On time once more, to accurately complete a quiz about René's 'three or four maxims' for a provisional code of ethics and actions, leading into an intriguing debate - is it possible to love/worship/have faith in something/someone while simultaneously questioning/doubting its existence? Led Schuldenfrei to wonder if our generation has lost understanding of the true meaning of devotion. Which is an interesting question - to what extent is ones philosophy generationally determined? Certainly it happens from time to time that one of his 'common sense assumptions' turn out to be at odds with how much of the class feels. "Does my shirt have a color?" he asked, exasperated. "Oh, well it doesn't, actually." It was a fairly quotable day. Kari starts cracking up as she writes up on the blackboard the Chomsky-sanctioned "Logical Form" proposition (which posits an additional level of syntax beyond s-structure, so that grammar requires additional movement and modification of some sentences that takes place after the form in which they're spoken/written, before they can be correctly interpreted), and Julie asks: "don't you think there's a problem if you're teaching something that you can't even explain with a straight face?" Oh my goodness, that class…

A quick lunch and gathering of shopping list and bags and then I headed back to campus for a talk on the acoustics of Lang concert hall from a very amusing acoustician who reminded me of a cross between Peter Schickele, Woody Allen, and some sort of absent-minded professor cartoon character. He complained about background noise, played a bit of fiddle, disparaged amplified music, answered Nori's question about a Viennese hall, and made me think that college, in a sort of way, is where you get a bunch of young people together in groups to look at old people and make fun of their idiosyncrasies. You might respect your professors or mock them mercilessly (or both), but you probably don't often think of them as people, as you might if you met them at say a cocktail party.

M. Arkangel to the illo picked me up at Parrish circle on his scooter, and we rode down College to his car. Thus began a three-hour shopping trip that was one of the more ridiculous things I've done recently. "Come With Us" propelling us nicely along the freeway, we took a preposterously circuitous route into center city in order to get to an address on Market Street - turns out, of course, that it was at 45th and Market, way way past and into the ghetto. And our destination, rather than being the ethnic experience and lesson in the superiority of the European way that we had expected, turned out (once we walked around a few blocks an found it) to be the epitome of ghetto. I suppose it was ethnic in a way then - and it was certainly cheap, following the European standards of charging for bags, deposits on carts, bulk purchasing of off brands. I spent little more than $30 on a half-trunk of groceries, including cereal for $1.50, OJ for little more than that, and canned peas for 29¢. Actually, I gave the money to a jovial fellow (claiming to be a parole officer) who chatted us into letting him buy our groceries with an obviously stolen food-stamp card. Well, whatever. We sat out in the parking lot and ate cheap-ass bagels and cheese and mustard pretzels, listening to Clinton, and then cruised back on down through Drexel's campus and found a faster way home. Mark treated me to some of his selections - DePhazz, Squarepusher, Tiesto - and, when we got home after a much needed supplementary trip to Genuardi's (four eggplants, three squashes, several pounds of spinach, and sushi for dinner), I grabbed Dig Your Own Hole and slid it in as he dropped me off to rehearse with Inflight - he had never heard it before, not even the ertswhile ubiquituous opener.

The rehearsal, which only got fully underway around 6:30, after I had run back here to grab my sticks and kissa lyssa and Fountains of Wayne, lasted until well after midnight. That is to say, I missed the dip, although when I got back, its brave participants for this month (Tuesday sunnious glor had turned mighty mighty chilly and windy by this time) were in the common room enjoying their deserved cocoa - surprisingly Olivia and Chris Keary, as well as Stallion Stehlik and a couple of the regulars (well, Nori at least). Well, we played for a few hours, then went to Tarble for dinner, where we were joined by Morgan and promised to swear at her Friday night. Alyssa stopped over for a bit, and then Cat, and Elena (succession of girlfriends, as well as Jessie, Milena, and Forrest); the high point being when Wessler, Berger and Lindsey burst in bearing cupcakes, party hats and noisemakers, and demanded a bit of rock. We gave them "Homos," as earlier we had tested out "Lullaby" and "Metamorphosis" on our sample audiences. Then a special request "Radical Honesty," which had tremendous energy despite sloppy unrehearsed ending. I think we sounded better on a few of them (especially "Lullaby") than we ever have before - definitely due in part to the long-needed addition of Aaron on bass. He even plays drums a bit, which came in handy Matt's new one ("Rhymes with Queer"?), which we all learned for the first time, me on accordion and organ with fuzzy end. I suggested a swingin' sixties groove for Metamorph which works fairly nicely. If we played this much every week, how good could we be?

baby please:
leave the biker
leave the biker
break his heart

The morning: French I presume? I spent a while fiddling with the language lab annoyingness, cassette-bound now, and only got halfway after an hour and gave up. Oh yes, and a meeting with Cothren, who is always dependably himself. He invited me to join the Asianist Hiring Committee thing, suggested that minors are useful for the creds and the home, which may or may not be compelling enough - I have to get this thesis thing sorted out I guess, but for now perhaps I'll drop it. Academia looms happy in my future.

Lesson with Tonio made me very happy, as they have all been doing lately; I feel like I'm really doing this thing, even though I only end up practicing maybe an average four times a week, rather than six (and this week none yet ooch get on it); scales and arps get faster, Bartók smoother and faster, he tells me I have "a special talent for Bach." What a guy.

Alyssa came over after her thang, reminded me I had wanted to be working then (I think I was, on lunch and the crossword), so I eventually turned my efforts to that and made it some of the way through the ling homework. Enough, again, to decide to go to African I although I'd said I might not, given workpressurebusyweektime. But it was Charles day again, and after another little unintelligiblecture, and watching Lela lead us/them (most excitedly!) in a charming Haitian groove, I decided that 3 Charles classes in just over a week was plenty, so I skipped out on II. Meaning that I could partake of dinner, quasi-pizza-stylee, and Barnlife. And finish the xword and lingwork and whathaveyou, oh right, Phil reading. Before I went to bed I turned the light back on, grabbed a pen, and scrawled the word 'music' on my stomach, so as not to forget.

A sunny Sunday
watching John McLaughlin and having sex again and again
I had stopped by
cause Ellen had my copy of Nebraska
they never even put on their clothes

Early to philosophy, someone asked me if this seat was occupied, and if the class was any good, and not my name. Turns out he's a living wage crusader from Stanford, on a tour of colleges with campaigns - I told him to go to Harvard, ours isn't working. He seemed to enjoy the class and Schuldenfrei especially, a discussion of the relative merits of architecture/city planning accomplished by one or many minds, with St. Peters as an example that I'm not sure I agree with (sure it brings together all kinds of elements, but an incredible amount of work was done to make it aesthetically if not stylistically cohesive); we chatted about screw and 'those crazy West coast linguists' - like Lakoff whom Alyssa is reading. IS+S devolved into abject silliness, as Kari asked us to accept "Where do you wonder what Max bought?" (that more from the literature, and I'm not convinced that "What do you wonder where Max bought?" is any better, as others seemed to think) and, but this was the kicker, "beans, who likes." Or, "these beans, who would eat?" Ben Schak was even more offended than I - he suggested "this hamburger, what is in?" Anyway, it was a gorgeous and warm sunny day, and the beach was flooded. After e-mail check and a run in with the unfortunate e.s. (who seems to grow odder and more pitiable with each encounter), I found Alyssa there. We talked about other people in close proximity to them, trying to name as many as we could that we don't actually know. What's this Megan's last name? Is that who that is? I had her over for lunch, although it took me awhile to get down to the business of eating.

Come to think of it, as busy as this week was, I spent a good long chunk of time on Tuesday doing not much of significance. I filed some CDs, listened to a few more, and what-all. Joel found out that he got his long-sought factotumship at TASP for this summer, which means he'll be in Ithaca (but not the Apple), so to celebrate I thought I would pull out Punch the Clock, his next assignment after devouring IbMePdErRoIoAmLlast week. Funny enough, it wasn't in the case, but a BMG copy of ATUB was - not mine, because that was in its right case. I checked with Raedownstairs, to whom I had lent PtC earlier, but she was really mystified as I was (pointed out Merritt article in the NYTMag, concocted elaborate explanatory theories). So I played Joel some of Goodbye Cruel "Congratulations, you've just purchased our worst album!" World instead, which was better than I had remembered, perhaps because of the expectations thing. Stupefying to think he could have done that relative tripe wedged between Bedroom and King like that. Nori and Alyssa made clever mushroom/spinach/ricotta lasagna.

I did go to campus to practice for a while, stopped by the triplet to find nothing much going on. Talked with Rae for a while, about food, philosophy, architecture, why sophomore year is the best year (later refuted), travelling mindset, Matt Rubin and Erik Osheim (neither of whom she knows - Renee came in and lauded the former, whom she had just met), whether cockiness can be internal. This was the night of the ediths conversation, not the other one.

please don't put your life in the hands
of a rock and roll band
who'll throw it all away

An hour class can easily be subsumed into negligibility in the right conditions - say if you pick up right where you left off in reading, as I did yesterday; the last few chapters of Samoa in the morning, then the preface and supplementaries after French, all quite amusing, including blanket excoriation, odd references to Nietzche ("obviously, Mead was not aware that Apollo and Dionysus actually depended on one another") and Tolstoy. Alyssa was still there and reading too, and I popped in an old scratchy cassette of Macy Gray's first album, which sounds terrific, and the Magnolia soundtrack on the other side. That took up only part of the occasionaly incongruous 1.75 hour gap in my schedule, so there was time for lunch too. HiCuCo was quite enjoyable, with a good two-hour discussion of the Mead that ended with an extended comparison of her ethnographic practices to trash-talk shows and RealiTV. Following the momentum of last week, I talked a lot, prompting Jocelyn to cite me in her notes and indicate lots of back-and-forth with Emily Allen, newly red(or maroon)-headed (several people with new dye jobs, what gives?). That class is developing a really nice energy, combining genuine scholarly intensity with lots of good-natured fooling around. Alex Adleman, with whom I spoke a while during the break, has taken to drawing little cartoons on the blackboard during break relevant to each week's subject. Matt Fitting gradually (in backwards installments) wrote "cumming of age in samoa" on the back blackboard, erased it immediately, then rewrote it much larger at the front of class. We discussed ways to convince Bruce to dye his hair. Part of this is that the class is half freshmen, and with a topic this heady and hardcore everyone feels some sort of group connection. Also Bruce is terrific. In the last half-hour of class, he gave us his capsule explanation of modern and postmodern, while I made a list of things to do over break:

read
eat
cook
sleep
shop
clean
write
compose
practice
camp
dance
walk
dine
attend
host
entertain
play
plan
prepare
watch
sort
drum
inhabit
imbibe

after a sunny-day confluence of post-playwriting people once again I walked back home for a scant two hours, enough time to make enough headway on work for the night (a presentation of a Platonic argument, some French something I'm sure, and an e-mailed party proposal because McCabe printers weren't working with me) that I decided to go to African I after all (I think) for more lamba. II was unusual and intense; for the first half we did a lot of the typical movements, but added turns to all of them (double turns to the hungway, which I even got once or twice - does anyone know how to spell that?), then he gave a fairly long speech about the future of the discipline, likening himself to our "ancestors," even though he only has about ten years on us. And the technique is only thirty years old, though he speaks of it like an ancient tradition in danger of dying out because of youngsters' lack of respect. We did some floor/stretchwork, of the sort that makes you realize that no matter how in shape you think you are, there are things that are still goddamn impossible to do without intense effort. It felt great afterwards though, and we wrapped up with fun lamba stuff that I had a pretty good handle on.

