, new and old, flowing seamlessly together. not a soul around me dared to take a bathroom break. i swear, my feet were six inches off the floor for "hummingbird." rock&roll bliss. even jeff tweedy was dancing. like real, skippy dancing. their first encore was spacey and everybody went appropriately apeshit during "spiders(kidsmoke)."

(Why can't they wish their kisses good
Why do they miss when their kisses should
Fly like winging birds fighting for the keys
On a private beach in Michigan)

i would have paid $35 to see the second encore alone. each song felt like the last, the deafening crowd going wild each time jeff tweedy was presented with another guitar...and another one...and another one. "i got you (at the end of the century)" was the moment of victory and it wasn't until "i'm a wheel" that i thought, "holy shit, what time is it?!?" it was 11:40. two and a half hours of that feeling of, "AHHILOVETHISSONG!" even the songs they always play felt different, exciting, like seeing your favorite band live for the first time. it was the third time i've seen wilco (four if you count tweedy solo) and it absolutely blew the others out of the water. it was JUBILANT. EPIC. A RHAPSODY.

rhap·so·dy (rps-d)

n. pl. rhap·so·dies

1. Exalted or excessively enthusiastic expression of feeling in speech or writing.

2. A literary work written in an impassioned or exalted style.

3. A state of elated bliss; ecstasy.

and thus concludes the week of rock. thank you.

2009-07-21T23:51:00.001-04:00

WILCO JUST RIPPED MY GUTS OUT FOR TWO AND A HALF HOURS. HUMMMMMINGBIRRRRD!

july so far

2009-07-17T17:30:00.003-04:00

thursday, july 9. cranbrook campus, bloomfield hills, michigan. lots of field spinning. scheming. driving. jamming. i showed off the art school cave we used to laugh about in high school. except now it's overgrown and looks like a place someone would hide a corpse. we lacked the guts to venture inside.

friday, july 10. oakland county 4-H fair, davisburg, michigan. i played hooky from work and went to a 4H fair to celebrate my sister lindsay's 27th birthday. it was the second petting zoo i've attended in the last two weeks. this is something i like about summer. the fair even had a circus. we went to dinner afterwards and i ate two bites of a spring roll before running out of the restaurant in a sweaty haze and driving back to my parents' old house and throwing up in their empty backyard. it made sense at the time.

saturday, july 11. blue moon in july, contemporary art institute of detroit, detroit, michigan. i returned to the CAID for the first time in a long time and was pleased the find the backyard just as i saw it last. some mess of a band led by a guy in a yacht rock captain's hat played a cover of "shout" that had more people on the stage than in the crowd. this exhibit was upstairs.

sunday, july 12. civil war days, historic fort wayne, detroit, michigan. i took my mom on a lunch date to tim horton's before we investigated the goings on of fort wayne's annual celebration of the civil war. we saw a super anti-climactic battle, explored a crumbling house, and watched canadian barges go by on the detroit river. the highlight, however, was seeing an adult man wearing homemade pants that served as a tribute to his bevy of dead chihuahuas. may they all RIP.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

wednesday, july 15. conor oberst & the mystic valley band, majestic theatre, detroit, michigan. conor oberst talked about miller lite and pizza parties a lot. and played a lot of songs. they played eagle on a pole #1 but not #2, which is my favorite eagle on a pole. before the show, we drank giant coronas in rob's van to honor el valle mistico. the mystic valley band are like a totally contemporary classic rock band. i think that is why i love their records so much. they are even more excellent when they play their songs on a stage for me. while we were at the show, everyone around me received simultaneous texts about the 9 mile overpass bridge collapsing/exploding/melting. after the show, we went to investigate. the scene was grisly at one-thirty in the morning, but miraculously - no one died!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

thursday, july 16. bowerbirds & megafaun, pike room, pontiac, michigan. i walked into the pike room to catch this show solo and was met with a trio of dudes with crazy mountain beards singing beautiful harmonies and letting their bluegrass ballads dissolve into really huge, spacy noise before bringing them back to normal at the end. like a more backwoods yankee hotel foxtrot. avant-garde bluegrass, perhaps? whatever they are, they are awesome. really awesome. and they talked about having pizza parties in lansing. i guess pizza parties are going to be the coolest thing in 2010. bowerbirds took over and i was in a happy fog of campfire crackle and beautiful songs - some i knew, lots i didn't. they make modern kinds of backwoods music, too, in the best sense of the word. the main dude's voice rips my guts out in the gentlest way. bowerbirds. to know them is to love them.

i thought i would be sad about missing my pitchfork after going the first three years, but there's been so many other things happening that i only have a vague sort of 'am i forgetting something?' feeling this third week of july.

coming up:

july 21 wilco (and my mom's 51st birthday PIZZA PARTY)

july 31 crofoot bbq (that $2 sangria fine print is likely to lead to trouble......again)

in closing, i miss this jird. a lot.

2009-07-15T22:12:00.001-04:00

help! i need a folksinger!

i think it was an eagle

2009-07-15T19:01:00.004-04:00

as if i needed another reason to love bon iver. dude had a life-affirming experience at an indigo girls concert. (read this).

his old bandmates megafaun and his old tourmates the bowerbirds play the pike room in pontiac tomorrow night. i will be there, as i believe it is likely to be most excellent by proxy. it's only eight dollars and i was excited to be able to afford a tub of hummus because today was pay day so you have no excuse not to go!

Conor Oberst Donates Music Video To Charity

for now, i am going to see CONOR OBERST AND THE MYSTIC VALLEY BAND play songs and i sincerely hope they play eagle on a pole so i don't have to be the asshole in the back of the majestic yelling, "EAAAAGLE ON A POOOOOOOOLE!!!"

i saw this eagle on this pole last sunday.

the deep yard dream

2009-07-14T00:06:00.001-04:00

misfirings

2009-07-09T17:46:00.007-04:00

while taking a shower, i heard a girl yelling from what sounded like our front porch. "BUDDY! BUDDY!!!!!!!!!" she was calling for her dog, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk in front of our house, bicycle splayed next to her and a tiny dog on a leash, staring at her.

as i hurried out of the shower to see if i could help her, i had the thought, "what if it's a trick? isn't the lost dog act the oldest trick in the book??" and then i realized that the person luring others with a lost dog is typically an adult and the kidnapee is the child. was this eight-year-old girl going to kidnap me from my own front porch? no. i saw a giant black lab bounding toward her just as i opened the front door, so i went back inside. i did not get kidnapped. my brain skipped the logical path and found another.

five teenagers were killed by a train today in canton. they drove around a car that had stopped at the lowered railroad crossing arms. the train dragged the car a mile before it could stop. on the train were a number of blind people with leader dogs, heading back to chicago after a convention in detroit and a group of librarians heading to chicago for a conference. i'd imagine that hitting a car full of teenagers would really color your week in detroit or your soon-to-be weekend in chicago. coming or going. i wasn't even on the train but i can't get it out of my head. we live in a world with so many precautions and so many warnings that when something that is typically so orderly (e.g. trains on fixed rails) does so much damage, it kind of throws things off kilter. in 1995, members of a cult released toxic sarin gas into a number of subway cars in tokyo, killing twelve people and causing short- and long-term blindness to thousands of people. haruki murakami wrote a book about it, called underground. i read it last summer and like all his books, it really stuck with me. these are two completely unrelated things, but as soon as i saw the news report, the word "kasumigaseki" flashed in my brain. i don't even remember if that is the name of a place or a person in the book, but it just popped right up. i think these misfires are really awesome, when two unrelated things can cause familiar recall. and this, my friends, is why most psychology nerds are married to other psychology nerds because i suspect i bore people to tears with this sort of business.

aaaaanyway. look! my good pal anthony has a show in berlin! big time kudos.

today i only had to go to work for three hours. we walked the kids to the bowling alley, bowled two games, and came back. they were the longest three hours of my life. there was crying, fighting, pants wetting, and i said, "stay on the sidewalk!" and "get out of the arcade!" so many times my eyes crossed. i feel like a mean mom, constantly nagging them, but when you have eight seven-year-olds that won't listen to a single word you say and also enjoy a game called "let's try to slap moving cars," it kind of just happens. i'm getting really good at pretending to be excited when i watch kids do their 7 millionth handstands in the pool. the trick is to wear sunglasses so your eyes don't have to waste too much energy lying. only your mouth has to say, "wow! that was so good! you're like a dolphin!" my mom pretended to care deeply about every handstand i ever did. and now i know that she was probably faking it 85% of the time. and for good reason. even after long days, i still would rather work with kids than adults.

this album is soooo good. it came out in 2001. what a fool i've been for eight long years, only to find this now!

where did everybody go?

