some birds are funny when they talk
corner



Fellows:

Aijung
Alyssa
Angela
Bobby
Carla
Dave
Ester
Jesse
Jonah
Josie
Kate
Lillie
Nori
Rabi
Rebecca

Mincetapes

e-mince

Photos!

Nice

Archives:

Stuck in my Head
"Kiss Me Harder" by Bertine Zetlitz
"Hot" by Avril
"Brain Problem Situation" by They Might Be Giants


Now Reading
Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

Recently Finished
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Mad Tony and Me by Carl Hoffman
Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guaralnick
This Must Be The Place: Adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th Century by David Bowman
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Movies Lately
Sicko
4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days
Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts
Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
2 Days in Paris
United 93
The Savages
The Bourne Ultimatum
Sweeney Todd
The Departed
Juno
Enchanted
What Would Jesus Buy?
Ghost World
Superbad
I'm Not There
She's The Man
Superbad
Lars and the Real Girl
Romance and Cigarettes
No Country for Old Men
Into the Wild
Gattaca
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
Across the Universe

Shows Lately
Damo Suzuki/Stinking Lizaveta @ Mill Creek
Death and the Maiden @ Curio
Devon Sproule/Carsie Blanton/Devin Greenwood/John Francis @ Tin Angel
Assassins @ The Arden
Oakley Hall and the Teeth @ Johnny Brendas
Isabella and Flamingo/Winnebago and Map Me and Gatz and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Sonic Dances and Strawberry Farm and The Emperor Jones and No Dice and Hearts of Man and Principles of Uncertainty and Isabella and BATCH and Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre's 20th Century and Car and Sports Trilogy and Explanatorium and Wandering Alice and Must Don't Whip Um and Festival of Lies and A Room of Ones Own and Recitatif @ the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe
Martha Graham Cracker and Eliot Levin and Kilo etc. @ the Fringe Cabaret
Lullatone and Teletextile @ Boulder Coffee [Rochester]
TV Sound @ the M Room
Aretha Franklin @ East Dell, Fairmount Pk.
Romeo + Juliet in Clark Park
Daft Punk @ Red Rocks
Spoon @ Rockefeller Park
Ponytail at Pony Pants' House
Mirah/Benjy Ferree @ the 1UC
Tortoise @ World Cafe Live
Hall & Oates...ish
"Nuclear Dreams" - Mascher Dance Group, x2
The Four of Us @ 1812
Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines by Rainpan whatever
Mascher Dance Group/Nathaniel Bartlett
Cornelius @ TLA
Sloan @ World Cafe
In Fluxxxx
Slavic Soul Party!/Red Heart the Ticker @ I-House
the Fantasticks @ Mum
Peter Bjork + Jorn/Fujiya + Miyagi @ fkaTLA
John Vanderslice @ Johnny Brendas
The Books & Todd Reynolds @ 1UC
Into the Woods @ LPAC
The Fishbowl @ the Frear
Caroline, or, Change @ the Arden
Low & Loney, Dear. @ 1UC




Thursday, May 30

daytime
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles : I Like It Like That
The Shins : Pressed in a Book
Lilys : Socs Hip
Blackalicious : Green Light: Now Begin
Cornershop : Lessons Learned from Rocky I to Rocky III
XTC : Burning With Optimism's Flames
UB40 : Cos It Isn't True
The Dismemberment Plan : Following Through
Pizzicato Five : Happy Sad
Hefner : Trouble Kid
Call and Response : Lightbulb
De La Soul : A Rollerskating Jam Called Saturdays
American Analog Set : Dr. Pepper
David Bowie : Sound and Vision
The Byrds : The Christian Life (Gram Parsons Version)
Super Furry Animals : The International Language of Screaming
The Supremes : Some Things You Never Get Used To
Elvis Costello : 45
X : The World's A Mess It's In My Kiss
The Strokes :Take It Or Leave It
Heatmiser : See You Later

nighttime
Jim White : Corvair
Antonio Carlos Jobim :Look to the Sky
Edith Frost : You're Decided
Crooked Fingers : When You Were Mine
Tindersticks : Can Our Love...
Four Tet :Everything is Alright
Cibo Matto : Moonchild
Kings of Convenience : Winning A Battle, Losing A War
Air : Le Soleil Est Pres Du Moi
Cornelius : Nowhere
Yo La Tengo : Tears Are In Your Eyes
Sparklehorse : Spirit Ditch
Rebecca Gates : In A Star Orbit
Stephin Merrit : Maria Maria Maria
Scud Mountain Boys : Grudge Fuck
Radiohead : A Meeting in the Aisle
Elliott Smith : Condor Avenue
Vic Chesnutt : Arthur Murray
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci : How I Long [to feel that summer in my heart]