From there to SAC, where we funded remarkably little, happily enough, and I recreated my proposal on the blackboard - ended up with $275 out of $317 requested, which should be more than plenty, depending on what turns the party planning takes. Fragmented screw discussions, and I couldn't get a clear response to whether or not Ben and I would DJ - some vague discussion of asking freshman hip-hopper Derrick who did the SASS basement (but I'll get into all that later.) I decided to go to Pi (I can make the greek letter here, but when I post it turns into , unless by some chance you can read that as the letter), which is as pivotal as I remembered, if not as fresh-seeming. The characters are so archetypal, and the themes so majestic and grand, that the film manages to be both melodramatic and playful without sacrificing its core intrigue; it's hokey and thought-provoking at the same time. And reflecting on it the next day, I decided that it makes an effective confluence of the Platonic and Cartesian worldviews Alison was there so I sat with her, she hadn't known about the Jewish mystic elements. And still I was in bed relatively early, after belatedly remembering the Phil reading - turned out to be 5 whole pages of Descartes. But was that the night Alyssa was here and I kept thinking of more things to say as we were falling asleep, about the party and assorted thoughts, Edith Frost and the other Edith?

you're so easy to love
you make it hard for me
…
and it's hard
maybe impossible
as long as you're decided
i can't stay mad at you
…
as long as there's a sparkle of life in the ancient heavens
i will always love you like this

posted by K. Ross Hoffman at 8:43 PM 0 comments

I had time to finish my entry (and the Beta Band s/t disc) Sunday morning before bursting out for banana french toast breakfast and Sublime. Somehow all of that only left two hours to read another chunk of Mead before I headed to campus at three, as I had promised myself I would, to practice. Cabaret rehearsal was at four. It was cute to see pretty much the whole cast there singing with us, and I think we outnumber them. I also played accordion for the first time at rehearsal, with two supporting actors who seem a bit young for their parts, on "It couldn't please me more" and "Married." Ran over as the rehearsal ended at 6, but it was too late to gain admittance to the directing night of scenes until the second half, so I went back and played some more accordion and put the drums away. I did get to see the second scene, "An Actor's Nightmare" featuring the always-appropriately-named Matt Fitting (crossword clue - 2D curator's gallery preparation) as George Spelvin, and Celia, Juliet, Ben Camp, Sam Bartner (peripheral or recent acquaintances). Funny as planned. Afterwards, Rebecca handed me a bunch of bananas on which everyone commented, Alex regretted I hadn't seen his performance, we all flitted about and decided to go to Tarble. As Alyssa and Ben and I waited in line (me for a blt-grilled chicken sandwich that I ended up taking home to heat properly), we threw around ideas for our next party, including the name by which it currently goes, Spring Loaded (one word or two? capitalized?) in Worth courtyard, lights in the trees; hopefully we can get lodgies to throw a simultaneous but nominally unrelated wet party indoors. Either way, it ought to be really fun and possibly transcendant.

Alyssa and I eventually did make it back here, not even too long before Matt showed up back from New York, later than anticipated but earlier than expected, with splendid and sordid tales of the board of managers meeting. We got public safety to open Olde Club and had ourselves a fine old rehearsal, pinning down "Metamorphosis" quite nicely I think (it's gotten totally Nuggets, complete with organ hook and solo, stop time breaks, half-step modulation, violent energy despite attempts at restraint), restructuring "Homosexuals" (which if it comes off right should be both cathartic and preposterous) and churning out a rock-solid arrangement for "Composition B in Blue" (no longer than two minutes.) Together with "Lullaby" (which we spent a couple minutes on, and for which Joel is working out lyrics) and Matt's new harmonica-and-accordian roots ballad ("Straight Hair and Jeans"?) should make up a nice five-song set for Rose Tattoo, assuming that our Thursday rehearsal goes as smoothly. A problem is that we can't really do any of my tunes, since I'm stuck behind the drum kit without a relief pitcher (although I might play piano on Matt's new one.) But one way or another, "Word Games," "Nineteen Years," and the others (my current conception for the song about Jess and Dave is veering towards string quartets and bluesy funk) will get their stage debuts before too long - "Takeoff" just needs a logistical solution.

After that, Matt joined me on my bed for some Sunday night reading to the delectable strains of Múm (his newest purchase and love affair, an Icelandic group that falls somewhere between The Twin and The Rós), Jim O'Rourke (only a few tracks, which had him sold instantly), and Cornelius (the new, grandmotherly incarnation; not the old untenable toddler one). Samoa but I wanted Alyssa in the same room as me, so we salsa'ed to one of the bossa-nova'y cuts towards the end, then read, then slept i think.

sell to them a killing jam
attack to get it back

Now even more than usual, as I was telling Alison last night as we left a * showing, my life seems to be moving forward on a neatly plotted trajectory. Most of my free time (although I did screw around a lot today) is taken up with preparing for activities in the close future or planning activities in the more distant future. Chief among these, in order of temporal proximity:

Dinner with Schmidt (Friday; in preparation a trip to a German supermarket with Mark on Thursday, and cooking all afternoon)

Inflight performance at Rose Tattoo (Friday; in preparation lots of e-mailing and rehearsals, including what Aaron has dubbed a super-rehearsal Thursday, which will make me miss radio probably but not dip hopefully)

Screw (Saturday; in addition to screwing my roomates - dozens of e-mails later, all two viable candidates are taken care of! - and picking music for DJing, I'll be spending most of the day setting up the space and so forth)

Anniversary Party (next Friday, probably; joint soirée with Alyssa, preliminary date-selecting e-mail process mostly done, next to work on guest list and invitations)

Spring Break (I made a list of verbs in class for what I want to do; mostly I want to stay here and take lots and lots of advantage of unstructured time, and hopefully receive some visitors.)

SpringLoaded (Saturday 23 March; so far and yet so close, Crunkadelia Productions DNCPRTY004 to be held in Worth courtyard, hopefully with the help of Lodgies)

Summer (...)

I don't usually write about plans for the future here; in fact I often won't mention what I'm going to do until when I start writing about having done it and realize that I hadn't given any indication of what was going to happen. So there's just a taste.

immortal billionaires are working on the problem (thanks ben)

Yesterday (Saturday) was okay. I haven't kicked the sickness, but it never got to the point of being bothersome yesterday; I wasn't moving a whole lot for most of the day, and when I went out to dance I was happily unhindered by ickiness. Nice that it was for the most part limited to throat stuff (and to be sure I was quite croaky when I got home at around two), unlike Friday when it was threatening to spread to nose (Vicky was having that problem on stage; she resorted to wiping with back of hand a few times and I felt really sorry for her.) Well that was a pleasant introduction.

I let myself sleep until noon (unlike today, when I set an alarm for ten), then sat here and made a stickie to write lyrics for this song about Brigid that has been slowly evolving for a long time. It ended up quite a bit longer than I had plans, with each 'verse' having three distinct sections, plus an intro and an outro section which don't have music yet but should be somewhat different from the rest of the song. There's no chorus or repeated section, which I like, it's like a Shins tune. Joel compared it to Big Star when I played it for him. I don't have a title yet, but I'm thinking about "Word Games," since each verse is centered around a game: 'death hypothetical', housebox, "never have i ever," with also some scrabble and card references. Joel and I played around with that and with some of his tunes ("immortal billionaires are working on the problem.") I also got a bit of reading done and ate some interesting food (Nori came back from Chinatown with "bubble tea," which comes with an extra-wide straw so you can suck up the doughy brown balls) before leaving the house.

I called the shuttle at 6:15, but after it finally came we sat at Parrish circle for ten minutes while I hiccuped in the darkness, then eventually to ML at 6:40. But Alyssa wasn't there. Kate Duffy directed me to the breakfast room for sushi, but her roommate Kate and her friend were all set and didn't need my help. So I sat and read and enjoyed the nice ML people interacting; Joy, Amy, Elizabeth McDonald Liz Singreen and "Elizabeth's mama", Ross Messing, Duffy strolling oddly in and out again. After a few chapters I went to go chat with her, but Alyssa was home instead. She thinks Joel has gotten more cynical. We looked at Grünewald's Issenheim crucifixion. At eight we went back down for sushi, armed with chopsticks. They had made a goodly amount; pieces with shrimp and tuna, and rolls with cucumber, avocado, crabstick, tuna and others in all sorts of combinations, as well as sliced and chocolate-covered strawberries. Not the best (the seaweed was pretty hard), but fairly impressive for handmade. It's unsettling not to be the primary Ross of reference. As that ended, I decided to practice on the piano there rather than heading for campus. That was partly a bad idea, since I never practice as efficiently when there are other people in the room (even though it was just Joy Mills and some other guy working on masks for their dance-theatre class), but it was fun. I think the Bartok improved even so, and arpeggios. I played around with some new songwriting ideas, started improvising and realized that I should incorporate the blues and funk of my piano improv into my songwriting. So I tried a funky swung "mind games," which almost worked, and then a more successful version of the song that I'm on the verge of writing about doting. The shuttle appeared as I was heading back upstairs, so I went for that instead.