2009-07-08T23:12:00.002-04:00

who could hang a name on you?

2009-07-05T00:07:00.003-04:00

july 2, 2009. ypsilanti, michigan.

i fell in love with a tiny donkey. he was seven days old. i would call him tingalayo.

frontier ruckus and chris bathgate played songs on a stage in a field next to a carnival. it felt like an oddly familiar dream, the kind where you are at your grandmother's house but it's actually your elementary school. i had such a strong feeling of being in that exact place before, hearing that music, in that field, punctuated by screams from the nearby gravitron.

carnival worker: hey! you! you in the boots!

me: huh?

carnival worker, extending his foot to display standard work boots: mine are better.

2009-06-24T23:57:00.001-04:00

atop the park shelton, fireworks are quiet. twelve stories above woodward avenue, detroit is sleepy and polite. michigan summer begins.

2009-06-19T23:03:00.001-04:00

cats and dogs are pounding on the roof of my parked car in a pay lot in pontiac. wait it out. wait it out. wait it out.

2009-06-19T14:47:00.001-04:00

the bratty, asshole kid convention @ target rochester hills is happening right now! free admission!

snake hill

2009-06-18T20:19:00.009-04:00

i took a solo road trip to the upper peninsula last week. the drive was lovely. i stopped to salute the mackinac bridge and test the waters of my favorite great lake at her northernmost point. i crossed the bridge to the tune of conor oberst and the mystic valley band's "difference is time," and when i pulled up to the toll booth, the attendant leaned his head out of the booth and said, "sounds

like the blues...i like it. i like it." and so do i, sir. i stopped at a few yard sales along US-2, but didn't find anything worth a quarter or two. kate and i took a tour of an iron mine, walked through an old iron town, saw a band of 1950s reenactors play at the friendliest yacht club on the lakes, and kate was even kind enough to drive me into wisconsin long enough to pick a flower and take a picture.

i stopped briefly on the drive home at the curio fair in st. ignace and paid fifty cents to climb the tower. the view was pretty. and quiet. i carved my initials into the mess of graffiti inside and then drove home to the tune of these excellent records:

with road trips and lakes and woods and lonely, aging tourist attractions, it's beginning to look a lot like summer.

i started my job at summer camp with a week of training. i spent the bulk of today's shift decorating a bulletin board and riding a turtle. every friday, we will spend the morning at the public library and the afternoon at the city pool. i think this job is going to rule.

last night, i stumbled upon an hourlong documentary on the making of conor oberst's newest record. (watch it here). it's been in constant rotation in my car stereo for the last three weeks. i really like it. it sounds like a sweet 70s band of dudes that would wear satin bowling league-style jackets. oh wait, they DO wear sating bowling team jackets!

i like everything about the record, right down to the paper colors in the liner notes and the photo on the back of the sleeve. sometimes i fear that seeing the process will make a record less magical (i still haven't seen the national's a skin, a night, which is the story of boxer, one of my favorite records of the last five years) but one of my kind doesn't spoil any of the magic. in fact, it makes it sound even better. the songs are really good, they seem like really good dudes, and it's better than watching an hour of daisy of love. i want one of those jackets. i want to be in the mystic valley club. it seems like they just drink beers and bro out and jam these excellent songs into being. mystical! magical! they roll into town on july 15. see you there.

bon iver - wisconsin

2009-06-07T20:53:00.002-04:00

this song belongs in some kind of hymnal.

i went to lutheran school for kindergarten and first grade and every wednesday afternoon, we went to chapel, where i would squirm around until it was time to sing. we sang songs from a hymnal and i remember how delicate the pages felt and how musty all the books smelled. my favorite one was called "i am jesus' little lamb," and even on the days we didn't sing it, i would flip to page 648 and sing it to myself in my head. that happened in 1989. i haven't thought about that until i heard this song about wisconsin.

betsy played bon iver's "for emma" on the jukebox at the emory last night and it felt so strange hearing bon iver in a public place. mine! mine! mine! like the seagull that i am.

2009-06-06T00:46:00.001-04:00

I LOVE MY LIFE.

our songs are sing-a-long songs

2009-06-02T22:00:00.006-04:00

why my summer vacation is going to rule: a pictorial guide

crofoot prom. friday. why? because i endured my high school prom stone sober while wearing white heeled sandals and a lavender evening gown. horrific!

june 10-14! U.P. 2k9: a solo sojourn to visit my favorite upper peninsula resident, kate. terror on the streets of gladstone! terror on the streets of escanaba! 1-2-3-here i come, majestically mulleted native american toll booth attendant on the mackinac bridge! it's been two long years since i visited the halls of dakota avenue.

yes. shopping is only a bike ride away.

i am still scouting the perfect viewing spot. the magic stick is a bit of an obstructed view. i may have to try to talk my way up to the top of the park shelton. that view is bananas.

the borden fireworks are the best opportunity of the year to watch all the people i went to high school with walk around with their kids from the safe anonymity of a sea of white people in old navy flag t-shirts.

cityfessssssst. elaborate drink ticket systems, the smell of smoked meats permeating the air, and free music. SOLD!

yessssssss (day 2)

cotton jones & frontier ruckus: count me in. twice.

olive hearts! one of my favorite songs of the last year. i would be happy if they just played this song twelve times in a row.

i will attend this event solely because of this pizza in a lunchbox poster.

five levels of junk for sale! yessssss!!!

yes times ten. i can't wait. wilco will love you, baby.

the winner of this year's most badass cover art award plays the crofoot in july. neeeeeeeko! i wanna beeeeeee yooooooou!

i like anything where a five day pass is $30. and i can also visit the soaring eagle casino resort on the same weekend. WIN-WIN.

this was one of the highlights of summer '08 and is sure to please again. i might try to consume ten fewer glasses of sangria this time.

when i was a wee lass, my parents dragged us to a number of highland festivals. i always complained, secretly enjoyed them, and now i'm ready to return to hear alex beaton bleat his way through "scotland the brave" and drink alongside log tossing giants in a beer tent.

i will have to try REALLY hard not to sing at this. hearing the breakdown in "mykonos" is worth every last penny of that $22.

i am going to see the wild horses of cumberland island if it kills me. this one is going to be quite grand.

soundtrack to my scheming: the hold steady - constructive summer

memorial day

2009-05-25T18:09:00.002-04:00

look! i wrote that!

cool.

i took lots of naps this weekend.

i went to ikea and bought chalk.

i listened to wilco's new album about twenty-six times. (sadly, jay bennett passed away this weekend.)

i went to the trumbullplex and saw this guy who managed to terrify and amaze me at the same time. i watched chickens sleeping in a coop outside.

betsy came over and i made guacamole and for some reason we watched the entirety of dirty dancing on TV.

there are lots of songs in my head.

2009-05-17T16:56:00.004-04:00

moved to college street. no internet makes my life better. downtown on the alley deck sunday. daytime drinking is tops. eastern market ruled hard today. the good life. YES!

(posted from mobile)

summer comes to multiply

2009-05-04T22:05:00.004-04:00

i got a summer job today. working as a camp counselor for the city of ferndale's day camp. this means i will be riding my bike to work five days a week to wrangle children. one day a week, i will be wrangling children on FIELD TRIPS. i would be lying if i said i didn't love field trips of any kind. the summer lineup:

the detroit zoo
detroit science center
bowling
red oaks water park
tigers game
metro beach
bounce U
greenfield village

also, my eyes were met with this glory today.

wonder of wonder

miracle of miracles

two of my favorites playing at the geographically nearest venue to my house. i don't count the magic bag because it sucks. i could ride my bike to these. in fact, i just might. wilco is playing on my mama's birthday but i think she would forgive me for a rock appointment with uncle tweedy and wilco (the band). now, if bon iver would just play in my backyard and kings of leon circa 2005 would play tastefest, this summer would be in order.

getting this job also means i have three weeks at the end of the summer to take an EPIC road trip......see you in august, wild horses.