Mingle and Squeal Redux
Firewater : Get Out of My Head
The New Pornographers : The Body Says No
The Spinanes : Kid in Candy
[Maxwell : Get to Know Ya - but not really]
The Sixth Great Lake : Across the Northern Border
Jeff Mangum : I Will Bury You in Time
The Smiths : Cemetary Gates
Ted Leo/Pharmacists : Under the Hedge
Edith Frost : Cars and Parties
Superchunk : Art Class
Clem Snide : Exercise
Vic Chesnutt : Until the Lead
Kings of Convenience : I Don't Know What I Can Save You From
Yo La Tengo : Stockholm Syndrome
MJ Cole : Crazy Love
The Dismemberment Plan : Gyroscope
John Vanderslice : Emma Pearl
Lulu : Love Loves to Love Love
Chet Baker : Un Petit Duet pour Zoot et Chet
Les Savy Fav : Pills
The Apples in Stereo : The Benefits of Lying (With Your Friend)
Future Bible Heroes : Blond Adonis
Sister Blue : Magic Wand
Super Furry Animals : Sidewalk Serfer Girl

Martha
Love : Bummer in the Summer
The Shins : Know Your Onion!
The Apples in Stereo : Seems So
Liz Phair : Uncle Alvarez
Beck : Get Real Paid
Yo La Tengo : Be Thankful For What You've Got
The Dismemberment Plan : Ellen and Ben
Elvis Costello : All Grown Up
Edith Frost : Wonder Wonder
The Pixies : Here Comes Your Man
The Byrds : The Christian Life
Cibo Matto : Lint of Love
The 6ths : Heaven in a Black Leather Jacket
Serge Gainsbourg : Shu ba du ba lu ba
Prince : When You Were Mine
American Analog Set : Dr. Pepper
Daft Punk : Harder Faster Stronger Better
Whiskeytown : What May Seem Like Love
The Coup : Wear Clean Draws
The Supremes : Some Things You Never Get Used To
Patsy Cline : She's Got You
Super Furry Animals : Juxtapoze With U
Pavement : Carrot Rope

Murrik
23
King
Drop
At Night
Lure & Cast
Miss America
Take Yo' Praise
One By One All Day
Be Thankful For What You've Got
Some Things You Never Get Used To
The Way You Look Tonight
The Bird You Can't See
Sound and Vision
Mister President
No Sympathy
So Young
Road Song
Moonchild
Fool

Today had a very nice flow to it, I thought as it was happening. I did things but was still suitably inactive. Also, the weather was spectacular.

It was glorious (as in sunny) in the morning, so I sat outside after some cereal and read the second fifty pages of Lanark. Then I came in and played the piano for a little bit, songwriting scant progress. The atmosphere grumbled noisily as I returned to the book, and soon burst into a fantastic thunderstorm of the sort that always makes me want to be on the porch. So I went out on the porch, read some more, while (the Real) Tuesday Weld sang "It's Raining," not loud enough to be heard. I finished Book Three, which is the first Book in the book (now I'm about to start Book One, which is the second) - this is a fabulous book, at least so far. Big and sprawling in the Pynchon/DeLillo tradition, and with reminiscent themes and tone, but almost more like Vonnegut (and come to think of it Hoffman) in its sorta-sci-fi way: magnificently surreal; dystopian but not in a cliched way; intriguingly peopled and a lot of fun while still strikingly dark. Whoopee! (and apparently it's about to get all Portrait of the Artist, but with a twist, 'cause it's Glasgow, see.)

As the storm settled down into a slightly quieter, though persistent, patter, I returned inside, found a cracklin' John Lee Hooker LP to scope out and made myself two creative fajitas from orts and spices. Our fridge is overflowing with tortilla and pita, but we're pretty short on normal bread. Suits me.