I was one of the first to arrive at the Paces Purim cocktail hour (after head jews Susan and Susannah,) but more people showed up almost immediately - Jess Sheldon, Wirzbicki, Jake and Andy, and they hadn't figured out the music yet, so we were just hearing the first minute or so of "Born to Run" repeated over and over. Doughy goodness hamentaschen, and dried apricots, grapes, chocolate orange. Then all kinds of my favorite people started showing up - Brigid, Zabby, Kate, and all the others - Stef and Jedd doing an over-emotive lipsynch to "Oh Darling" (which, appropriately, we had sung about Ester last weekend) - Ben photographing them, Nina and Adena (who I didn't get to talk to), Addie and Celia, Holts, Joel, Micah and gold-haired Jav (chatted about semantics). I asked Rae for something, and she handed me a Long Island Iced Tea; quite potent, and within a minute I was bawling and air-guitaring to "Bohemian Rhapsody" along with a tablefull of goofies (as Kara and Ted sat in the corner and smiled). Despite my intentions not to drink much due to being nominally under the weather, I had another (bay breeze) and another (improvised 7 and 7 with Jack Daniels instead of Seagrams 7, right?) and it felt pretty okay. I was never all that far gone, but it certainly made a difference. I helped them get some Lauryn Hill on the box, and soon we had a circle going in the center of the raised area (they had it excellently set up with tables around the edges and open space in the middle). If they had wanted to it could easily have gone all night, with just a better music setup. The group of people was terrific - all the people I like to see at Paces parties, plus twice as many more who never go to parties. And a lot of them stayed out, moving (as I did) down to Olde Club and the WRC, where as I had anticipated, one of the happeninest nights of party action was in full force. Upstairs was already pretty crowded when we got there, but downstairs was nice and open; plenty of space for Ben and I to go abstract around the painted poles. Both floors had excellent music - one off-campus and one on-, but both were spinning for real, albeit covering similar musical ground (awesome hip-hop, though downstairs was more techno at times and up threw in some reggae and dancehall stuff.) I danced with Morgan, Celia (to the amusement of her friends), Maria, Camilla (drunk; we had several interactions throughout the evening, at each of three parties, and maybe said more than we should about J and S), Rae (back in the basement; my most energetic, exhausting stint), but not Sara or Sarah. I ran into Liza, and we danced for many songs, but we stopped before things went too far (well, too far by my definition at that point in time). Alison and Lauren Appel in the basement ("get Ur freak on" minutes after Liza and I had upstairs; that song will always make me think of Addie Candib, with whom I danced to it at the formal; then he played a rather bizarre song looping "ass…titties…ass, ass…titties." okay.) And so I decided to head back, stopping to offer a shirt to half-naked Jocelyn.

Back past Willets, where Jarrett was sitting on the stoop like an oracle; puffing on his cig and then exhaling into a bubble wand, so that his large, grey bubbles smoked and evanesced on contact, really very beautiful. We stood in silence, then Brigid and Ali showed up, returned from the city, and we all dispersed. Today: reading, phil stuff(?) cab rehearsal, directing II scenes, inflight rehearsal (in preparation for Rose Tattoo this week.) Banana breakfast? Let's go see what's up.

I went down to the county drug store

Yesterday (Friday) was a funny one. As I mentioned in that last post (which was actually written earlier in the afternoon), I went out for a walk. Ran into Alison in the Worth courtyard and invited her along, after waiting for her to do some laundry and reading a bit of Coming of Age in Samoa in the sunshine. We both had somewhere to be 3:30, but we headed down into the crum, talking about laundry and trying to do that sort of awkward 'how are you' thing. I made a jokey reference to last year which she didn't appreciate, I'm not quite sure what to make about that. Dropped her off at Parrish (on time despite perhaps the long way around) and went to the lodge to call Jack and start moving drums. His friend with the car was Ariel, who I remember Corey had introduced me to last semester; we loaded it up, stopped by the barn, headed for Lang. I decided to leave them there, at least for the weekend; it looks like it might have to be after tomorrow's rehearsal too. Anyway; we played through stuff, it was fun enough, I didn't use the accordion.

Home then back out again after dinner (curry with Laurel and Alyssa) - to For Colored Girls, where though we were late we got second row seats because they just decided they were no longer reserved. I was fairly impressed with the production - nice performances especially from cutesy sexpot Katia and my erstwhile co-dancer Chelsea, Rajaa was strong and versatile; Maria (sorry, María)'s performance seemed forced at times, I wasn't quite sure what to make of Vicky's, although she certainly had emotion; - but more so with the play, which didn't bore me (except in a few places), didn't fall into cliches (except in a few places), and didn't go on for too long (although it could have ended a bit sooner.) I very much enjoy stuff like that when it is direct and narrative, but occasionally it veers too far into the poetic to be sustainably accessible for me at least. I definitely enjoyed it though. Afterwards, I invited Brigid upstairs to play for me, and surprisingly she agreed. She made it through some Joplin and Gershwin (falteringly, but better than I could have done if I hadn't been playing in years), and then we sightread a bunch of three-parts together. Afterwards, she commended me on my patience, but I love that stuff. Ben, if you read this, we need to get our two-piano on sometime like what.

I did a spot of practicing, but I wasn't really feeling it, so I left and walked over by Paces. There weren't many people there yet, so I read a while in parlors, then checked back. Still not much of a crowd (Wirzbick and cronies in flannel; sexual health counselors in sequined halter-tops), and I was not in the best of health, so I decided to head back home. Except that I was intercepted by Alyssa and Nori, dead set on partying; and I got swept up in the wake with Laurel and some other gals (Ellie and someone). Amazingly, ten minutes after I had been there, the party seemed to have literally tripled in size. I was there for maybe an hour and a half, enjoying it for the most part despite being annoyed at the music (which just made me want to DJ all the more) and lacking the energy or resources to find dance partners. Best was maybe a little bit at the start with Alex and Chloë, but then they took off. Lots of circling with Al and Laurel and Rebecca et al. Alyssa and I sat down through "Up in Here" and "Baby Got Back" (face it, folks, it's a bad song), and gradually rose up on the bench through "Whoomp." Then a set of unfunky "crowd-pleasing faves" ("500 Miles"?), with thankfully some Spice Girls, but I'd had enough.

Contrary to plan, since Joel was up for it, I stayed up as well for a while. We made it through about half a game of Scrabble mostly just talking about ruhlayshunshipz - in the 'math of an unpleasant awakening the other night about Sara (I dropped him off chez elle for tea before radio, only to find she had forgotten their date and was entertaining her, er, boyfriend). Marveled again at my proficiency last semester, tried to help Joel understand his own position with regard to this stuff, wondered what my future holds.

if you wanna get with me
better make it fast

Achoo! Goddarnit! I'm not supposed to be getting sick. My throat was hurtin' a little all yesterday, and now my nose has started acting up too. I was just sick the other week! I tried to catch up on a little sleep at about noon today, and only somewhat intentionally missed birdithology class by sleeping through the first half of it. The morning class was pretty unsuccessful; we saw a few things at Martin, but when we walked over to the holly garden there was absolutely nothing around, except a pair of turkey vultures occasionally in the distance. The sun was really really nice in the hollies though. I just wanted to stand there and bask. Actually, I want to go back now. I think I'll do that, except I ought to wait here and see about sorting out logistics for CabOrch rehearsal today. Rrrgh. I hate these stupid hassles that I didn't sign up for.

maybe your baby done made some other plans

After my lesson Wednesday, I met up with Jocelyn and took a nice little aimless stroll with her around campus - she bought me chai at Kohlberg, which I stupidly burned my tongue on; we looked into Kirby to count the number of seats; we examined the twine-and-dowel compass that some alumnus had erected on Parrish beach; and ended up outside Willets, were I met a couple of Jocelyn's innumerable followers. She's the best person to gossip with, because she knows everybody and what's going on with them (Chris Ang has a girlfriend?), and especially all the freshmen (by virtue of her residence.) It's so easy to resume our perhaps superficial relationship right where we left off last time, though it feels like ages. But I like to delude myself that perhaps our relationship isn't as superficial as hers seem to be with most other people.

It was Charles Day in African, and I of course got to experience it from both sides of the drum. Unfortunately, he mostly just told stories (some terrific ones, particularly in II) and let students lead the movement - Lela in I; Morgan and Moriah in II. Some people might be annoyed about taking class without Kemal, but, as I was telling Nori, I like the liberation of feeling that you really are doing the movement entirely for yourself, and contradictorily I sometimes push myself further than when Kemal is around. It was fun though; lots of good lamba, with Ben and others stepping up to suggest additional steps. I finished the very readable Descartes (Discourse on Method parts one and two) quickly, even before class, but I stayed up way too late (well, like 2:00) talking with Rebecca about Cabaret, screw, and such things. She told me some of my rejected potential screw dates, which seemed promising.

I was five minutes late to class partly because of staying up so late, but Schuld didn't seem to mind that much, and he handed me a quiz anyway; a surprising number of people came in late through the rest of class, which did upset him, quite a lot. I got more and more restless through the next few classes, figeting with my legs on the chair. Um. Kari was wearing pink. Afternoon: I worked on some music stuff; Inflight rehearsed. We're playing Rose Tattoo next weekend, and hopefully I can write (finish) a song or two this weekend. I'm conflicted between composing on piano and guitar. I obviously have much more versatility on piano, but I always think stuff comes out sounding kind of cheesy. Since I am more limited with what I can do on guitar, I'll end up writing simpler things, which is probably better.

Sherman Alexie, when he finally took the stage after five nondescript songs from a nondescript Indian singer-songwriter with a vaguely Neil Young voice, was funny. He didn't give a lecture as I had expected, or even read from his work; he did standup comedy. And it was good. Even more impressive, it was about September 11th, and it was funny. He spent a while on what it's like to be a "brown person" in a post sept-eleventh world, and then broadened out into presidential politics, comparative religion, and suggesting that we all experiment with rejecting all of our assumptions. Dead-rock-star pre-flight tape, a gay dog, Cosmo November 1996, "gay, lesbian, gay, gay, Hemingway, gay…," "Let's get 'em, girls" and so on.