2009-04-29T16:46:00.004-04:00

my boss is covered in beeeeeees!!!

-excerpt from a real 911 call featured on my favorite news program, inside edition. they just did back-to-back stories on swine flu and sarah jessica parker's soon-to-be twins. and now, a "who is this guy?" story about how no one recognizes eminem on the cover of vibe because he has brown hair.

matinee

2009-04-28T21:48:00.002-04:00

there are a ton of movies coming out this summer that i am totally jazzed about. apple.com/trailers is an excellent waste of time.

1. moon. sam rockwell looking like ben bridwell + a lonely-in-space story = my advanced ticket.

2. is anybody there? michael caine + magic tricks + retirement home = me crying uncontrollably.

3. the hangover. zach galifianakis + ed helms + a baby in giant aviators = comedy gold.

4. away we go. written by dave eggers + bearded jim halpert + sad folk music trailer = a movie custom-tailored for my liking.

5. paper heart. OMGOMGOMGOMG i don't even care if this isn't real because i love it already.

6. daytime drinking. a movie about bus stations and drinking in korea. yes.

get a life!

will you love me when i thaw out?

2009-04-26T18:36:00.003-04:00

midday thunderstorms

empty high life bottles on the coffee table

open windows

the national's boxer

sunday afternoon couch naps (accidental)

NO SOCKS

minty iced tea

muggy air that makes everything slow down and always makes me want to listen to love as laughter's in amber.

In Amber (Album) - Love As Laughter

it feels like summer. four days away from my favorite of favoritest months. nineteen days away from a new house on college street. i feel compelled to celebrate may day this year. who's up for twirling around a may pole on woodward?

2009-04-24T12:35:00.001-04:00

the unsweetened iced green tea from starbucks has never tasted as good as it does right now. sitting in my car listening to CSNY on my lunch break.

is it thursday yet?

2009-04-20T23:44:00.003-04:00

and now my life is complete. one of my ultimate favorite dudes singing one of my ultimate, all-time, you can play this at my funeral (and not in a sad sack way but just because it totally rules sort of way) favorite songs.

check up on it.

bon iver sings the standards! so totally awesome.

oh, and it's official! we are moving to a little white house on college street!!!

2009-04-20T23:43:00.001-04:00

Testing

don't stop me now.

2009-04-17T22:47:00.004-04:00

totally stoked on this, as most of the music listening i've been doing in the last few months has been made by these two.

also, it will take place here. color me excited.

the acoustics of this apartment somehow allow me to hear someone that lives in a house across the street and three houses down have a ten-minute coughing jag. i can also hear every jalopy that barrels down 8 mile road. and every time my neighbors' dogs bark, which is every second all the time, i can hear that, too. i can hear my other neighbors (those in the halfway house that share our parking lot) have shouting matches about playing darts, guns n roses, cars, and dumpster rights. the warm weather has made this neighborhood SO noisy. yesterday i tried to get away from it and drove all the way to lake saint clair again, as it seems like the closest thing to nature i can find living in ferndale. when i got there, there were dueling machine sounds (jet skis? chainsaws?) that i could not escape. i walked to the end of the beach and i could still hear them. it was a real bummer. when i lived in seoul, i actually cried once (okay, it was definitely more than once) because my ears hadn't experienced QUIET in so long. it was on some sunday morning when the old men of my neighborhood were hawking loogies with major vocal chord action right outside my window for the tenth sunday in a row.

c.s. lewis said that heaven is a place where "all that is not music is silence."

i think i would like that very much.

the days of shabbiness and shame are behind us!

2009-04-12T21:15:00.004-04:00

for easter, we went to my mom and pop's house and ate sandwiches and had jumping contests in the front yard. then we found some hats in the little barn and jumped out of said barn while wearing the hats. these are the prizewinning jumps.

lindsay

bonnie

moi

it was a most excellent day.

i put up some fotos of some things that have happened in april and a few that happened in march.

back to work and school tomorrow. boo hoo.

a conversation that occurred this morning while i watched tyra

2009-04-07T15:49:00.002-04:00

bonnie:

god. bat for lashesis so cool

12:06 PM me: she totally loves neverending story i bet

bonnie: yeah

she maakes these awesome paper cutouts

i want to make some

12:07 PM tomorrow! lets craft and take pictures

and get $5 footlongs and eat them in your livingroom

me: yesyesyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssss

IS IT TOMORROW YET??!??!??!??!

bonnie: that will be tomorrow. today is working, and waiting for tomorrow

hahaha

same brain --->lame brain

12:08 PM me: hahahaha

bonnie: haha i am nan drink*rd's weird-ass daughter

me: we all have her weird genes

bonnie: yeah

luckily not her weird jeans though

weird

mom jeans

12:09 PM me: you are so PUNNY

kids are punny volume 6 by rosie o'donnell

bonnie: i hate you

mathmathmath

2009-04-04T21:59:00.005-04:00

s-a-t-u-r-d-a-y-hey!

simple math:

1 trip to flea market at civil war-era fortress in detroit.

+3 hours watching college basketball on mute while playing guitar, annoying invisible friends.

+figuring out all four harmonies to CSN's "teach your children."

+homemade nachos with green AND black olives at halftime.

+1 entire bottle pinot grigio, the cheap kind from australia.

+victory dance for msu to the tune of wilco's "candyfloss" in my bathroom, lights off.

+short break for a visit with betsy and rob.

+why?'s alopecia played very loud to the chagrin of my neighbors (especially "these few presidents" and "the hollows")

+1 bottle tacky glue

+1 model ship, painted gold with forever21 lettuce-colored tissue paper sails

+1 3ftx3ft diorama that grows more ridiculous by the minute

+1 google chat with heather in flah-rida, missing her incredibly on this happy spartan day.

although last time we celebrated a sporting victory together (the era of tigers victory benders on their world series run in '06), it was OUT. OF. CONTROL. i miss daytime drinking (specifically thursday afternoons at the riv) with heather smith more than i miss a lot of things.

__________________________________________________________________

=my saturday

though this math may constitute an entirely enjoyable saturday to me, it may prove once and for all my lifetime membership in the Die Alone Club.

god put a psalm on my palm that you can't read. (thisrecordisSOgoodithurts)

madonna thunderhawk

2009-04-02T22:07:00.007-04:00

i am watching benny & joon. it is reaffirming itself as one of my favorite movies ever. i especially love the fact that it begins AND ends with the proclaimers' "i'm gonna be (500 miles)." i think that song is one of the most romantic songs of all time. i also love that this movie includes the ubiquitous 90s movie anthem, "have a little faith in me,"sung by the world's throatiest randy newman imposter, john hiatt.

Have A Little Faith In Me - John Hiatt

i took the BEST bike ride tonight. i found a manmade sledding hill in the middle of a park. i saw lots of people watching TV in their living rooms and stirring pots and standing in garages with hands on hips, staring at lawn mowers. i listened to frontier ruckus' the orion songbook, which continues to delight my ears. it's just the most perfect record for bike riding at dusk and living here and thinking about houses and windows and lakes and trees and flashes of things that were. i saw them play last weekend in the pike room only a week after seeing them play at the blind pig. that's how good they are. totally magical.

things i thought about on my glorious dusk bike ride:

lately i feel like i've been screaming into a jar. telling stories to walls. rehearsing conversations that will never occur. sometimes i like being along in my own head and sometimes it's scary.

i love the boldness of crocuses. they risk frostbite just to be the first ones out there.

the nervous tulips are still shrouded, peeking out their windows, checking weather forecasts.

a landfill sledding hill on the first warm day of spring has to be so relieved.

i wanted to tell it, "take it easy, brother. winter couldn't be farther away." and then i wanted to ride my bike down it but i was afraid that i would go flying into a tree. maybe next time.

the seven o'clock hour is best for the kind peeping toms that just like to see people doing regular things. TVs tuned to weather reports - do thunderstorms on the plains mean much to you? i have a lot of questions for these people. i have a number of questions for the person who built their dog (cat?) an elaborate ramp to travel from the driveway to the front door. it was at least twenty feet long. i want to see what the person who made that looks like. i don't know if i'll ever be able to shake the instinct to head home when the porch lights come on.