My occupation for the afternoon was the making of several CD mixes - work if it can be called that; great because it feels productive, and of course is, but is still quite a lazy way to spend an afternoon. I put together the "nighttime" half of the summer mix project the other night (Monday, must have been - oh yes, I stayed up until four working on it and finishing The Language Instinct), and it turned out okay but not completely satisfactorily. I'll have to try it out some evening when I'm hanging out with some folks. The problem is that the cornerstone of most mixes (mine anyway) is variety, and that's not really what you want in that situation - even if everything on the CD is mellow, it jumps around among several genres (country, IDM, tropicalia, acoustic ballads), and that still manages to disrupt. I was having trouble narrowing my selections down for the "daytime" disc (a problem with CDs, but not so much with tapes, where you have less control from the outset, and so time limitations and spontaneous decisions make for a much more organic product), so I decided to effectively broaden it into two discs: one mostly a recreation of the misplaced "Mingle and Squeal" mix from February (modified with hindsight and my diminished library to fit the smaller space and substitute in some fresh blood), and the other a proper mix for the status quo, full of toothy rockers and soul throw-backs, with some hip-hop squeezed in. Martha saw me at work and asked for a mix, so I obliged (pulled out about fifty more discs for that, but unfortunately had to cut out a lot of the more offbeat choices in order to fit in most of the somewhat more standard "definites" - still good, I'm listening to it now.) That one had to wait until after dinner (L-Os and silly family dynamics - arguing and laughing back and forth) and the movie. Tracklists forthcoming.

By the way, Rah Rah Sis-Koom-Bah for Mr. Jonah Gold, who has made with much fanfare his entry into the swatblogcommunitythang. Yes, and hello to the rest of you as well. You may not be reading this, but I'm reading your'all'n, at least until I start doing something with my summer. Gosh, it feels good to be a part of something. Foster community, that's what let's.

others find pleasure in things I despise:
I like the Christian life

Films Films Films. (oh, pardon me, movies) 'tis the season, it seems. My average is now up to one for every day I've been home.

Film : Thoughts

Sixteen Candles (Monday night, with Martha in the exercise room) : First time I've seen one of the "brat pack" films the whole way through. I rather enjoyed it, my only apprehension was that it might just be really dumb. But it's actually somewhat cleverer than a lot of recent high school films. Easy to see how those follow the cliches set up in these movies, but I liked how this was so exaggerated in its ridiculousness - almost to the point of tongueincheek. And doesn't try too hard to be moralistic (unlike various Julia Stiles flicks, etc.) John Cusack (at about age 9) is, as Martha pointed out each time he came on screen, very cute. And Molly Ringwald continues (sets?) the tradition of the protagonist loser-chick being way too attractive to be believable as a misfit. I'd like to see some much earlier teen high school films. Blackboard Jungle or something. What were some that were made in the 60s?

Rat Race (Tuesday night with Dad, Martha, intermittently, and Mom but she was mostly asleep) : It took the first hour or so of Martha expressing her disbelief at our failure to laugh out loud at every single gag in the film (although I'm not sure that was necessary), but it got pretty hilarious by the end. Past a certain point, you just have to start laughing if you're going to keep watching it at all. The set-up (quite reminiscent of It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World) is promising, but the cast is unfortunately divided between performers who pull off with requisite subtle balance of zaniness and sanity (Breckin Meyer and Cuba Gooding as sweet, slightly smarmy straight men, and Seth Green as his usual self, matching the pitch of the movie) and those who are just annoyingly hammy (Jon Lovitz is awful, and Rowan Atkinson is just preposterous, even worse when he opens his mouth.) Nice cameo from Wayne Knight (aka Newman); Whoopi doesn't get nearly enough screen time (although she has one of the best scenes - "you should have bought a squirrel"), while John Cleese is rather disappointing, despite a great string of great big-shot bets a la Henry Sugar. Hmm. So, there are a lot of actors. Yeah, it's funny. Not great.