I skipped out before the Q&A session (unfortunately we couldn't have him over for coffee) to do the labo stuff. Of course, there were about five other étudiants there already, using all the tapes, and the sound files on the computer are screwed up, making it impossible to do about half of the exercises. So that's what I did. Oh well, Ed sympathized. I'm pass/fail and I love it. Radio was fun; I played a bunch of playlist stuff while Alyssa went back to talk with Sherman, some of it good, some not so much. I played most of the CDs that had arrived that day - reduced-cost press copies of Yuka Honda and Susie Ibarra, DJ Shadow and the Kinks from Half. Song list:

Welcome to Tokio…

Spinanes : Kid in Candy
John Vanderslice: You Were My Fiji (P)

Mirah : Cold Cold Water (P)
Jim Yoshii Pile-Up: Jetzt Mit Iodine (P)
Red Shirt Brigade : Thugs with Venom (P)
Charles Douglas : Prince (P)
Anywhere Right Now (P)

The Saturday People : Found Out (P)
Grandaddy : The Crystal Lake
Cibo Matto : Speechless

Yuka Honda : You Think You Are So Generous, But It’s The Most Conditional “Anything” I’ve Ever Heard--Jumping The Gap Between Me and Myself--
The Aluminum Group : Easy on Your Eyes
(The Real) Tuesday Weld : L’Amour et Le Morte

David Byrne : Burnt by the Sun
[flippin’ the tape over]
Scud Mountain Boys : Cigarette Sandwich
Belle and Sebastian : I’m Waking Up To Us
Elvis Costello : Human Hands

Susie Ibarra Trio : Azul
DJ Shadow : Organ Donor (Extended Overhaul)
Kings of Convenience : Singing Softly to Me
The Flaming Lips : The Spiderbite Song

The Dandy Warhols : Horse Pills
[oops, terrorism!]
The Reindeer Section : Fire Bell
The Dandy Warhols : Get Off
Cornelius : Smoke
Dismemberment Plan : Ellen and Ben

Jim O’Rourke : Therefore I Am
Liz Phair : Soap Star Joe
John Vanderslice/Britt Daniel : Time Travel is Lonely (live) (P)

REM : Begin the Begin
George Harrison : Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let it Roll)

…you know i love you more than slightly…

I have written four record reviews this afternoon/evening, as you can see below. Despite my intentions on brevity, they all ended up being over 500 words. Among them is, I think, some of the better stuff I've done later. As usual, a lot of these lines have been kicking around in my head over the last week or so. I didn't know it was all going to come out today though. Well, I figure, I might as well write some more now. (But read the reviews, I like them, and while you're at it check out the four terrific videos from the new Cornelius record, directed by the man himself. And is anybody interested in the point contest? It's a little late for it, but it looks like fun.)

About the 1:15 Monday to 12:35 Tuesday block of classes and stuff:

I augmented my food purchases with some akmak and mango chutney and strolled over to class, through the ridiculously pretty scene of arboretum workers working amidst fields of purple crocuses with a jhetto-blaster playing Vivaldi or something. I sat alternately unperturbed and slightly anxious as Bruce took the first half hour of class talking about the paper that I don't have to write (oh yeah, that's the other bit - I justify not getting the concretization of knowledge that comes through writing because this isn't stuff I'm officially interested in, it's just kind of neat to be exposed to it, although of course it would be good to get it solidified that way. Oh well.), suggesting for instance, that "and" should only be used in serial closure (as in "this, that, and the other" - I asked him about a list of two things, and he said that was allowable; of course that's the only way "and" is used anyway. But I don't have to write for him, as I said.) When it came time to get our facilitate on, which was for about an hour and a half, my partner Roxanne said very little. And I said a lot. I would estimate that I made about a third of the utterances made during that time. Didactic questions, rhetorical questions, genuine questions I had about the reading, genuine questions I had about the nature of existence and theory and meta-theory (is that what he means?), my interpretations of what other people said, my interpretations of the readings, and so forth. It was fun, especially towards the end when Bruce started to talk a bit too, and was occasionally unsure how to reconcile some of my concerns. Yeah, it was really fun. Then, after break (when I talked to super-friendly and stereotypically self-deprecating Sean Lannigan and made a date with Jocelyn) Bruce offered some more of his characteristic words of advice. To be specific, his top 3 German words to slip casually into conversation: Weltschauung ("pronounce it like you're the kind of person who knows that there are two 'u's"), Zeitgeist ("starts with a capital zed") and Schaudenfreude. It's hilarious how deadpan (or genuinely serious) he is about these things - how important it is to seem smart.

I had a good time back here; rather than reading Plato I read Elvis Costello lyrics over Joel's shoulder as I accompanied him on his magical first encounter with Imperial Bedroom, then snuggled with my sicko girlfriend and played her some Strummer as I skipped out to get some practicing in. I had forgotten, but we had a combined class in African, so it was fortuitous that I was there anyway, and so was Alyssa. And it was all very fun and fast-paced, simpler movement but still a workout, until I cut my foot on a piece of wood during across the floor. Then, when we were doing some awesome men-only moves with sudden drops and pops back up, long low lunges, alternating elbows to the ground, my thighs started to get really cramped. That got better, but I still couldn't muster the energy and focus to do most of the movement full-out, also out of fear of hurting my foot. With the free hour and a half, there was time to read some Alexie to Alyssa and share a lovely pasta dinner before biz-as-usual SAC, still stayed up too late trying to focus on The Republic.

But apparently I didn't comprehend it well enough, since I was rather stymied by the pop quiz this morning. I was a bit sleepy during class, and was worried that I might become more so sitting through the next two hour-and-a-half classes as well. Instead, as is I think more usually the case, I became more and more awake as the morning progressed - through being a model for body-part identification in French and a major participant in syntax dialogue today (with Kari in white(!) - I asked her about it and she said "Oh, you guys! I like grey!). To the point where by the time I got back here it felt like morning, time to start the day refreshed. Alyssa was still here, sick and reading, and we had some Mac+Cheese, listened to Sam Phillips, read the times (deciding on a book for NYC to read). It felt nice and easy-going. Then I wrote all those record reviews, just sitting here on the bed, trying to brush some of the crumbs away. I reconquered my CD player remote for the task, as well as relying on Joel's power cable to avoid the inconstancy of mine.

Not too much after I finished (and Kate Duffy sends me congratulatory, supportive e-mails) (and Joel wrote his nine-days-overdue three-page Geology paper too) Nori came home, made dinner for me and Nadav as promised (accompaniment: Stories from the City.) Food was good: funky yellow rice with golden raisins, pink yogurty sauce, and (her favorite) hard-boiled eggs. I skipped out on that (promising Nadav a game of diplomacy sometime - any takers?) to catch the hastily publicised showing of "Smoke Signals," which was fun but not as superb as I remembered. Then practicing (progress on parsing out those arpeggios; Bach is fairly solid; Bartok makes strides whenever I actually think about it) and a swing by Paces (Morcheeba on the box; Edleson and LePichon.) I passed JoeFlo and R. Van Fleet, pink-faced in parlors ("we've been talking about some pretty face-turning-pink stuff") on the way to the habitual stopover. Brigid in purple peasant garb showed off her marker-drawn hand-puppets, a frog and a girl (and they talk! "ribbit" and "hi," respectively) and requested to be screwed with Beck. As I walked out with Stef, I wrote on the dry-erase: "Loveless 1, Fallen 2" (Stef insisted on wiping it out, and then the pen wouldn't work.) We walked down and then conferred at length in Worth courtyard. She's got everyone taken care of except Felicia, who seems like an extremely problematic case. Girls are more difficult to screw in general. And I've got a bunch to deal with: my two lovely roommatesses, Alyssa, Rae (whom I've conditionally convinced to go). Joel is another issue. But of course I can't really talk about any of these things here. Suffice to say that discussions are happening; wheels are in motion; the good stuff is on its way. I just sent a series of three e-mails to the three relevant subsets of roommates, subjected "Mission: Joel," "Mission: Rebecca," "Mission: Nori." I'm still somewhat open to suggestions for any of the above, and particularly for Operation: Rae. Smoke Signals has inspired me to make frybread, but as it's late (nigh on two) it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

you say it doesn't matter if he sends you roses
you say apologies don't mean a thing

The Chemical Brothers - Come With Us (Astralwerks, 2002)
Daft Punk were once described as "toeing the line between stupid and clever," and I think the same thing can very accurately be said about the Chemical Brothers. For example, I can't think of a dorkier way to start a song than by sampling an "academic" voice intoning the words "it began in Africa," and then looping the "ka" syllable repeatedly. But when that track, after about five minutes of rather inane build-up including the obligatory talking drums and djembes, suddenly turns on its head and introduces a syncopated hip-hop breakbeat, I start to think that techno artists should be doing this sort of thing more often. The track I'm describing is "It Began in Afrika" (note clever/stupid spelling), the second cut on the Brothers' new album, which was probably the most keenly awaited electronica release since Daft Punk's Discovery dropped last year. (Okay, I want to stop making comparisons with Daft Punk right now. Come to think of it, the two groups have an awful lot in common - both are idiosyncratic European duos who were largely responsible for turning the world onto electronica back in 1997, with two of the most infectious techno hits ever, and have since had marginal success reclaiming their groundbreaking status - but that's not what I want to talk about.)

It's more or less universally acknowledged that the Chemical Brothers reached their peak with 1997's bombastic Dig Your Own Hole, which featured not only the inescapable "Block Rockin' Beats," and a guest vocal from heavenly-voiced relative unknown (and cutie) Beth Orton, but at least a half album's worth of some of the most bizarre and abstract music that could possibly be construed as funk. Those successful elements of bombast, rock swagger, guest vocalists, and "experimentalism" (probably more like screwing around) were harbinged on their debut, "Exit Planet Dust," somewhat controversially recombined for the difficult third album "Surrender," and, unsurprisingly, reappear here. And, this time at least, they work. Not in the way they used to work. The Chemical Brothers are no longer groundbreaking, and in its weaker moments this record almost feels like nostalgia. This time around it's more like i've-heard-this-all-before-and-it-still-sounds-damn-good. Of course, they do have a few new tricks to show off. Like, well, Daft Punk, they have taken note of more recent trends in dance music, as is evident in the streamlined, glossy house of "Star Guitar" (one of the most infectious cuts here, for all its Darude-cribbing). If anything, Come With Us is more varied sonically than any of their previous efforts, from the dark and tumultuous celli that open the album to gentle Spanish-y guitar line suddenly morphing into dark electro-funk (on the nifty "Hoops") to what sounds like a demented music box tinkling away in "My Elastic Eye." Even when things start to sound awfully hackneyed, there are enough ideas percolating in the mix to keep them interesting. The Brothers made some questionable decisions on this one, like submerging a pretty little Beth Orton melody in swaths of muddy knob-twiddling and burbles, and allowing the annoyingingly earnest Richard Ashcroft vocal about acid tests to mix with a recycled but workable funk loop, creating the danceable but ultimately rather inane closer "The Test." And, unavoidably, a handful of cuts in the album's second half don't quite make the mark. But the Chemical Brothers were never perfectionists. Their genius, it seems to me, has always come from goofing around and coming up with entertaining (and occasionally sublime) pieces of music - songs, even. And, in a way, they've never done that more successfully than here - this album doesn't want for humor, versatility, or flavor. All it lacks, maybe, is a bit of the freshness that made them seem so revolutionary back in 1997. (7/10)