i have been doing more paper and ink writing lately that makes my brain feel better. the internet is still good for things like this, though.

it's a shame about raisins

2009-04-01T12:41:00.000-04:00

they are doing this super bizzaro practice-run of a "pandemic drill" right outside my office/classroom right now. there are kids pretending to be violently ill into shopping bags and garbage cans. the principal is asking them in a community theater voice, "what's wrong? what's WRONG!!?!??!??" and they are all just faux-puking and moaning and rolling on the floor. they are all taking this very, VERY seriously. i think this is what would happen if an outbreak of bad acting broke out, and not what would happen if everyone got ebola on the same day. tomorrow there will be firetrucks and ambulances and police involved, so i'm glad i will be working in another building. pigs make me nervous. they sent out a note that said, "other than the students involved in the enactment, no other classes will be interrupted." they forgot to finish the sentence! "no other classes will be interrupted by the lights, sirens, firetrucks, police presence, and local media camera crews." keep doing your math, kids! pay no attention to the fake medi-vac helicopter outside the window! after the totally creepy "lockdown" drills that involve covering all windows and HIDING from pretend rogue gunmen and this new mass barfing scenario, i'm wondering how long i will have to wait before we get to do a zombie invasion drill. if i were a principal, we would do that on this very day. april fool's day. and then all the weird parents that don't let their kids trick-or-treat would burn the school down and dance on its ashes. and then summer vacation would come early.

murray feldman

2009-03-25T21:15:00.003-04:00

you should probably just kill me now because seeing this movie will certainly be my end. cause of death? sheer enjoyment. i don't think i've ever looked more forward to a movie than this one.

american idol update: adam lambert looks like a lesbian elvis impersonator. oh wait, i am the only person i know that watches this show and even writing about it just became really depressing because it's like talking to myself but like talking to yourself and putting it in a time capsule.

one of bwe's best posts to date

yes. in my group counseling class tonight, my professor started the lecture on existential therapy by walking around the room, pointing to each of us and saying, "you are going to die."

if that's not a great way to spend a wednesday night, i don't know what is. especially when it is followed by coming home after a thirteen hour day, eating a turkey burger, and fighting with my sisters and then crying vacation tears while an empire carpet commercial blares. sometimes i think i am best suited to a solitary existence in a cave.

some guy on the news beat a lady in the head with a pipe.

i applied for a job working at a summer camp in ferndale.

i could ride my bike to work.

phoenix are going to be on SNL this weekend.

i miss amna when i think about phoenix.

last weekend, betsy, bonnie, and i went to see chris bathgate and frontier ruckus play at the blind pig in ann arbor and it was downright magical. ring the banjar. michigan folk making amazing music. inspiring.

marzipan

2009-03-19T20:23:00.003-04:00

the month of march always tends to slip by unnoticed. it might go in like a lion and out like a lamb, but the middle part always kind of just sits there. i am on spring break from wayne state this week so instead of going to class after work, i've been able to come home and:

1. ride my bike.

2. take naps.

3. enjoy various after school snacks, such as hawaiian punch and goldfish and/or chocolate pudding cups.

4. celebrate st. patrick's day by drinking miller lite from plastic cups at the post. how authentic!

5. drive to lake saint clair just to see what it looks like (like lake huron without the waves!) did you know that the french explorers originally called lake huron la mer douce? it means "the sweet sea." i learn a lot of interesting things when i work in fourth grade classrooms.

i've also been working on a giant diorama but i only work on it on saturdays and sundays, as some sort of unintentional personal rule. last weekend i built a mountain out of multi-colored pom pom balls and this weekend i will be building a whale's mouth that shall be eating a golden ship. these are the things that i have on my to-do list.

things i have enjoyed lately:

-neko case's middle cyclone

- elvis perkins in dearland

- sigur ros: heima

- thoughts of the bicycle in my parents' garage i am going to steal and ride and claim as my own.

- 30 rock. as the glory of the office begins to wane, 30 rock never fails to please.

don't worry, baby.

2009-03-01T18:49:00.003-05:00

today, march 1, 2009 will be recorded as the day i got sick of winter.

every february in elementary school, we had beach day. on this day, we changed out of our snowpants and boots in favor of shorts and sunglasses. at lunch, we sat on beach towels on the cafeteria floor and ate hot dogs and listened to the beach boys. mr. scislowicz, the gym teacher, wore a hawaiian shirt and sat in a lifeguard chair. it always felt like they were trying to trick us into forgetting, even if only for an hour, that we had endured seventeen consecutive indoor recesses because of dangerously low temperatures.

it is this time of year that i have to fight the urge to get in the car and drive until it starts to feel warm. this is the first winter in many winters that i have not flown south. or southwest. now listening to the beach boys just seems like a mean joke.

15

2009-02-26T21:30:00.002-05:00

this has been making the rounds on facebook. i thought i'd do it because as soon as i read everyone else's my brain started burning with all the albums that have stuck with me along the way.

"think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world."

i will go chronologically because it's only fair. not release years, but the dates that these records found their way into my ears.

1. (1997) jeff buckley - grace

i didn't know music could be as beautiful as this album until i found this at the public library at age 13. it was the first record i loved that felt like a secret.

2. (1998) elliott smith - xo

another public library gem that i first knew as "the good will hunting soundtrack." it feels like a part of me. and it cemented my lifelong love of sad bastard music. forever and always.

3. (2001) dashboard confessional - swiss army romance

continuing the sad bastardry. the first sticker i put on my first car was a dashboard sticker. the first time i snuck out to go to detroit to see a concert, it was dashboard confessional at saint andrews in november 2001. i have an 8x10 glossy of me, poly, and chris carrabba in a frame somewhere. shout-singing along at that very show made the shitty parts of high school seem as insignificant as they really were.

4. (2001) jimmy eat world - bleed american

another high school favorite. i had a CD walkman rigged to tiny portable speakers that i would hold near my head while i drove to school and blare this album. it sounded tinny and terrible but it still made my heart swell as i sang along at 6:45am driving to school in the dark.

5. (2001) the strokes - is this it?

i remember listening to the title track on this album at six o'clock in the morning standing in front of my bedroom mirror, mouth agape and half asleep and thinking my life sucked so bad because i had to drive ten minutes to school and sit through bullshit classes and see my friends every day for seven minutes at a time, seven times a day. now i just miss them seven times a day. i skipped a lot more classes after i started listening to this album.

6. (2002) ben kweller - sha sha

this album equates spring of 2002 and eating lunch with betsy and amna and poly every day. we would all pile into one car and take our brown bag lunches to manhattan bagel and only buy cokes and laugh at people getting hair cuts at fantastic sam's. when we left school in the afternoon, amna would wave to me via the back windshield wiper blade of her car. and this album IS all of those things. wasted and ready.

7. (2003) brand new - deja entendu

this is a record that is as melodramatic as i was as a college sophomore. everything in those days was so heightened and important-feeling and intense (intensely fun or intensely depressing, depending on the day)

8. (2003) nick drake - way to blue

this was purchased at the mall in port huron and i listened to it over and over on a CD walkman in the annex of the cottage. it is trees and summer and all the good kinds of sadness.

9. (2004) phantom planet - phantom planet

phantom planet are road trips and parties and doing stupid things late at night with my friends and living in east lansing and having the best time ever and i specifically remember listening to this record as i drove to the administration building on the day i became a psychology major and decided to spend more time having adventures and less time caring too much about academia.

10. (2005) rilo kiley - the execution of all things

this album is when i found solidarity with songs written by a GIRL that sounded just as sad and hopeful and disappointed-but-trying and nostalgic and lazy and scatterbrained as me! this, to me, is girl power at its best, truest.

11. (2006) wilco - summerteeth

this album is the feeling of finally not feeling like a teenager anymore and living in the midwest and every good book i've ever read and families and roads and age and settling in for the night and jars and odds and ends that make up everything i like about music in general. i love this record so goddamn much.

12. (2006) nada surf - let go

this record is graduating too early in the day to care and moving back into my parents house and shoveling snow and planning my next move and figuring out that everything that needs to happen will eventually happen. everything is okay when i listen to this album.