Ghost World : later that night, by myself in the exercise room.
I've been waiting to see this for a really long time - I went to the movie committee screening but the projector(s) weren't working. Man, that was annoying. Anyway. It was worth the wait; this was a very engaging movie. I'm not completely decided yet about its "artistic merit" or whatever, but I definitely enjoyed watching it. Enid (played Thora Birch, who is terrific) is problematic; you're obviously supposed to like her, and I tend to, but she really is horridly inconsiderate, besides being just cynical and friendless and "misunderstood." Misanthropes have no more right to be mean to people than the rest of us, right, otherwise they give other misanthropes a bad name. It's probably a good thing I don't know her, because I would befriend and try to humanize her, and get partway and probably end up upset by the whole thing. This is mostly superficial, but she reminds of Meredith a lot, beyond just appearance. Steve Buscemi is as likable as ever, and his vinyl collection is pretty enviable. The guy on the bench at the bus stop is a good touch, even if the ending is both predictable and unsatisfying. Not in a bad way. I'd like to read some of the comics. Basically, the film just looks really great, and it has a good story.

Nine Queens : tonight (Wednesday) back at the Little (I'm getting really good at driving there) with Dad
Alright! This certainly evokes Mamet and The Sting, like they said. A genre piece, indisputably, but brilliantly executed - good writing, great pacing, very nice visuals, especially the first half which is a long continuous scene following the two leads as they wander through the streets of Buenos Aires, casually perpetrating a series of small-fry scams. This sort of stuff is always fun to watch, but this film does an especially good job of working in "human interest" details that aren't necessarily central to the main plot of the con. My only real complaint is with the ending, which has an all-too-typical final revelation adding another level of complexity - you know it's coming, and it almost wouldn't be right without it, but this one just doesn't quite work. It strains the realism of the story up to that point, and even if it can all be made to work out, thinking retroactively, it just doesn't make as much sense as if they'd let things stay as they seemed. Regardless, definitely worth seeing, and lots of fun.

after the victory at sea
we learned Portuguese
for use when in Brasilia

Monday, May 27

A Day of Activity! (did i ever actually say that?) I was up early-ish (I've been breaking my streak, rising safely in the AM), drove with dad out to Chase Pitkin and Wegmans (my best back-out job ever, I think, and more successful highway driving) for some errands. Also to Radioshaq, where I bought a 30pak of blank CDs and a matchingly multicolored 25pak of slimcases (hm. so you need to buy 150 before they come out even?) in order to make a summer mix. But trying to start the process back home, I was daunted by the permanence of the burned-CD format. A CD mix seems to me fundamentally different from a tape mix, and frankly I much prefer the latter. My plan was to make a set of two paired discs, one upbeat (designed specifically for cruising down the highway with windows open) and one mellower (for hanging out late at night in the backyard or whatever.) But especially with that degree of specificity, each track has to be perfect; no sub-par choices allowed. Combined with my qualms about whether or not to repeat tunes that have been on mixtapes from this semester, particularly if I'm having trouble locating the tape (the splendid long-playing "Mingle and Squeal" from about February). So much pressure!

I spent a while this afternoon cleaning the porch - scrubbing down the furniture, attempting to sweep months of accumulated leaves and dirt off the concrete floor (not particularly possible), and then washing the whole thing down with a hose (whoopee!) - while I listened to Rae's velvet-covered mixtape. So good. That may be the best tape anyone's ever made me. That was (supposedly?) partly in preparation for a little backyard barbeque we had in honor of memorial day, with appearances by Kate, Mike & (tall! afroed!) William and Trish, Mike, and (gradumacated! er, redheaded!) Caitlin. I handled music (the Lilys, who are fantastic and have been getting a lot of airplay around here; then Mofro, Shuggie, and Jimmy Smith, who I decided all sounded more or less the same), while Dad grilled the chicken and sausages (and overgrilled the buns, so that it brittlely crumbled all over my plate when I tried to take a bite) and Mom mixed the (rather strong) margaritas. And Martha graced us with her presence. Fun fun. Lots of talk of prom (including a "professional" prom-date who had served for eleven proms in addition to his own) and Smith, as well as "trendiness," olives, movies (David Lynch and Human Nature compared to You can count on me). Brilliant dessert of vanilla ice cream, Harren brownies, and my (still moist!) cake.

