that day, july 4th, that was a while ago now. that was thursday and now it's tuesday. there was a barbeque with fairly few but a nice mixture of guests - jim, ben+alisa, autumn+victor, lance and someone, others. we talked about mead and marriage and northhampton and heard some stories. did you know that jim dated dar williams? rae was there - she took the chinatown bus from ny the night before. we played badminton, enough to get pretty good at it.

rebecca showed up at about 8 or 9 with smoothies and her mother. the party got smaller and went to a nearby hill - a golf course, where we were joined on the streets by a crowd of americans, searching for a hole in the fence so we could get inside. we watched the newton and then the boston fireworks from a distance, listening to the simulcast pops concert on someone's boombox. pyrotechnics very impressively coordinated with the music. some kids behind us were setting off roman candles too. and a little girl made friends with oak.

rebecca and rae and i watched mulholland drive. we'd all seen it before, so we talked about it while we watched it. it's good to see a second time. we drove becca home, listening to the oldies radio. i'm trying to remember if the oldies station i used to listen to played dylan much, or much past '67 or '68. (danny?) rae and i listened to that scott walker cd, which i'd been saving up until then. it was late and we were tired. it was weird, as expected. reminded me of kurt weill a bit. i do want to hear it again. but i read during the second half of the record, so as to finish reservation blues so rae could take it with her. only she didn't.

i already wrote about the next day.

then it was saturday. martha was here, and we hung around newberry st. noodle shop. record shops. mostly this one, where i got used copies of an old old 97's cd and a pere ubu cd and a boyoyo boys record, and also some records from a free records bin - laura nyro, keith jarrett, frank sinatra, and the 1812 overture. i'm not really sure why i got the tchaikovsky. the keith is pretty weird - it has a lot of ethnic percussion and flute stuff without rhythmic/melodic structure - but it also has a song called "inflight." good. martha and four little friends were at urban outfitters. i joined back with them and dan and mami and we went to another record store.

problems with record shopping (not exhaustive):
1. i always regret not buying something - in this case 12" singles with remixes of Chemical Bros. "come with us" and Macy Gray "sexual revolution." hopefully i'll go back some time and they'll still be there. only three dollars each, c'mon.

2. i'm often spurred into a binge of internet buying, being reminded by something i saw at the store of something i wanted to get - i finally caved and ordered the Kid606 "The Action Packed Mentalist Brings You the Fucking Jams" album of maverick fukwithit-ery (on vinyl!) and the princess superstar album from insound. i really hope they're both as good as i hope they are, because then they'll be really good. or at least one of them.

yeah, so.

martha came back to the house and we watched mulholland drive, for my third time, their first. i didn't understand much more this time, but i did enjoy it just as much, which is a good thing. it's just an entertaining movie, first of all. martha wanted to meet jim, so we called him up and went out for (guess what?) japanese food. he played us a song he had written and recorded that day, about mix tapes.

hold on. i've got to turn this record over. (duane eddy, tee hee)

do your checks have elasticity?
did they cut off yo 'lectricity?
did you scream and yell explicitly?