13. (2007) the national - boxer

boxer is living in the hampton apartment with lindsay and late spring and my friends slowly leaking out of michigan for good and my parents backyard and public pools and night time and the month of may as a whole.

14. (2007) band of horses - cease to begin

this record is moving to korea and surviving and hating it and loving it and climbing a mountain and american music and subtitled tv and being half-awake and running to catch buses and field trips and spicy olive chicken sandwiches from paris baguette. every time i hear it, i'm back on that bus going over the han river bridge 0n my way to work and watching tiny shards of sunlight cut through the heavy morning smog and thinking "what the hell am i doing here?"

15. bon iver - for emma, forever ago

this is the deepest part of winter, the hardest part. it's a literal connection but this record just captures midwestern winter. it gets dark at four o'clock. you can't go outside for more than a few minutes. but it's quiet and it's kind of magical when it all melts. this record is the geography that i will always carry in my heart. midwest is best!

listen to the magic.

2009-02-23T21:42:00.003-05:00

as always, i am really looking forward to may.

5-3-09 franz ferdinand - clutch cargo

5-6-09 mogwai/twilight sad - crofoot (sad, cinematic scottish explosion)

5-8-09 the kills/the horrors - magic stick (i can see the smoke clouds and leather jackets already)

5-9-09 leonard cohen - the fox (probably killer expensive, but i wanna goooooo)

5-12-09 bonnie prince billy - crofoot (yes. yes. yes. i want to construct a large willow tree inside the crofoot ballroom and sit in it to watch this show)

5-13-09 king khan & bbq show - magic stick (there's no way this won't rule)

may is also my turn in the club574 cd of the month club. i bribed nikki to give me my favorite months. may and october. because who wants to make a mix cd for a month like april? or september? yuck. those are my least favorite months.

i didn't really leave my house this weekend. the end of winter always turns me into a sad sack invalid. on friday, i watched a most excellent murder mystery episode of dateline, narrated by the one and only keith morrison. on saturday, i made a tiny canoe out of old newspaper and watched the man who fell to earth. david bowie's first dramatic film role proved to be just as weird as i presumed it would be.

believe it.

be mine (or else)

2009-02-14T15:21:00.006-05:00

five valentines that make me feel uncomfortable.

1. davy crockett

i don't like the word "trap" and "valentine" so close together.

2. a wee bonnie lassie

your rosy inner thighs make me question your desired level of "class."

3. but you said you wouldn't bite.

creep.

4. chop suey.

OR. ELSE.

5. how much?

strictly business, huh? it's called solicitation and it is a crime.

my valentine's day started in the wee hours of february 14 singing karaoke with bonnie, lindsay, and sean in some bar in windsor, ontario to a (small) crowd of fortysomething women and american nineteen-year-olds. we wanted to show bonnie what windsor was like while she was still to young to imbibe in the united states. we got in and out of canada without incident. our border guard asked only about the family history of our last name and nothing about our business in canada. when we left windsor, it had just started snowing and by the time we were headed up I-75, the roads were already slippery. i went into a pretty good skid on the entrance ramp to the lodge and my car was stopped by a concrete wall, wrenching the drivers' side tire to a 90 degree angle and breaking the axle. while i was on the phone with AAA, another car came around the corner and crashed into the wall behind us. we feared it would get worse before the tow truck arrived (our suspicions proved wise) and we had nowhere to go but up. so we got out of the car and crawled up a snowy hill to the parking lot of an vacant building to wait. while we waited there, at least ten more cars came flying around the corner smashing into walls and pushing the second car into my car. bonnie and lindsay walked to motor city casino and took a cab home, while sean and i waited and watched for headlights through the trees. our best "SLOWDOWNSLOWDOWNSLOWDOWN!"s from the top of the hill were no use and car after car came plowing around the corner. several narrowly made it through the space between my car and a van that was immobilized against the other wall. others bounced off the walls or off the other cars. it was surprisingly sickening to watch. we saw a truck spin out on the lodge and come to a stop perpendicular to traffic. the tow truck came about an hour later and he had to jump out of the road twice when cars came barreling down the ramp. when he finally had my car up on the truck, we got ready to run across the ramp and hop in the truck when a car came flying around the corner, slamming that poor, poor car #2 into the back of the tow truck. at this point, i was about to cry. luckily, the tow truck had some sort of extendo-arm that PUSHED the car away. we ran across the ramp, jumped in the truck and rode all the way up woodward back to ferndale, where lindsay and bonnie's cab had run out of gas right in front of our building.

this is how i felt

i went to bed at 5:30am and slept all day. i woke up long enough to watch half of an infomercial for that two-chambered cooking pot hosted by the lady with adult braces. and then i went back to sleep.

happy valentine's day!

i was following the i was following the i was

2009-02-12T21:23:00.003-05:00

today at work, i found myself IMDB-ing heavyweights. i should really try to be more productive. i was also texting bonnie via email about heavyweights. did you know that it was written by judd apatow? do you know that my life makes so much more sense now that i know that heavyweights was written by judd apatow?

on friday, all of the kiddies are having their valentine's day parties at school and i am trying to talk my way onto a valentine's day bowling field trip. i just really like drinking warm coca-cola from a pitcher and sharing greasy bowling balls with ten-year-olds. hanging in the hallway of the elementary school are "kindergarten sweethearts" - valentines written to kindergarten students by their parents. every time i walk by, my eyes find a different one and another cause to tear up. valentines written to five year olds from their parents make my heart want to explode. this week has also been "spirit week," which i did not enjoy when i was in school and i do not enjoy now. i especially don't enjoy seeing adult coworkers in their pajamas. it skeeves me out. especially the dudes. i don't want to see your saggy flannel pajama pants that make me question whether or not you changed your underwear this morning. gross. today was "crazy hat day," and i was impressed by the number of giant, fuzzy raver hats that kids in 2009 own. where the hell does one find a giant top hat emblazoned with flames and electric purple trim in 2009? i guess i haven't been to a spencer gifts in a while. they probably still have them. the kid in the fuzzy flame hat went home sick at 9am. i blame the hat entirely.

did you know you can go over the mackinac bridge on google street view?

View Larger Map

white antelope (robin pecknold from fleet foxes) singing "it ain't me babe," one of my favorite dylan tunes.

betsy has been telling me about this clip for weeks. it sounded too good to be true. huebel as a duggar? thank you lord.

also, my mom emailed me today to tell me about a dream she had in which was a duggar trying to find a wedding dress at arizona saddlery.

i have next week off and i am going to sleep and read a lot.

is this going to be forever?

2009-02-05T16:29:00.000-05:00

is there a unicorn in it?

2009-02-03T20:51:00.002-05:00

how exciting is this? pontiac may rise from the ashes after all. an old GM office becoming a movie studio? that is a beautiful thing. it reminds me of detroit's motto. "speramus meliora; resurget cineribus." (latin for, "we hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.") personally, i credit the drum circle /shaman ritual /paint battle i partook in last spring. we invoked the spirit of chief pontiac to renew the spirit of the city. what did YOU do?

i'm pretty stoked about this show. we shall remain is a five-part installment of PBS' american experience series. each episode will tell one of five of the most important stories in the history of native americans. 1. after the mayflower 2. tecumseh's vision 3. trail of tears 4. geronimo 5. wounded knee. i saw the preview special for it on sunday night (instead of watching the super bowl) and it looks AWESOME. american experience is probably my favorite show on PBS, other than their epically missed reality time travel series...........i weep for the days of frontier house and manor house.

today marks the occasion that i rejoined netflix. my brain has grown bored of everything on TV and since i owe the RHPL my kidneys in overdue fines that i may never pay and punxatawney phil just announced six more weeks of indoor activities, i need a new source for brain stimulation. weird documentaries! how exciting. TIME TO FILL THAT QUEUE!