I have two movie reviews to submit: Lantana was quite reminiscent of Magnolia (Ester take note), down to title plant-allusion that they never bother to explain in the movie. But I liked it more, perhaps because it was only two hours long rather than three. And Australian. The scenario/storyline was interesting, and it got more so as the film progressed and lots of pleasingly subtle interconnections get revealed. It's hardly compelling or engaging, though, and I realized, despite some very fine (key- restrained) performances from the cast, I didn't really care that much about any of the characters. Still, it's worth seeing, if not worth the hype it's apparently had (in Australia or something). Pleasantly in the vein of "modern cinema," (on the American Beauty side of Memento? I don't know what I'm saying.)

Human Nature, now, reminded me very much of Fierce Creatures relative to Being John Malkovich's A Fish Called Wanda, which was about what I expected - that is to say, not nearly as original, hilarious, or just plain good as the "original," and probably not really deserving of comparison, but certainly enjoyable and amusing enough in its own right. And, as it happens, similarly concerned with themes of the human vs. animal dichotomy, the corruption of "civilization," and cheap sex gags. Well cast (Robbins, Arquette, Forster, particularly, are so nonspecifically familiar), well acted, visually quite nice. I won't go into plot summary (it's hard to describe in less than a paragraph, which means that most reviews I've seen are about half plot summary, but it's one of those which is disappointingly almost exactly as you would imagine it from the reveiw plot summary - so my advice is don't read a review before you see it), but it's predictably "quirky" and nowhere near as unpredictable as Malkatraz. There were a number of sections that were pleasingly reminiscent (even allusive) of some of M. Gondry's earlier work in Björk videos - the surrealistic bestseller in "Bachelorette," the scenery and animal focus of "Human Behavior." Sadly no return of the gorilla dentist of "Army of Me," though it would have fit right in. Funny thing - I saw the film while I was in the middle of reading the chapter in Pinker about animal language and the various misguided attempts to demonstrate primates' ability to acquire human language. He specifically contradicts a couple of things in the film, such as the "popular misconception" that pygmy chimps are more closely related to humans than other subspecies. Pinker is definitely opiniated and sometimes he just seems to be spouting off (as in his extended, nitpicking critique of "language mavens"), but it is fun reading and undeniably informative. Thirty pages left - what to read next?

I saw Lantana with Dad Saturday night, after a decent but unspectacular meal (once again, good appetizers; too much boring meat in the entree) with the folks at surprisingly crowded Mykonos. Human Nature last night after an unofficial block party in Dennis and Marilyn Roche-Ritchie's back yard. We were there about half an hour earlier than everyone else, bearing dad's scrumptious rhubarb pie, and sat in the slowly retreating sun (by the end we were completely in the shade of the house) discussing the city school district's financial plight, and college college college, with the R-Rs and our neighbors Lisa and John. As the afternoon bore on, more folks started showing up - at least two-thirds of whom I either vaguely recognized or had never seen before (lots of new blood on the street, it seems) - many with kids. Langes, Nazgoulds, Kellys. All ages, which is incredibly refreshing. Turkey burgers, fruit salad, pasta salad. Yeeah. Just like the good old times. My mom makes fun of my haircut (did I mention this - she's the first person to come down decidedly negative on it, and Martha quickly concurs. I dunno what to think - all my crazy college pals liked it so much.) I answer the same questions multiple times - Boston...Art History... I think of myself as just "the son of those people down the street." what a nice kid.

My eyes are getting bleary from staring at screens. Don't know about a video tonight. I think I'll work on songwriting now. K.

if
the as-
pirin
you take

doesn't cure
your
headache

Saturday, May 25

I've been sleeping twelve hours a night, from one to one. I'm not sure at what point this ceases to be recuperation time from the "stress" of college life and the travel here (i'm still residually sore from transporting my luggage the other day, my goodness) and just becomes pure laziness. I'm somewhat amused by it, actually. I suppose it's good to be in any sort of a pattern though. I really haven't been exerting myself in such a way as to need/deserve that much sleep. I'm fighting the allergy battle with the cats, and mostly winning I think, thanks to Zertec and occasional inhaler puff. But that seems to take a lot out of me. So does the sun, when I'm outside for even a little while. At least it's beautiful out.