The Dismemberment Plan - Change (DeSoto, 2001)
Almost every review I've seen of the Dismemberment Plan's most recent record (yeah, yeah, I know it came out in the Fall, the promo people are slow, okay?) has invoked the album's title to discuss the earthshattering shift that it represents away from the band's old sound. I find this quite amusing, partly because I'm just amused at how much artists can shape critical response to a record just by their choice of title, but mostly because I doubt most reviewers would have harped on that aspect of the release if it hadn't been for the title. First of all, the elements that make the Plan one of the most distinctive bands around are still firmly intact - clever, chiming guitar work; complex and methodical, but funky drumming; and head Planner Travis Morrison's unmistakeable dry, deliberate delivery. Certainly, there are distinguishable differences between this and their last effort, 1999's universally (and rightly) lauded Emergency & I. For instance (as has been most often commented on), this one is slightly mellower - that is, nothing here verges on unlistenable the way Emergency's weakest link "I Love a Magician" did. Also, there's nothing as glorious and cathartic as "The City," or inane-yet-beautiful as "You Are Invited." And, arguably, this release definitely finds the Plan continuing to distance themselves from their brash and racous early work (epitomized by "!", whose title is unfortunately not pronounced as a Bantu click.) But so what - what's so mindblowing about a group evolving their sound. It used to be, in the days of Talking Heads, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, and even Led Zeppelin (all of whose influence, incidentally, is apparent on this album), that nearly every album an artist released would involve some distinct stylistic change.

So. If Change is not noteworthy in that respect, then what has it got to commend it. Well, there are some dandy songs: the chiming, propulsive opener "Sentimental Plan," the majestic and driving "Time Bomb," the fast and funky "The Other Side." Morrison's lyrics continue to be delightfully literate and often abstruse ("I'm an old testament type of guy/I like my coffee black/and my parole denied.") The band continue to demonstrate deft musicianship, smartly upholding the proud tradition of intelligent guitar bands in a world that has all but forsaken them. Without question, Change is one solid record. I was excited when I first heard it, at the thought that it would prove everybody wrong, and show that a band like this can continue to improve even as they edge gradually towards a maturity beyond their "mature masterpiece." But sadly, this record, as good as it is, doesn't live up to the standard of excellence set by Emergency. And I can't help but thinking that that failure comes not simply from the quality of the songs (which, though consistently good, don't reach the same peaks of greatness), but from the disolution of some of the rough edges of the last record - rough edges which, come to think of it, are perfectly described in its title. (6/10)

Point - Cornelius (Matador, 2002)
Fantasma, the 1998 breakthrough record and American debut from Japanese oddball Keigo Oyamada (whose nom du disque is taken from Planet of the Apes) was a thrillingly original, but frenetic and impossibly eclectic collage of an album that encompassed stylistic (as well as lyrical) allusions to dozens upon dozens of musicians (the Beach Boys, the Clash, J.S. Bach) and genres (hardcore, bossa nova, videogame soundtracks), often splicing them together in second-long fragments to create what might be called (to quote one of the track titles) a micro-disneycal world tour. It was undeniably fun at times, but there was simply too much going on for it to work as a real album. In light of this, the title of Cornelius' newest release is unimaginably appropriate. Where Fantasma was splintering in a thousand different directions, this new record is cohesive, compelling, and meaningful: it very much has a point.

To begin with, Cornelius works with a surprisingly simple and consistent sonic palette. Almost all of the tracks here are built on combinations of precisely plucked acoustic guitar chords, sparse but carressing breathy vocal snippets, crisp percussion that sounds like it actually comes from a real drum set. Sure, he changes things up a bit: "Another View Point" gets a bit rocky with spiralling electrics and a solid bass groove; the playful "Drop" masterfully encorporates the sounds of water dripping and splashing (a terrific accompanying video shows a young boy washing his hand); elsewhere we find birdcalls, subtle banjo plucks, tastefully arranged electronic clicks and beeps, and snatches of theremin. But all of this is carefully reined in and channelled toward an overarching sense of unity and calm which prevails throughout - even on the frantic, fractured, faux-metal "I Hate Hate," glimpses of melodic majesty emerge from of the chaos. The album also flows in a literal sense - most of the tracks merge into one another, linked by rhythmic and textural motifs as well as a unified sound. Although Oyamada's stunning voice dominates the album, usually multitracked in dense, lush harmonies on sustained "aaahs," it's easy to lose sight of the fact that these are individual songs (no doubt in part because even the English lyrics are largely undecipherable - the chorus of "Smoke," which simply repeats the title four times, comes off as "soo-moooohg.") One highlight is an irresistable update of bossa nova classic (and Terry Gilliam theme song) "Brazil," with a mellifluous computer warble taking on the soaring melody. Despite its lush beauty, the record is also intensely rhythmic, and consistently danceable (if you dance like I dance), alluding to Brazilian samba, upbeat house-like grooves, and complex funk while never quite giving way to one genre absolutely. Promo material for this album suggests that it's equally appropriate for listening in the car or through headphones - I would add the dancefloor and a late-night lounge sofa to that list, but the point stands that this is a versatile record, capable of providing immense listening pleasure in any number of situations. The best point of reference I can make is to Björk, and I think that's a fairly accurate comparison, but I think that what Cornelius has done here is something truly unique. Point is gorgeous, engaging, and magical. (9/10)

Eban & Charley soundtrack - Stephin Merritt (Merge, 2002)
This is Stephin Merritt country. For whatever reason, the modern day pop troubadour's various musical projects seem to have a larger following here on Swarthmore's campus than just about anywhere else. Even people who don't listen to indie rock listen to the Magnetic Fields. If you're unfamiliar, just tune in to WSRN and chances are you'll hear Merritt's deliciously dry bass voice and impeccable pop melodies within the half-hour. Despite his knack for coming up with some of the best band names on record (besides the flagship MagFields, there's the Future Bible Heroes, the Gothic Archies, and 6ths), he's decided to resort to his birth moniker for the first time on his latest release.

That's not the only thing that makes this unusual for a Stephin Merritt record. After a simple thirty-second piano introduction, the first appreciable track, "Cricket Problem," is not properly a song at all, but a sort of interlude comprised entirely of mechanical whirs and rattles and the sounds of baby toys, interrupted occasionally with a stumpy drum machine. This is quickly followed by a more typical piece, a downcast folky tune about postponed love, but similarly odd, 'experimental' tracks continue throughout the majority of the album. Naturally, the preponderance of instrumentals and mood pieces (including dulcimer-sounding renditions of "Greensleeves" and "O Tannenbaum") is due to the fact that this is a soundtrack. (The film, set for release in July, apparently chronicles "unflinchingly" an intergenerational Gay relationship between a fifteen-year-old and an "ex-soccer coach," who sounds like a real loser.) It's hard to know if Merritt put together the instrumental fragments to augment and justify the inclusion of his other songs in the movie, or if he was more interested in experimenting with filmic incidentals and included the pop tunes out of obligation to his fans. Though there's nothing wrong with the instrumentals (they work quite nicely as background music and lend an interesting flow to the album), I suspect that most people are more interested in the songs. There are six of them, and they are very much worth your time. The hummable melodies are very typical of Merritt, as are the quirky, reverb-laden arrangements. Standouts include the gorgeously sung "Maria Maria Maria" and the appropriately titled "This Little Ukelele," but the best thing here is probably "Poppyland," a bouncy ode to a utopia where, in a line whose authorship is unmistakeable, "all your favorite things/are painted on the wings/of the butterflies." In comparison with other Merritt releases (say, oh, 1999's staggering 69 Love Songs, these six pretty little ditties hardly make this a must-purchase. But they should serve perfectly adequately to tide fans over for now. (Oh, by the way, the Magnetic Fields just signed a new record deal with Nonesuch, besides which Stephin is apparently working on a new Future Bible Heroes album, as well as some project of songs based on childrens books.) I won't be surprised to hear them blasting out of some dorm windows this spring. Hey, why isn't this on the playlist yet? (6/10)

Yesterday felt like a Monday, despite I was wearing my Sunday pants and I partook of the new Sunday breakfast tradition (plus added a new one of singing the song along with the bananas). However, it also didn't like I'd spent the entire day in McCabe. Which I more or less did. I went there after my computer inadvertently shut off about four times in a row (each time I have to reset the date and time, and it's just damn annoying.) The reading, which I printed out even though I usually just save the paper and read it onscreen, was more or less pleasurable: two chapters of anth-history by Kuper and an amusing critical essay by Geertz before (tired vegetable soup by Rebecca - leeks +potatoes + green things) dinner, most of a typically indecipherable chapter of Fabian (which tried to set up some sort of dichotomy between reflexion and reflection) afterwards. Alyssa asked "what does it mean that Jesus was crucified and resurrected," and I told her what it meant to me. Then Roxanne and I watched the marginally useful, occasionally funny video "Strangers Abroad 6: Strange Beliefs" about EEE-P (that's Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, about whom we had to facilitate a discussion today) and I did a spot of practice over to Lang. Then back here in time to catch the latter half of a clever game show on wsrn (a complexified version of Botticelli that I didn't quite figure out). While "Audience of Two" played (surprisingly good, half-hour of VaCo praising notwithstanding), Brigid and I made cookies: she concentrated on her memorized (almost) molasses thins recipe, while I dealt with some Joy oatmeal-raisins. Both turned out excellent, and in substantial quantities (there's still some left even after HiCuCo had their 18-fold way with them.) Phil Garboden's talk show came on (featuring Blair and music from Elvis Costello and T-Heads - who knew?) but we traded it in for Cornelius (really sublime) to accompany 3/4 cribbage and 3x boggle (ardour, porous), devolving into more wrestling and thoughts of coexisting in a parallel universe.