1. minik: the lost eskimo

2. american experience: the lobotomist

3. ken burns' america: the shakers

4. the family that walks on all fours

5. american experience: the carter family

6. woody guthrie: ain't got no home

don't you wish you could hang out with me so you could watch this kind of shit? you do. i'm sure you do. of course you do.

when i was very little, i only liked non-fiction children's books. which, in those days, meant a selection of three large board books that were kept on one particular shelf at the public library. one was about going to the airport (i can still envision the page where his mickey mouse doll had to go through the x-ray machine), one was about going to the doctor, and the other was about a kid going to preschool. there weren't many books for kids with real photographs. i think this is why i still prefer documentaries to real movies, non-fiction to fiction. there are so many fascinating things that real people do and think and feel and say, why look at pretend things? this is also why i refused to join my sisters in seeing "inkheart" last night.

the discussion:

me: "is brendan fraser in it?"

lindsay: "yes."

me: "is there a unicorn in it?"

lindsay: "yes."

me: "you have your answer."

i do not have to work on friday! HURRAY!

madonna thunderhawk

2009-02-02T22:17:00.002-05:00

i am jonesing for an adventure in the worst way.

last day of january

2009-01-31T22:17:00.002-05:00

i am on day seven of a cold that has deposited something akin to instant quaker oatmeal in the bottoms of my lungs. i can't help but presume that this illness is a direct result of my not-sick sick day last friday. i didn't go to work on friday because i was out late on thursday jamming to superdrag in a booth at the loving touch, a new bar in ferndale. superdrag! the loving touch has tables and stools made of laminated logs in an indoor forest. sold! so on friday, bonnie, lindsay, betsy, and i went to marvin's marvelous mechanical museum in farmington - an impressively named arcade with some entertaining mechanical things - like puppets that polka for a quarter and fortune telling heads a la big. a most excellent way to spend a paid sick day, i'd say. my real illness, though, is a bitch. i almost drove off I-75 several times falling asleep on the way to work on wednesday, fighting the lasting grip of a heavy dose of nyquil taken in a zombie trance at 3am. my coughing grossed lindsay into wearing a cowboy bandanna over her face as she sat next to me on the couch watching american idol. one thing i do like about being sick is the crazy fever dreams. i've had probably fifty short, memorable, totally insane dreams in the last week.

i managed to get out of my pajamas long enough to go to the ann arbor folk festival to see jeff tweedy last night. betsy and i got there midway through old crow medicine show's set. they were the only other band on the bill that i'd ever heard of, but i was totally unprepared for the mindblowing number of RABID old crow medicine show fans in attendance. we actually heard a guy yell, "hell yeah! old crow!" which caused us to nose-laugh quietly for ten straight minutes. also in our immediate vicinity were several dreadlocked heads doing vigorous seat dancing, arm waving, and punching the air to lines like, "rock me mama like a southbound train!" the whole event was just as folky as i suspected it might be. but jeff. oh, jeff. JEFF! TWEEDY! the man, the myth, the legend. from start to finish, i was on the edge of my seat, grinning like an idiot, trying not to sing along in my croaky sick voice. he opened with an unamplified version of "someone else's song," which happens to be one of my favorite wilco songs. he played a couple of new songs, a KILLER cover of the stooges' "i wanna be your dog," and played another totally unplugged version of "acuff rose" for a one-hit encore. it was short. it was sweet. and it was the best thing that happened in january.

this is what it looked like from the upper balcony.

the theater itself is really quite beautiful. a fitting place for those songs. as much as i like to rock, my heart always feels so good around acoustic guitars and banjos. i spent my childhood cursing the banjo, screaming and running from my dad's bluegrass collection. now i pay to see it.

on the rock and roll front:

man, i am so glad franz ferdinand are back in the game. mostly so i can post pictures like this again.

what's not to love?

come on, february. let's get through this together.

an introduction to the world of jan terri

2009-01-24T20:55:00.001-05:00

1. losing you

2. get down goblin

3. journey to mars

you're welcome.

green gloves

2009-01-20T18:59:00.005-05:00

it's a big day in america. we have a new president!

we huddled around a grainy tv in a second-grade classroom to watch barack obama become our new president. sworn in on honest abe's bible on a freezing january day, president number 44 has the whole world pretty stoked. even london's city hall flew an american flag today. this photo is from an electronics store in edinburgh, scotland.

that guard(?) in the weird leather helmet that happened to be standing behind ted kennedy at the inauguration is getting an awful lot of screen time. or maybe i just notice him every time? i never watch cnn, so when i do, i always notice the weirdos in the background of whatever clip they need to show seven thousand times. even QVC is getting in on the inauguration day hype. they are selling "the kinds of necklaces people at the inaugural balls will be wearing tonight." will a lot of people there be wearing multicolored imitation pearl necklaces that can be purchased in two easy payments of $18.97?

when something is on every channel, which one do you watch? do you go with whatever one has the brightest colors? the best fonts? tom brokaw? the least number of tickers/logos? i always go with NBC. always. i'd be hard pressed to tell you why. it's kind of like drug store preference. they are all essentially the same, but most people prefer one to another. i'm a CVS fan because i am a customer that enjoys both value and service. i also like grey industrial carpeting and earning sixteen coupons for nicorette gum every time i buy a coke. most of all, i like buying toilet paper from self-proclaimed trailer park psychics wearing lab coats. see-vee-hessss! (sung with flared nostrils and eyes closed).

i bought a bunch of junk at borders today for no reason.

things i purchased and am very excited about:

1. bon iver - blood bank (EP) it came out today and borders had one copy. it is now mine. i was so excited to have it in my car, i was drumming the steering wheel and sort-of dancing. to bon iver. yessssssssssssssssssssssssss.

2. antony & the johnsons - the crying light if it's anything like his last record, i will be drunk and melodramatically waltzing around my house by myself, crying like a sad transvestite in no time.

3. great lakes crime II: more murder, mayhem, booze & broads - YES. YES. YES. it's one of those locally printed numbers with bad cover art and a generally terrible layout throughout. it's peppered with grisly photos from the 1930s and a quote on the back says - "everybody likes reading about the seamy side of life!" seamy? SOLD! "proudly printed in michigan, U.S.A."

things i purchased completely out of compulsion and might get around to someday:

1. steely dan - the definitive collection just so we can relive that night at sneakers when we played "rikki don't lose that number" on the juke box and harassed people. are you reeling in the years?

2. run with the hunted: a charles bukowski reader just to contrast item #3 (see below)

3. soups and stews: simply delicious recipes a spiral bound collection of things i'll probably never make. $3.99!

omg a headband curly hair guy that takes care of his mom just called her "mom-bo" on the phone...........i am the worst sucker for american idol bullshit. how did this happen? my sisters came back from costa rica and i am still here watching american idol and eating goldfish crackers from a family-size carton by myself. lovin' life!

i didn't know vampires have diamond skin.

2009-01-18T22:49:00.004-05:00

today i went to see twilight. by myself. no self-respecting adult i know was willing to go see it with me, so i finally bit the bullet and uttered the words, "one for twilight, please." it was precisely what i expected it to be - breathy, heartthrob teen vampires with unbuttoned shirts scowling at each other and flying around on mountains. and i LOVED it. like, kind of a lot. like, i am now really wondering what happens next and wondering if i could by the book at meijer under cover of night so that no one would know i was reading a book that ten-year-olds love. the thing i enjoyed most about the movie was the fact that at no point after finding out the sullen high school poet babe is a vampire does the girl ever freak out. she wonders why he is pale and why he doesn't eat. she does some research and concludes that he must be a vampire, but she never says "WTF?!? a vampire??!?!!?! WHAAAAAAAAA?!?!?!!?!?" no, she's just like "cool, whatever. it's hard for you not to kill me right now - let's hang out all the time. do you want to go to prom?" i wonder if the other 13-year-old girls in attendance wondered the same thing. probably not. they would probably offer their necks gladly if it meant this dude would bite them.

.........and so would i. dude's a fox! i stuck around during the credits to see who sang a couple of the songs in the movie (and, you know, to see if there was a vampire blooper reel). one of the songs was "flightless bird, american mouth" by iron and wine. the other sounded like ray lamontagne, but i knew it wasn't. so who was it? the credits told me the song was called "never think" by someone named robert pattinson. i googled that shit when i got home and robert pattinson is the dude in the movie. quick, somebody renew my subscription to tiger beat magazine. i need a locker to hang his picture in.