What have I been doing? Driving some, practicing by taking dad on his errands. A lot of laundry. Playing piano some (Chopin and Martha's jazz arrangements, not much digging through the repertoire yet.) Reading a lot - I finished Cloudsplitter the other night (funny that it took me two days to read the last 250 pages after four months of reading the rest of it), it could easily have gone on for another hundred pages to really wrap things up, I've been thinking about the implications of the book for today's world - after all, it's all about terrorism. I'm over halfway through The Language Instinct, which I had also set down for the bulk of the semester. A lot of it is a rehash of my various linguistics classes, but in a completely different voice, geared to a different audience, which makes it interesting. Watching some (perhaps) of the bewildering assortment of videos that have found their way into this house in my absence - last night it was Keeping the Faith. It was pleasant enough, but for one thing too long, and for another I fail to find Jenna Elfman the least bit interesting or charismatic, so that doesn't work so well. Ben Stiller has never been my favorite either, but he's growing on me a bit. This was a good role for him. He's actually better as a serious romantic character, he's just annoying when he tries to be funny.

I'm being shamefully non-proactive on the friend front. The only interaction so far has been the result of several phone calls from Jesse - he came over the other night along with Jon, Kelly and Michelle Accorso. A funny group, but that's how it goes these days. We sat around in the living room, searching for topics - music, school, um. Jesse's RZA album was on, and I entertained their request by playing some jazzy piano stuff over the top of one track (whose repeated (only?) lyric was "your ____ ain't shit, your ____ ain't shit..."). They looked through my CDs, which tends to make people uncomfortable. UB40. Hugs, and they took off. It was nice to see folks, you know, but I never had a real conversation with Kelly when we were in school together, so it's just sort of an odd game to do so now.

I Am the World Trade Center is/are playing at the Bug Jar tonight, and I'm sort of tempted to go, but not that much, and I probably won't. I am quite excited, though, about this Jazz Festival that we apparently have in Rochester now (look what happens when I leave town for a little while.) I'm impressed - they're getting lots of big names: Sonny Rollins, Aretha, MMW, Dr. John, the Rippingtons, Randy Brecker, and on and on. Best of all is there's a $25 "club pass" that gets you into a considerable number of the shows, including Brad Mehldau, Sun Ra Arkestra, Akira Tana, Dan Hicks, Jon Abercrombie, and somebody called Elephunk, among others. I'm down with that. Hopefully Joel will want to come up when that's going on - which would fit right in with the plan as I see it. If he ever responds to e-mail. Funny thing, I haven't been getting any real e-mail in the last few days, despite pending responses from Joel, Nori, Rebecca, Alyssa, and several others. Oh, look, Alyssa just wrote me back. A car, cool.

I'm listening to Spinner again. They're playing this Luna song a lot. And stuff. I made an orange cake last night, from a recipe in Moosewood. It's good - very moist and flavorful. It collapsed a little bit when I was unmolding it from the tube pan, but I kind of like the shape now, like a ruined citadel, something from an Escher print. Hey, hooray for summer. This isn't too bad!

it could have been real
it could have been off the hook now


Thursday, May 23

it feels better to be home than i had anticipated. really good in fact. i'll try to hang on to that and not slip into the typical summer boredom, at least for a while. for starters, it was absolutely gorgeous today. that was plain for the whole of the astoundingly scenic cross-state train route of the Empire service, but i felt it best getting off the train, mom and martha there to pick me up. luggage inside, i showed martha some pictures barefoot, helped mom give a dress consultation to julia walsh, sat on the swing. went out to the plum house (a ridiculous quantity of food - age tofu, nasushigi, wasabi shumai, ohitashi, bonito, tuna tataki, tamago, lots of rolls and sushi - left me once again over-full but happy), came back and watched a funny thing happened on the way to the forum - funny how the "period" emphasis of the film has shifted so now you're more conscious of it being a sixties' artifact than set in ancient rome. i went to bed at about 12:30 and only got up over twelve hours later, so i must have been tired.