Today I was up early and wrote here but the computer shut off again and it got mostly lost. I was happy during French class and had a quiet Sharples lunch with Roxanne to vaguely go over ideas before facilitation. It seemed that she was far less interested in talking about it or working out a plan than I was, and I felt that I shouldn't have to put in more work or thought than she. Then I went to the co-op and bought a half-gallon each of milk and OJ, and a bunch of grapes. When I came home, I found that (despite it being a national holiday, right?) a copy of Fabian's Time and the Other had finally arrived in the mail for me - for just slightly less than $24 list price on half. I not only spend more effort and time on that class than any other, I also spend far more money. Some people think I'm crazy, and I do too sort of, but it also makes a lot of sense. If I'm auditing the class, then the only reason to do any work is because I enjoy it. If I enjoy it then it shouldn't be a problem to spend a lot of time on it. That's the theory, and it's more or less true. In any case, part of the reason it's so much higher on that scale than other classes is that I have very little work for the others: besides tons of French and youngsterish Orno stuff, there've only been the piddling Philo readings and one Ling HW so far. For a similar reason, the thought occurred to me that I could just do a course Arth major and nothing else - my whole reason for Ling Minoring is to take the classes, and if they're going to sneak a thesis onto the minor requirements that was definitely not there before (which is the indication I got from the minor form I'm supposed to fill out), then why should I bother - unless of course I decide I really want to write it. It's not a problem of not wanting to do more work in either Ling or Art History, it's the matter of how many classes I'd be able to take outside of fulfillment requirements. (See my list in the November archive.)

I'm an old testament type of guy
I like my coffee black
and my parole denied

Yesterday was one of the fullest days I've had in a while. Even considering that it was rather longer than usual (18 hours). Actually, literally it wasn't a very full day; all I had to eat was four slices of quiche (two for breakfast, one for lunch, one for dinner) and an English muffin. Doesn't it seem like Aretha makes references to "Running Out of Fools" on a lot of her songs, even though it isn't a very well known song?

Once again I started Saturday by writing a French composition about fifteen minutes before its technical due date - this time about Quand faire en jour de pluie - Alyssa sez it's great how taking a language reduces all of us to five years old. Listened to Handsome Boy Modeling School, which has so many good bits, not least of which is the album art. And Do the Collapse. Matt Rubin banged admittance and barged in to form a circle of tall skinny white boys with me, Joel, Jacob, and his Yale friend Andj(rew) - a brief conference on rock music rehearsals and why you should never date a girl who drives stick. Matt also displayed his wax-sealed invitation to a somewhat questionable "super-private" party in the WRC, for his discretion, radiance, and poise. Ahem. While Alyssa huddled on the couch. Then we set out, into the brilliantly sunny day, an hour later than might have been advisable. I was able to get in a good 45 minutes of practicing before I was kicked out of the practice room because of a blasted recording session. (Shamefully, the best I've done this week - I'll have to make up for that tonight.) With nowhere to go, I peeked into Charles' drumming workshop, to see what had been going on (Alyssa was there for quite I while; I had not been invited, which I'm not sure about.) Then I lighted on a lovely chance: Alison perched in Kohlberg reading Jewish Mysticism, which she put down to chat for an hour or more about, well, you know, classes, religion, living, travel, people. We haven't really talked in a long time. Maybe since last year? Well, we agreed to be friends - still, or again, or better.

Then it was 3:15, and time to figure out logistics for Cabaret orchestra rehearsal - phone and e-mail tag with Borrebach and Rubin, and in the end a confluence of constraints and factors - car location, performance length, recording session interminability, ease of transport - led to the happy decision to rehearse in Olde Club instead. So Danny Loss (I could have linked to him if I only had the energy) drove us over to the barn (some oldy accompanying - what was it Danny?) and we talked about Carmen. I popped upstairs for sticks, (where they were listening to Carmen), and rejoined Matt. A moment of musical catharsis - blasting "Born to Run" out the windows as we drove up the fieldhouse entrance behind a car that was moving too slow - then amusing first rehearsal: jack conducting with a pencil, I ran upstairs to get cowbell and woodblocks as needed, the pianist spent most of the time playing around with the Juno, chairs in the audience from the vagina monologues pushed around to serve as music stands and so forth. Most conveniently, Matt and I just stuck around after that rehearsal to have our next one. The Blechers showed up with my lunch quiche, and Aaron Goldman not much later than that. His contributions (on bass!) were most appreciated; he seems like he'll be good at coming up with interesting countermelodies and stuff, even though Matt instructed him just to do flat triphammers at times. We mostly just ran through stuff - Radical Honesty, Inflight Announcement, Save the Homos - although we spent a while toying around with "Metamorphosis" (Joel's insect tune), partly because it took a long time to figure out they weren't in the same key. Jacob, who had been sitting there trying to read, but confessed to me later that he liked the way we sounded, described it as a cross between the Doors, Dire Straits, and something else (Billy Joel? GbV?), which seemed most applicable to that song. Anyway, it was just good to play through them again. We're going to try for Rose Tattoo in two weeks.

Elena showed up towards the end, anxious to get to the Vagina Monologues early - it was a reasonable concern, but turned out not to be a problem, since apparently Lang concert hall is large enough to contain as many people as fit in the lobby, even though it seems extremely crowded. We were pretty far back, but good enough for a straight view of the series of cleaned-up women in red and black. Standout performances from Louisa as a repressed old NY jewish woman, Khadijah, who made "coochie-snorcher" as serious as it needed to be, and Sam Bartner with her show-stopping litany of sexual moans. Others were all at least decent, although some of the material was much more poorly written. The range of topics covered, though substantial, sparked discussion later of what was left out (and what was included - a rant against inconsiderate tampon manufacturers?) More recently added pieces, about Afghani women and birth, were not nearly as compelling as most of the others; in general the poetic ones don't come close to the effect of the more narrative, conversational ones. Overall though, the production was really great, making good use of the interstitial material and remaing for the most part consistently enjoyable and entertaining.

After that, performers duly hugged, I came home to figure out what was next on the agenda, learned I had missed a Gabestyle dinner. Rather than make hashish brownies with Joel, Jacob and Rae, I decided to heed an invitation from Brigid and Stef to vote for a video, even though nobody in the triplet was answering her phone. When I arrived, Brigid, Elizabeth, Kara and Crescent just had as well, and we launched into some speed scrabble and password (cookery?). After Ben showed up and persuaded us for long enough, we finally picked out a movie and started watching it, an hour and a half late. "The Big Lebowski," which probably would have been my second choice (after "Brazil") and which I enjoyed more than the other time I saw it. For all its flaws, you can't really complain about that movie - it's just fun and quirky and has good music. And good characters, especially. Not long into it, Stef, Kate, and Felicia appeared as well, so that there were nine of us in Brigid's tiny little room, all piled on top of one another. This continued and increased after the movie, when a few people left and the rest of us continued wrestling and reconfiguring ourselves amid verbal sparring, attempts at nicknames, VagMons analysis, riffing as Porn Star puts it.

Eventually, we were able to overcome our brownian inertia and get outside; we being Brig, Stef, Ben and myself - Zabby (sorry?) had decided to stay inside, as she discussed on her site. Gradually making our way towards the amphitheatre, we took turns inventing activities - from the handslapping game from COBS (I sacrificed my jacket for the cold ground), to Stef's idea of amusement (putting me in a bush, watching Ben perform compulsory pelvic thrusts at a tree), to Ben's music video game (we dance as he sings "Sledgehammer" and "Like a Virgin.") Brigid starting singing "Oh Darling" (substituting Ester's name where appropriate), and we ended up singing through most of Abbey Road, especially the second side medley, cobbling together lyrics remembered from our collective childhoods, scatted guitar parts, tap-dancing rhythms. Before we turned in ("golden slumbers fill your eyes…"), Ben started up "Twisted," so I took over and performed that a little. Walked back and it was 4:30. That stuff is both more fun than it sounds and almost not as fun as it should be for all the concentrated effort we put towards having fun. We kept quipping "Hey, we ought to be drunk," but it's just a reminder of the kind of pure abandon that works best without substances, in the childlike way. Anyway.

forget about your sorrows
forget about your heartache
life is nothing but a shadow
without your sunshine

Janet McI. Williams is perfect. Her students flock to her with this sort of incredible devotion born of countless hours of nature walks, poring over natural history texts and sketches, lovely little chats and peanut butter sandwiches. They are brought together with the love of something both arcane and universal, and they keep coming back. A 1999 graduate was back Friday morning, and she and I were at first the only students on the walk. Others gradually trickled in, and we spent the time mostly talking about sounds rather than sights; whistles and rasps and squirps, and a circling, soaring red-winged hawk flew over several times. In my hour and a half of legroom, I made enough dough for two pie crusts, but I supplemented with half as much again after class got out. A sorting out of recipe ideas and a trip to the co-op for ingredients (three blocks of gruyere, a yam, bacon!) and there was already no question of finding time to practice or read before dinner was over.

I made three quiches, cobbling together recipes from the VegEpII, the Moosewood, various online sources, and my own harebrained ideas. Number one was the most ordinary, but essentially without a recipe: spinach, bacon, and sauteéd onions. Two was a liberal adaptation featuring garlic-basil feta, chêvre, and broccoli. Three was the most experimental, but the one that most closely followed a recipe - sweet potato, carrot, and corn (my only substition - for cranberries), with a generous amount of sugar - the VegEp said it would be "sweet and savory," but I think it falls pretty indisputably in the latter category. It was dubbed a dessert quiche, or a cornbread pudding. The first obstacle was pre-baking the crusts. I tried to use our new candy thermometer to ensure that our inconsistent oven wasn't putting me on too much; but I'm not sure how well that work. I was supposed to line each crust with foil and weight it down with beans or rice, but rather than use up those precious commodities, Rae suggested I just stack them inside one another, with a saucepan on top (I weighted that down with a candle.) Before the eight minutes at 450° were up, tons of smoke had started leaking out of the oven - it wasn't the crusts, but some gunk on the bottom of the stove, which I had a semi-successful time scraping off. That accomplished, the crusts looking somewhat the worse for wear, I moved on to trying to parse out fillings. As this was going on, also, I was cracking up at wsrn, where Rob had succeeded a professor's soul show (James Brown to the O'Jays to Alicia Keyes covering Prince) along with his 'sister' Lil' Cox ("she knows it's not hip-hop, but she wants to hear some Moxy Fruvious" "brigi-I mean lil' cox") and wreaked idiosyncratic havoc on the twiddlers and noise effects. I supplanted that with Oranges and Lemons, and then a bit of Party Music, which is quite good.