Never Think - Robert Pattinson

and this, my friends, is reason enough to establish a lifetime membership in the die alone club. hurray!

in the quivering forest

2009-01-18T00:24:00.003-05:00

in honor of their exquisite performance on saturday night live tonight, here is a fleet foxes video. their album was on constant rotation in my stereo last spring after being awed by their siiiiick harmonies at the magic stick. if you don't have their self-titled record yet, get it. it's gorgeous. it's GLORIOUS! i listened to it yesterday while i was cleaning my room and i thought about how it was the kind of record that i would want to play for my hypothetical future kids so that they would know that the decade of 2000-2009 was a time of some really, really good music. and then i started thinking about how there probably won't be station wagons around by then. at least not the kind of wood-paneled, rear-facing seat kind of station wagon that i was envisioning. fleet foxes make the kind of music that should be played in a ford country squire or a vanagon. even in my 2003 saturn ion, they are completely magical.

here is their installment of la blogotheque.

Fleet Foxes - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

i think i like them so much because they are dreamy, both in the physical bearded singing angel choir of logger babe lumberjacks in sweaters sense and the this-music-belongs-in-a-dream sense. i've been thinking a lot about dreams lately. i've been crazy tired, which always makes me have really interesting dreams. right as i was waking up the other day, i started to think about this dream i had about a town where everything was closed and i had to walk around looking for a place to stay and the buildings looked like sad cartoons and it was cold and it didn't seem like a real town and then i remembered that it wasn't a dream, it was a real town that i went to in korea. it took me some time to figure it out in my morning grogginess and the thought that it was real was puzzling. it was when we went to the mountains - to the city of sokcho. of the hundreds of photos i took in korea, i only took one while i was in sokcho. we rode the bus there, ate lunch, climbed a mountain, tumbled down, wandered around the frozen beach town looking for a place to stay (the sad cartoon hotels were closed), drank milky rice wine, and tried to sleep on a floor. it was probably the strangest 24 hours of my life. i remember when we left, we had to wait in this little bus station and we watched a korean soap opera on a tiny t.v. and ate snacks from a vending machine and we were all really tired from hardly sleeping and even then it didn't feel quite real. it doesn't seem like any of that really happened. it's too far away now. i think revisiting those places would be even stranger. maybe it's better to keep them in my memory the way they are now - foggy and good. when we left town, i remember i was listening to band of horses and the beaches were covered with giant cement jacks and i fell asleep wondering how long they'd been there.

is it tomorrow yet? my sisters come home from costa rica tomorrow night and i will be so glad to have people to talk to.

remember all those nice things i said about winter in december? i take them back. we've had snow storms more days than not since 2009 began and they are starting to wear on me. i need a winter project. someone give me an assignment. i want a piano but there'd be no way to get it up these stairs.

i think maybe this is the real reason why listening to fleet foxes made me think of kids today.

cold colder coldest

2009-01-15T20:00:00.003-05:00

the best week ever blog is like an echo of my thoughts.

first this. (the first guy was the one who sang the song from mulan.)

then this!

it makes me feel less pathetic for watching two nights of american idol by myself and then writing about them.

i have no new thoughts for today, except that i saw two robins trying to push a grape out of the road as i drove down cass avenue on my way to class today and i really wanted to stop and help them because it was taking them forever.

the party after you left

2009-01-14T20:53:00.005-05:00

thoughts while watching the second consecutive night of american idol, including commercials (alone):

- dragon shirt. 300+lbs. blonde caterpillar mustache. transitions lenses mid-transition. and singing "my reflection" from MULAN! YES! YES! MORE! MORE! MORE OF YOU!

- i love humans. they are so weird and funny and desperate and hopeful for the dumbest things.

- i could never call anyone "jazz." even someone named jazz. even if it was on her birth certificate.

- if they interview your grandmother at her home, how could you NOT be going to hollywood?

- why does everyone have to sing so LOUD?

- the deep vee can go so right and so wrong. there's very little middle ground.

- omg i wanna see that biggie biopic just for the kid with huge plastic aviators who plays him as a kid!!!!

- this indian kid in american eagle khaki shorts is KILLING it. excuse me. anoop is killing it.

- i miss my sisters. *

- poor michael nicewonder, the sandwich maker with the bleach blonde freshly shorn bangs.

- sometimes i think that if one of of these people were revealed to be a joke or a costume, it would be the funniest joke of all time. but probably not funnier than the idea of howie do it. but HOWIE DO IT?!??!??!??!? HOWIE FUCKIN' DO IT?!?!?!?!?! and the theme song is "this is how we do it," which betsy and i imagined the moment we heard about him having a show called howie do it. i love the world we live in.

- cheyennis doom, that is not your real name and you probably don't even drive a ford focus.

*there's a commercial for the show house featuring the song "i don't like mondays" by the boomtown rats and it is making me miss my sisters a whole lot. they tend to sing it a lot. they sang it at my karaoke birthday blowout and the karaoke hostess got pissy about it and as they returned the microphones to her, she scoffed at them "that song's about columbine, you know." WRONG, douche. that song came out in 1979. and it's about a girl who shot up a playground, killed two adults and when they asked her why she did it, she said "i don't like mondays." get your facts straight, woman who hosts karaoke on saturday nights at the stop spot in ferndale and plays favorites, especially middle aged bald men who sing embarrassing ballads.

today i had to read a u.s. history final to a high school student. it was the first time the phrase "bully pulpit" has entered my brain since i took u.s. history in high school. i had to pick the test up from her teacher who had not only a STYX poster hanging completely crookedly (but not so askew it was on purpose) in his classroom, but also had the concert for george on DVD and the u.s. vs. john lennon on his desk AND the background on his computer desktop was a tie-dyed peace sign and he was wearing a jean shirt and jean jeans. i had to run out of the class with the test in my hand because i was joker smiling and trying not to laugh with a pah! in front of an entire tenth grade class.

i was listening to NPR today on the drive to class and i couldn't believe they were interviewing don knotts LIVE from the north american international auto show about the auto loans. i thought he was dead! oh wait, it wasn't don knotts, you say? don knotts IS dead?! it was tennessee senator bob corker??!?!!?! NO WAY! but really. i thought "oh wow, don knotts is at the auto show. maybe i should go this year." and then it wasn't don knotts at all! it was a senator! he's that sumbitch who was fighting the auto loan package tooth and nail because he's some old crotch from tennessee who doesn't give a shit about anything.

listen to that voice! THAT. IS. THE. VOICE. OF. DON. KNOTTS!!! barney. FIFE. i wish you could have seen me flying down I-75 in swirling snow screaming about the existence of such a dead-on don knotts sound-a-like. (i wish i'd made this ...)

coconut records! new full length album is on myspace!

rikki tikki tavi

2009-01-13T18:54:00.005-05:00

i'm back into ferndale-rochester-detroit-ferndale commuting mode again and i didn't have any CDs in my car today. i tried to think of all the words to songs i haven't heard in a long time. today my focus was on television theme songs. most of which i can start, finish, and mumble-talk-sing through the middle. what ever happened to predictability? also, why were most of the sitcom theme songs of the late 1980s sung by bluesy hermaphrodites? see: full house, step by step, family matters.

i was dicking around on facebook today and came across a profile that had the following listed in the "interests" section: family hot tubbing holidays. i really think that phrase could stand to use a few commas. or maybe this person takes family hot tubbing holidays to hot springs resorts and i'm just a grammar snob. but probably not.

why do i feel like most comedies coming out were written by fozzy bear after he got dumped. confessions of a shopaholic and bride wars - women are so dumb! wokka wokka wokka!