i got about five hours the night before, but it was more than i had planned for: my alarm didn't go off (poetic irony or just bad luck?), but i luckily woke up at 8:30. too late to make the 8:40 train i had been shooting for (i wanted an extra two hours to finish packing stuff up, clean a bit, wash dishes, eat breakfast, etc.), but i managed to catch the 9:06, with a bit of scrambling. hurried down to the station as fast as my luggage would let me - my pack weighed 72 pounds (i measured it when i got home), and i was dragging a suitcase that was nearly as heavy, along with my computer pack, likewise overstuffed - gave up partway there and dropped the suitcase, dropped the pack at the station and went back for it just as the train was rolling in. i wouldn't have made it if not for a kindly conductor who waited for me as i lugged the suitcase back over as well. whew. sweating pretty hard there, and on no breakfast either. luckily i had filled my water bottle. i got my reserved ticket at the quicktrack machine quite efficiently, but somehow still managed to miss the 9:42 by about a minute. so i lugged the stuff back up the staircase, and fortunately ran into a red-cap who offered to cart it over across the station for me so i could catch a 9:55 to new york. good for that. i slept for most of the time on that train, which was luxuriously empty. and it turned out i had plenty of time (20 minutes) in penn station, which i just spent people-watching in the entrance to the seating area. managed to snag a seat to myself on the six-and-a-half-hour empire state train to rochester. so i was happy.

it really is a beautiful ride. the train follows the hudson the whole way up and over, and i just sat there and looked at the water in the sunshine for long stretches of the ride. i read 150 or so pages of Cloudsplitter (gripping, especially the bleeding Kansas stuff, which is where I am; and easy to get back into thanks to many passages where Owen reflects back on his life and enumerates the important events), slept for intermittent half-hours or so, constructed hopeful summer scenarios of convenient encounters and travel plans, devoured a much needed and not-too-awful lunch from the cafe car (green salad and raspberry-turkey-swiss sandwich). i read the spike piece about boredom (and the rest of the magazine as well - it's good reading, if largely not funny per se - i liked especially the conversation about the mütter museum and the p. hortense vroom story - also, i wonder what that vowel-grubbing laeona niaess would think if she saw that bit about her) but i didn't really feel bored, which i thought was impressive.

funny, i had felt a bit the prior day (this would be what, tuesday), as i was packing all day. not boredom maybe so much as panicky frustrated sadness, loneliness and yearning for something. packing, maybe, will do that to you. joel left in the mid-afternoon, taking rae and his receiver, and we were down to one-pair-of-speaker capacity. so we listened to the end of the alphabet (remain in light, twilight singers, vanderlice, lucinda williams - too sad sez nori so traded in for stevie wonder) trapped in my room, as i put things in boxes - so many boxes, so many things, and it just becomes arbitrary which goes where. the dust kicked up in the process made me teary too, which doesn't help. rebecca mentioned the low level of e-mail activity, and it was definitely evident. most of my my communications were disheartening - brigid stuck in an inhospitable home without use of computer or phone, and unreasonable punishing parents; edith headed for vermont too soon for us to consummate our theoretical friendship, amidst a rough patch that i don't even have the references to connect, and she'd already seen the movie - it broke her she says; pained business and infuriating inbox filler. somehow things all took a turn for the better after petar (my latest savior) came over to help drive the sealed and labeled boxes over to the banana house. it was a quick and painless process (amusingly one of the boxes started buzzing partway through), and joanne was there at the receiving end to help out too. then we turned to other things - white-tape initials on our foreheads, ice cream and undone macaroons, my house at montmartre and a visit from gabe. petar, becca, and i went to his gargantuan triple in roberts, shared for the summer with nick jarrèt and mawrter aaliyah (spelled?). the room is huge and white and biblical - the soundtrack changing too fast for me to realize it had switched from dancy idm to george michael to pachabel's cannon to califone to gregorian chant - for some reason i was enjoying the smell of cigarette smoke - coke from wine glasses and discussion of soda and ester and boucai and summer and fall and people i didn't know. i didn't talk much. becca and i climbed up to the loft and i stood posing for christlike photos, with leftover lacrosse stick. then back home, where nori was ripping my collection as fast as she could, i helped myself to some water-ice and malibu (mmm), conversation turned to metric units (as in poetry) and the microphones. and i turned in. (3:30?)