All through the preparations, people showed up fairly regularly. Ben was first, checking in around three o'clock with a stack of 50 discs to burn, and took up occupancy in my room. I hadn't invited him before, but he stuck around for dinner too. Then Alyssa, with a person, as promised - Claire, a woman too, which helped a bit with the gender balance (she also helped a bit with putting up posters and other handimanstuff.) Joel went out shopping with Rae (seems to be taking over for me) and in the interim his twin Jacob arrived, fresh from New Haven, and with no idea what he was getting himself into. Then the rest of my roommates, and Mark Angelillo and Buffalonian Ed Stehlik, he of the kinky perhaps doomed hair, fortuitous dip encounters, cercle iterating, quiche-party inspiring, bearing Genuardi's cheesecake and Oreo ice cream. With Gabe (impeccably arriving about fifteen minutes before dinner - not unreasonably late at 9:20 for an 8:00 invitation time), we made eleven, certainly our largest dinner-party crowd ever. I love these things not least for the way that everyone shows up expecting dinner, and then ends up helping to prepare it before they can eat. The energy was so high and rampant, especially after Ben suggested some salsa, and Cubanismo! had the whole flat bootyshaking, even when the kitchen was full to the brim with seven or eight people at a time, all reaching for different jars and cupboard doors and implements in an intricate tangle of arms and spirit.

We ate at our leisure too, entertained by Claire's attempts to re-enact eating yogurt with spoon and no hands. Joel whipped up some puttanesca spirals for the vegan, and Alyssa and I concocted a last-minute green honey salad that Ben called "great" in his last entry. There were also three and a half bottles of wine consumed - one provided by Gabe and two by my folks (I had to stop Claire from going for a fourth.) I had several glasses as well, which made things even more amusing. Ben's subtle suggestions controlled the flow of the evening - he requested [P-]funk to replace my dinner-Blakey, and then ChemBros after that (forgetting about Hot Fudge Petar Split); as well as deciding the game for the evening: lunch money. It took a while to get off the ground, with a large unruly group (and flagrantly drunk Nori, who whined needlessly later about her flirtatious tendencies), but it made a predictably spirited game, with Ed and playground pimpstress Joeletta teaming up against the unrepentant SupaDyke, while we all picked sensei Rebecca off early. I made a serious of African references, starting with the [Nigerian] Stomp, and made "bah-yah" the catchphrase for the game ("and close." "and you hold!"), managed to stay in the game until right until the end, despite much early loss of life and a cruel backstabbing kick from my sweetheart MaryBelle - I probably would have won if I hadn't neglected to trade in all five of my attack cards when I had one life left and it was down to me and Joel. And that was accompanied with the most appropriate little-schoolgirls-beating-each-other-up soundtrack: Bis' Teen-C Power and Intendo. Stars came on after, with the gorgeous "Tonight" among others. We were rather tired, so as soon as Ben finished burning his last CD-R for the night, we put the bed to another use.

someone tell me why i do the things that i don't wanna do
when you're around me
i'm somebody else

I've been up since eleven actually, which really doesn't seem very late and I'm amazed that that means about six hours of sleep, which really doesn't seem unreasonable. So much for staying out until 4:30. Nothing's late anymore. Anyway, this was one of those mornings that I had to hear something: The Dandy Warhols Come Down to be specific. So I lay here for a while listening to that. And when it ended I put on the Les Savy Fav record and emerged, a little too late to get in on the first batch of GR-inspired banana french toast (new Sunday tradition around here, coupled with the singing of the song), so I made some more for myself. I want to write about Friday and Saturday now, but I have to get a lot of reading done, so I'm going to write entries interspersed between the articles. Check back periodically if you're interested in that kind of thing.

time to gather your arse up off the floor
(have a banana)

I had this funny pressure in my jaw which ebbed and swelled over the last few days, somewhat similar but probably unrelated to the pressure and aches that had plagued my nostrils and sinuses for the few days before that; the residue of my sickness. It varied from barely noticeable to more than mildly annoying. It started after I had eaten a bowl of this familia granola with really tough raisins. They were quite hard to chew and I felt for a long while after that the exhaustion of having chewed really hard. It started up again with a bagel a few days later. Alyssa asked about wisdom teeth, which I had been secretly wondering about but afraid to admit.

So, I accomplished only a small amount of the reading Thursday afternoon, just the rest of the Nuer, but nevertheless I decided to go off to Sharples with Ben and Alyssa, even though I was theoretically still supposed to meet with Roxanne in a few hours. I'm glad I went though, Sharples was quite the spectacle; total zoo, such as I haven't seen since screw last year. Of course the staff went all out, with tons of petits-fours, eclairs, strawberries, dessert fondue, little round tables in the center room and live flute/guitar muzak. Then there was the SVD massacree reenactment (which went down twice?) and the SAO auction. The auctioneer wasn't very good (or well-amplified) which was probably the reason that prices were so much lower this year. The highest was $75 for all of sixteen feet, whose performance-by-way-of-enticement was also difficult to hear over the tumult. Jocelyn, obscenely adorable with a little heart shirt, flower in hair, and holding Prof. Ghannam's cherubic little baby (whose cheeks were as pink as anything in the room), went for $40 to Matt Rubin. I might have bid on her if I'd had any money on me, but I kept my hands free of the whole affair and just enjoyed the show (unlike last year when I made a couple of timid, clandestine bids.) Michelle was there and delivered my two poems, poorly typed out on crisp red paper. Alex Edleson said he'd had a hand in part of each.

Came home and delivered Joel's (excellently rhymed - Blecherino and Cappucino - but not really metrical at all) and dashed right back off, to McCabe, late for Roxanne. It went fine anyway; she had done more of the reading than I did, but I ended up coming up with most of the questions and the structure for the discussion. She seems to have a decent handle on the stuff, so that should combine nicely with my bunch of pointed uncertainties. She typed it up, a bit simply, adding a vegan query (guess nobody is?) and sent it off. Back here, soon joined by Alyssa, with whom we selected titles for the Reality is Lubricated Special Valentine's Day Broadcast.

It was terrific (I thought); and we have a perfect all-encompassing love mixtape to show for it now, even with great cover art (a small size version of the poster.) It is to some extent a cobbling together of other love tapes I've made in the past, but with lots of good new additions, plus Alyssa's input. Only a few callers - Joel commending a transition, Branen praising the Moldy Peaches but unable to accept the tickets - but we had a full-on visit in the studio: from crazy-daisy Liz and her gruff Audio-Rescue-Squad gennelmun-friend (who didn't seem too happy to be there.) She offered me cookies from a tray downstairs, and he poked through the records library. We read the SCW ode to SRN on the air. Lots of good banter too; plus a couple fun mistakes. Anyway, here's what we played, as copied from our script-fonted playlist:

Oooweeoooh! Oooh! Oooh!
“Grandpa” Myron (Mike) “The Moose” Cantor - As Time Goes By

Blur - Tender
XTC - I’d Like That
Björk - Like Someone in Love
[flubbed announcement - mic set on cue] [radio silence]
Paul Simon - For Emily, Wherever I Will Find Her
[apology to the listenerhip, repeat of set rundown]

The Old 97’s - Question
The Beach Boys - God Only Knows
The Kinks - Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy

The Fairways - Close to Me
The Pixies - La La Love You

The Sam Cooke - Medley: Try a Little Tenderness/(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons/You Send Me (live)
Prince - Kiss
[clarification from Alyssa about it being a song about sex]
Randy Newman - Falling in Love
[A n ODE to WSRN]
Joni Mitchell - A Case of You
Plastic Fantastic Machine - Love is Psychedelic
Jeff Magnum - I Love How You Love Me

Joe Jackson - Be My Number Two
R.E.M. - At My Most Beautiful
Pain - One-Legged Girl
[a little show here for people from Alyssa]
Kings Of Convenience - I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From
Pizzicato Five - Baby Love Child

The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You
[apology to all the non-{Moldy Peaches Fans} in the audience]
The Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)
Joe Henry - Scar
The Shins - New Slang (When You Notice the Stripes)

Buddy Holly - True Love Ways
The Yo La Tengo - The You Can Have it All
Jonathan Richman - When She Kisses Me
Ella Fitzgerald - Something’s Gotta Give
Chet Baker - My Funny Valentine
The Big Star - I’m In Love With A Girl
[Alyssa's declaration of love]

Nat King Cole - The Very Thought of You
Billy Bragg - Valentine’s Day is Over

Afterwards, we had a lovely little chat with Brigid-san, over an absolutely ridiculous Swarthmore College valentine/donation solicitating card. Checked mail again, to find the card from Becca, figuring the windows of her heart. And my first conversation (I think) with Jackie A., in parlors.

Well I don't believe in love
Until I'm in love.

Man, I want friends like Liz H…'s got web-type friends. Six of her last seven posts have at least eight thoughts thus far.

Happy Valentine's Day, as Ben just said on the air. I'm really feeling the love this year. I love the mass of traditions that cluster around this time of year, and the memories they bring back about this time last year; figuring out the way things must have happened by the order of events - the valentines auction, sophomore paper time, screw, Math 9 paper due dates.

Today I have to read a whole of the anthrostuff that I only got through the first hundred pages or so of on Tuesday despite reading pretty much all day. It was enjoyable, but I wasn't really focusing on it, especially when Nori and Alison Adelman were here and livelily discussing in the kitchen the mango lassi they were making. I'd taken care of the rest of the tilapia for dinner (marinated in tempur? dipping sauce), so I didn't take part in the Indian meal (except I had a bit of lassi.) Then I went to practice, and to make a radio show flyer in McCabe: scanned in an i-zone smooch photo and photoshopped in the text: "Reality is Lubricated…a special Valentine's Day broadcast" "listen in as Ross & Alyssa declare their undying love on the air" and the frequency and time. I really like the way it came out, grainy but with neatly delineated composition. The overwhelming response: kawai! (as Alyssa wrote on my stomach last night, a reprise of the star-bellied sneetch episode, now a bit worn) There are now about ten flyers around campus. Alyssa wonders if single people will be embittered by the flyer or the show, but I think that's sort of the lot of such-minded singles this time of year anyway. Unsuccessful in contacting either A to confirm her approval or Stefanie to take our long-awaited chat date (as I had been all day), I stopped by the triplet to see what was kicking. Brigid was asleep, but she claims only napping, in the middle of an Induction paper, and she flopped upright and told me not to leave. On the subject of Babblebook's elusive, contentless proclamation, which she hadn't seen, she was stumped. If there are exciting new developments for some member of the Willet's octet (the should-have-been Loveless girls mach two), it's not her; clearly not those other two (or Kara) - and Ester isn't as far as anyone knows close friends with any of the other four. So we dunno what all the fuss is about.