....aaaaaaaand one of my favorite mates of state songs ("for the actor") has just been used in a royal caribbean cruise commercial. i guess it's okay because they have kids to put through college.

bones and i are just partners! (ineedmysisterstocomehomesoicanstopwatchingsomuchtv). well, most tv. because the first episode of the new season of american idol is on RIGHT NOW. i am not ashamed to say that i. LOVE. AMERICAN. IDOL. i watched the last season from start to finish. including the andrew lloyd weber theater (word that rhymes with swag) competition. so now you know. its the corniest, lamest tv show but i love it . this blind guy with the coldplay montage better make it to hollywood! aaaaand ryan seacrest just tried to give the blind guy a high five.....

taking a ride on the frigid experess? say it ain't so, luterman!

i am now going to try to learn a song from garfield in paradise on the ukulele because it's the only thing i can think of that will impress betsy.

in closing,

hey! fuck off, england!

video round up: the let me do my stuff edition

2009-01-11T00:15:00.005-05:00

i am beyond bored.

i played both of my guitars and the ukulele tonight.

i read a book.

i put together a miniature paper building from a kit i bought in berlin.

i tried to go to the movies but when my car slid across four lanes on woodward, i turned around.

i bought this beer at trader joe's because i liked the bottle. delicious.

it was probably the best part of today.

because my tv is full of garbage, i present to you some internet videos that stimulate my brain just enough to keep it from turning into something akin to grey snow slush. specifically, the hanging chunks of brown snow that i have a near-obsession with kicking from the wheel wells of cars. i got caught kicking a really good one off some guy's suv around christmas time and when he came around to the passenger side of his car to see what i was doing, i froze. and then i hurried into old navy like some kind of ashamed, snow-kicking pervert.

1. franz ferdinand - ulysses

thank you, franz ferdinand. thank you for not disappointing me, like so many of the bands i loved like a crazy person in 2005-6 have done. thank you for still making sexy jams for sophisticated living room dance parties with lots of shoulder shaking and posing.

2. my morning jacket - touch me i'm going to scream (black cab session)

love the capes. love the omnichord. love the song.

3. jeff tweedy & co. - fake plastic trees

one of my favorite dudes ever singing one of my favorite songs ever. i am going to see him play at the ann arbor folk festival in a couple of weeks, provided i can find the tickets. they are somewhere in this apartment. somewhere. i should always choose will call when i order tickets just because i borderline on amnesiac when it comes to questions of "where did i leave _______?"

4. fleetwood mac - second hand news (embarassing fan-made slide show version)

last night while at the WAB, someone played a SOLID rock block of songs i really like that i would not expect other humans to like in a row. it was almost unsettling. it was an odd hodge-podge of songs, all played consecutively and all to my delight. first was nick drake's "northern sky." (not video video). not a song you expect to hear in a bar on a friday night, not even at the WAB, a bar with an excellent jukebox. next was fleetwood mac's "second hand news" which i love more than i'd like to admit. next was pulp's "disco 2000," (video) a song that resides in the core of my being - it makes me want to jump up and down and scream-sing every time i hear it. lastly (and this was the one where i looked around to see if i was being punk'd) jimmy eat world's "23." (sweaty live video)it's a long, slow droner of a song that is the last track on their 2004 album futures. it's a song that i totally love. it's a song that i sang in my car a lot when i lived in spartan village. it's a song i sang in my car a lot trying not to cry. i'm glad being 23 turned out to be a lot less melodramatic than i thought it would be when i was 20. because i hardly listened to that song at all when i was 23. and now i'm 24 and i can listen to it and not be a sad sack on the verge of tears in a used car driving to a shitty apartment next to an amtrak station and a freeway. i saw them play this song at the state theater in 2005 and i do believe i was closed-eye jamming to it. cool. really cool.

4. berlin on new year's eve - this is what was going on in the streets at 10pm as we walked to the center of the city for the legal fireworks display. I SHIT YOU NOT.

it was INSANE.

5. this is the legal, sanctioned, but also INSANE new year's party where we rang in 2009. it was SO german, it blew my mind.

the entertainment (i get misty just thinking about it.)

is it january 19th yet?

smells like mustard

2009-01-07T17:01:00.003-05:00

i've decided that i need to get a better job so that i can afford cable. i spent sunday at my parents' house watching vh1's charm school and commercials for the snuggie and shamwow! with my mouth agape. it's like we had another industrial revolution while i was in germany. also, so that i can watch this, which may be the finest piece of television vh1 has conjured up yet. didn't you know your boyfriend was cheating on you when you saw his haircut?

today at work, i was in the kindergarten class and heard a tiny indian kid with glasses scream from the miniature kitchen, "NOO! WE'RE NOT GOING TO THE CIRCUS TODAY! WE ARE GOING TO-MORR-OW!!!" and then he slammed a his plastic shopping cart into a garbage can.

my sisters are still in costa rica riding zip lines with monkeys and i am here. watching pride and prejudice at four o'clock on a wednesday and playing my new ukelele and making nachos in the microwave. at least i haven't gotten to the point of making things like this. it shan't be long, mr. bingley...

going to work every day is so lame. i'm already scheming another getaway...

prost neu jahr (welcome 2009)

2009-01-05T20:56:00.005-05:00

seven days in berlin.

blasts were had, heard, remembered.

luggage was lost and found, searched and sat upon.

i took seven hundred photos, mostly of dinosaur bones, train stations, and the back of amna's head.

we wandered an outdoor flea market in jet lag stupors. it was hard to see anything because the sun was shooting at us sideways.

we rode a lot of trains and climbed a lot of stairs.

we ate at a potato-themed restaurant.

we saw the crypts of kings and some were caving in.

we went to the zoo and saw birds, bonobos, and red river hogs that looked like wizards.

we rang in the new year so hard it cracked. we woke up at four o'clock on new year's day.

it was incredible.

new year's eve was downright magical. we trekked through the exploding streets of prenzlauer berg, dodging drunk fifteen-year-olds with bottle rockets on every bridge and in every tunnel. we followed the herd through a dark forest, stumbling over empty bottles and fences until we were met with shining lights, pounding house music, and what appeared to be a never-ending carnival. a bottle of champagne fell from the sky and led us deep into the crowd, where we slipped pass security and tried to count backwards in german (fail). at midnight, fireworks were sent up over the brandenburg gate and we spun and danced and shouted BONNE ANNEE to anyone who would listen. we swam through the crowd to a ferris wheel that took us high above the mile-long party. we danced to a terrible house version of "there she goes (doo wah diddy)" in a tent. i shouted every translation of "happy new year" i could think of (there were four) for six continuous hours. it was the new year's eve that i wanted when i was twelve and drinking cherry 7-up in my grandma's bedroom while i watched the top ninety-six videos of 1996.

this is my favorite photo from that night. i love these three jirds like a crazy person.

this was the star-studded lineup that entertained us until dawn. really.

i don't know how i'd possibly ever top this in my life, except maybe if i get to take a ride ON the times square ball as it drops and kool and the gang's "celebration" is playing and i land on a rooftop where elton john lets me borrow from his glasses collection and prince performs in a confetti-filled purple snow globe and when it breaks the purple sparkling confetti covers everyone in a fine, sparkly purple glitter dust. maybe.

(speaking of kool and the gang's "celebration," my morning jacket played on new year's eve at madison square garden and they played that song at midnight. video proof.)

i'm working on uploading my obscene number of photos to flickr. i swear.

champions

2008-12-22T00:53:00.003-05:00

the air outside is so cold, i can feel it sitting three feet from the window. we decided on this apartment because of the huge (thin) windows (and the lack of a lease). even when it's two degrees outside, i can't bring myself to wear socks to sleep. despite the ice forming on my pillow, i like living here. we had a party last night and it was fun. we drank champagne and danced to devotchka. my mouth feels better. we forged through the snowy streets on friday to peddle bonnie's vintage goods at the crofoot's christmas party on friday night. the crowd was thin, but we had fun and made friends and sold sweaters to cold people. i didn't sell a single dinosaur keychain but i gave a few away. charlie slick warmed some bones with his synthy robot jams. carjack also played rap versions of christmas songs that made us laugh. amna and rabia came and bought stuff and sold stuff and those two make me happy. i am going to berlin on friday! i keep forgetting so i have to remind myself.

oh yeah, and it's almost christmas! this may be the best week yet.

a year ago today i came back to america!

number 18

2008-12-18T22:56:00.006-05:00

joshua
john-david
jana
jill
jessa
jinger
joseph
josiah
joy-anna
jeremiah
jedediah
jason
james
justin
jackson
johannah
jennifer
jordyn-grace

those motherfuggin' duggars have done it again.

this news officially solidifies thursday, december 18 as the BEST people.com news feed on iGoogle OF. ALL. TIME.

1. duggar family welcomes 18th child (jordyn-grace still does not beat JINGER)

2. jeremy piven stricken by toxins from sushi, chinese herbs (so perfect in so many ways)

3. david copperfield trick goes wrong, breaks man's arm (what i wouldn't give to be in that audience...)