Stefanie was equally confused when I asked her about it yesterday morning, as we walked to Target in a most unorthodox way (starting off past the DuPont parking lot, down a residential hillside, back by roads nearly to the barn). But she did oblige with a capsule history of StefeLiz (Ester's coinage, decidedly awkward) which was more than I'd been able to piece together elsewhere. A further mystery is why neither Target nor Genuardi's carried any Valentines chocolate boxes on 13 February! (I had to go to Hallmark across the street and find a tacky little Russell Stover box that I later doctored up a bit with Becca's label-maker; oh, I miss the Nut House) Also, Target doesn't carry (apparently) jacks, which I've been looking for since Christmas eve, and which I thought would make a nice v-day gift for my gal. The camera batteries I bought there turned out to be the wrong size (durnit durnit), so the only worthwhile purchase was three three-packs of 120 minute tapes. The only ones they had were funky purple Sonys that come with space-age "Slipcases." That brought me back here in time to chat with the hallway-cleaner about the building and the college, and to catch some more good radio - the end of Ben Wharton's alt-country "Dorks of Hazzard" and the start of Karl Heideck's non-folk, non-country (despite the schedule) hip-hop/Prince side-project "On-Air Drinking Contest" (earlier I'd heard a 6th Great Lake/Smiths/Morrissey broadcast and the start of a bluegrass show with some non-objectionable Nickel Creek), before my lesson. The lesson was equally good - MarcanTony seemed impressed with my preparation of scales and Bach and Bartok; hopefully it can stay that way when I only have a week to prepare (he missed last week.) After the language lab work (shortened by a sound-file mix-up), and a run-in with smallwood, I barely beat Alyssa back here to hide the choclets, then had little energy to do more than start some Hindi phrase-structure diagrams for ling hw. I heated up some Sarah B's that had arrived from Delia in the morning, and one of them squirted its deceptively fluid insides on Alyssa's pink sweater, continuing a string of unfortunate liquid emergencies that started when I woke up in the morning with an inexplicable bloody nose. African was excellent, in the way of those classes that are not super-intense, just average, but really enjoyable on their own terms. R. Charles let me solo for a while over a 'square' rumba-family rhythm, and we traded stick-tricks before the patakato. II was typical but atypically extreme in its mixture of movement that I can do really well and jam on, and movement that I just can't wrap my mind or body around. But it was fun. I stopped up to WSRN to plaster a flyer up there and chat with Lonesome Monarch Rae about whether love songs should be played/sung without irony. Back here, some tasty avacado gunk and vegan chocolate pudding. I sat on the couch and tried to complete the multi-part ling as neatly as possible while listening to Rae's blues, ska/punk, the New Porno's, the Weezer happy hour, and my roommates crafting clever valentines (Rebecca's trademark cutesy neatness, Nori's Klimt und label-maker assemblages, Joel's minimalist construction-paper triptych to Sara.) And of course a bit of Philo. Only the first three pages seemed to contain much discussable material, the other seven were kind of unapproachable metaphysical descriptions of afterlives.

And we didn't even mention that part this morning, after I woke up and slipped the box onto alyssa's semi-sleeping shoulder. I've been able to get up and out fairly easy for this 8:30, and once I get there I have no difficulty at all staying awake for the discussion. Today's was particularly animated, with Schuldenfrei obsessing with a detail of an marginally workable snow-fire-soul analogy, challenging us to provide an example of a culture that doesn't treat broken bones, pacing and gesturing and quipping "in religion they called it the reformation; in philosophy they called it Descartes." I spoke up a lot more than usual (as I did in Syntax and French as well, sounding smart.) Put some more radio flyers around Kohlberg and made two commissions from the SCW love-poem people, one jointly with Michelle for Joel-o (rhymed and metrical, with or without reference to a certain dyslexic Italian danseuse) and one dedicated to WSRN, the only radio station for me (stipulations: must be FCC-appropriate; half the verses should come from the playlist; only the first four words of the title count). I received two valentines through campus mail, from Jocelyn and Mark, which is so touchingly predictable. Now I better go see how my apple/munster/spinach/vinnaigrette sandwich turned out, and read some o' that anthropology.

i can never place
the name with the face

I didn't drum for African I yesterday because all of the congas had been taken and I wasn't sure what style of drum to take out of the closet instead. But that was okay, because I ended up going to Sharples and having a nice chat with Alana, about screw and all that entails. Also, there was Thai bar, which I'd never seen before (peanut chicken pretty good). It's funny, I haven't noticed too many people talking about screw, but I overheard it a bit at Sharples, and it is coming up pretty soon. In fact, we voted on a theme at the SAC meeting after African: "Chains," which doesn't really mean anything, or rather it can mean whatever you want it to mean. For whatever reason, it was decided that we had to have a theme, and nobody really had a particularly exciting idea. Screw pretty much provides its own theme anyway. I have somewhere between one and four people to screw, depending on whether my roommates would ever consent to committing one way or the other. I have a few thoughts, but nothing at all concrete yet.

I have to read all of the Culture Concept stuff before Friday this week, or actually earlier, in order to talk about it with Roxanne, send out an e-mail Friday, and facilitate discussion next Monday. That will be nice for my weekend (since I've basically been putting far more effort into this class i'm auditing than any other) but it means I'll be busy doing that for the next few days. It's good so far, most of an ethnography of the Nilotic, cow-obsessed Nuer: "Their social idiom is a bovine idiom.…I used sometimes to despair that I never discussed anything with the young men but livestock and girls, and even the subject of girls led inevitably to that of cattle." Computer is difficult and useful.

you've got to stop fucking her up
you've got to grow up

Java Joe's, as Gabe predicted, was "stupid crowded" Sunday morning (including with two other groups of Swatties - Kara & entourage and Liz, Chirag and companions), but as he also suggested, it wasn't such a big problem, because the day was simply gorgeous. So Matt and Alyssa waited in the sunny parking lot before Brigid and me and my parents arrived and then waited another twenty minutes before a table for six was ready. Conversation was predictably lively - why Republican speakers are scary, why Nickel Creek (the N*Sync of bluegrass) are coming rather than Wilco, why I'm not DJing Sean Peterson's benefit, why there's something sketchy going on at my parents' bed and breakfast. Rather than splitting cheese blintzes all round, I went for just a spinach-garlic-prosciutto-mozzarella omelet; at first I wasn't feeling it, but after I peppered-and-salted and then hit the prosciutto, and the cholesterol kicked in. With sides of homefries and rye toast, and a large glass of freshly-squozen, that was plenty to keep me filled for most of the day. Samples of others' food - Dad's cinnamon roll, Mom's salmon-havarti-dill omelet, Matt's apple-raisin-carrot pancakes - were all uniformly excellent. The folks left from there, so Matt took the four of us back, by way of Neu!, part of his effort to acquire a grounding in rock-snob obscure classics.

The rest of the day was mostly consigned to reading, much as seemingly everyone else on campus and off was set to work the day away. I didn't make it through all of the week's assignment, but did read all 113 pages of Malinowski (rather enjoyable), 60 of Kuper (helpful overview), 30 of Fabian (still overjargony but less dense contentwise than last time), and 200 pages in the course of eight hours (between 1:30 and 9:30) is no slouch for an audited class. Mostly I just shut myself into my room, playing music just loud enough to drown out Joel in the next room working out the chords to "Biomusicology" - AmAnSet, 4Hero, ATUB, La Mima. Didn't need much in the way of food intake, just some leftover fish and rice. About five, when I really needed a break from "Argonauts of the Western Pacific" (fascinating as Trobriand ethnography is), it came in the form of a dispute from across the hall - Lizzie and Samarah wanted me to put my name down on one side or the other of the Buckley/Cohen debate vis á vis "Hallelujah." After giving several arguments both ways, I agreed to side with the traditionalists (the majority, somewhat surprisingly). Kuper e-res interrupted with various other computer activities (researching the next round of promo requests. Then I went out.

The day had transformed (observed by me obliquely through my comforting Southern exposure) from gloriously sunny and clear to gloriously rainy and humid, by the time I walked over to McCabe. Managed to get through Fabian in record time, despite distraction upstairs from Susie Ansell's no-good whispers and downstairs from all kinds of folks, the generous Sunday night crowd. Then to Lang to practice and finish a chapter of Cloudsplitter I'd started weeks ago (I must make it a point to read that more regularly, I do enjoy it so.) And Paces, whose newly frantic noisy r&b ice-block incarnation Gabe blamed on "my generation." Brigid declared it too loud to play cribbage, and we went off in search of somewhere else. Decided it was too nice to be inside, so back to the fragrance garden to take in the witch hazel (after blowing my nose on leaves a few times, I still couldn't smell much), and the lovely CP&P porch of Parrish, which is a wonderful spot to play cards in the rain, and a good vantage point for much of campus - shuttles, trains, mccabe sharples tarble, the triplet window. It took a little while to recollect all the rules for ourselves, and to exhaust puns on the bridge (which she had just learned), Brigid, Bridge, cribbage, etc. Funny looks and visits from Ben, Rob, missed-date Stef. A shuttle pulled up as I was dealing what could have been the last hand, but when we played it out I was still five pegs shy. So B dealt another; by the time we finished the van was still there, but after sitting in it for a few minutes without a driver, I decided to walk instead. Joined by Rachel Block, who talked of food, and I invited her up for some and KOA. Left a pleasant all-flat chat about Nicholson Baker to write here, and still made it to bed by 2.

Yesterday was nicely planned out in my head, and surprisingly enacted accordingly. I even did all the last few things that I thought I would only do some of (Fabian, practice, Paces, cribbage, update.) Today was similarly plotted out and, so far, well accomplished: French, practice, lunch home, culture concept (good - illuminating and at times fascinating), update. Even better than well, in fact, thanks to two long-awaited arrivals: Plastic Fantastic Machine's Beautiful and Stephin Merrit's "debut" soundtrack record Eban & Charley. An article in the press kit for the latter prompted a debate here at lunch about whether "gay" could or should be capitalized (as in "openly Gay musician" and "two Gay black soldiers"). Nori Joel and I had never seen it, and didn't much feel a need for it, while Rebecca defended it, rather unconvincingly I thought. If the power for this computer hadn't cut off unexpectedly, I would have been done with this twenty minutes ago and been able to make it on time to African. As it is, I'm headed off now.

all your favorite things
are painted on the wings
of the butterflies
in Poppyland