yes. well, as this entry loses its fluidity and the reverse-chronological artifice becomes apparent as that, i might as well recount a bit of monday too, and make it complete. readers (this is me addressing you, o-how-meta) may have noticed inactivity here lately, days left undescribed, a drop-off perhaps linkable to the discovery of the sproul parody site (have you seen it lately? his apparently random-entry-generator has gotten amazingly sophisticated. or maybe it's just standard, i don't know. it's funny though) - to his implied (and lately rather explicit) criticism of this site (or blogging in general?) as egotistical, self-centered, etc. it is that, arguably, but not necessarily in the ways he seems to be targeting. i mean, well, i'm not going to explain myself again right now. but. thanks to Eva Holman (senior, or whatever) for the e-mailed in vote of confidence and assurance that she likes this "because it is personal." i certainly don't intend to change my s.o.p. on this site in response to the parody. however, i have been thinking for a while of allowing more flexibility with the degree of detail in my self-coverage. just so as not to feel compelled to go back and write about events long-past, for continuity's sake. we'll see if i can really live up to that. i feel that summer may have more periods of less-noteworthy time anyway, as well as diminished computer access. and we'll see how much danny makes fun of me for writing long hours all the time. i still feel a desire to go back and write about some now-rather-distant events, specifically Worthstock and maybe the DisPlan show, because I think they're things I'll want to remember (and i do remember them, in fair detail, at this point, so good to record that.) that's what it's about. physical memory, a la alex timin, who carried around an elph to keep a photographic record to serve as a memory. of course i know the paradoxes and impossibility involved there. but this helps, truly, and i can recapture feelings with these details that more of a gloss might leave out. anyway. about monday.

what happened monday? i was returned, refreshed, rubin was around, recording (with mastaproduca joel) a funky "dress up" that veers wildly from our live version, makes perhaps too much use of protools and electribe gimmickry, but that's the fun of it, right? some very nice bits to it. they churned it out as a two-song cd, cover-art from my photo of rae + elena (aw, the girlfriends) at worthstock, b-sided with a retitled rupture-dynamics track (the evolved "cheat on your boyfriend for me"). meanwhile, I visited campus, not to get lost, but found Stef and Zabby (new name, coined completely spontaneously in a comment on her blog: bizzy, as in lizzy with an affected lazymouth, and ironic because it sounds like busy), and then Ali, but didn't really meet up with any of them again as we discussed. i prepared some corn and spinach/asparagus w/ stuff for dinner, augmented by rice and peanutsauce by becca, and later supplemented with some blue-corn nachos and a nice stiff gin-and-pineapple juice. there was an abortive diplomacy game (it sort of started out abortive), with Dan Shargel, a friend of his from Cornell (who knew Julian and reminded me of Anthony), me, Becca, bombastic-ridiculous Joel (as Germany with rapid-expansion 'blitzkrieg!') and latecomer Nori, but not exhausted Petar or scruffy Rubin (look - capital letters!). I had an easy time of it as England, since Andrew (the friend) made a tentative, unclear-on-the-rules France, and Russia and Germany (nori-o and joel-o) soon departed to pick up Rae from greyhound station. yeah. but it ended. oh well, some other time - it is a fun game, and good to play again.

these long-few-and-far-between entries mean not so many lyric quotes, so they're starting to stockpile now. i may write about events of last week soon, just to see if i can remember what happened. it's good memory exercise, fun for me too, you know? now i'll eat and play in the sunshine.

they say that i'll recover
my love of her
once in a while
but i don't know
i don't think so

Sunday, May 19

I'm back from Baltimore now. I spent the $63.75 on an Acela express ticket to Philly, subsidized with $25 from Gary Timin, in recompense for vagueries planning that meant I would likely miss the earlier cheaper train; travel options on a Sunday night are quite limited. And the next SEPTA to Swarthmore after I arrived at 30th Street at 9:40 was the 11:26, so I decided just to take a taxi here. It's only money after all. All roommates are here, as is Matt, whom I've not seen in a while. Food and alcohol are tempting, but I've eaten so much this weekend that I may cut myself off after this piece of mochi. It was a muted departure and only now, listening to and then nothing turned itself inside-out, a perfect happy-sad late-night album, does the emotion creep back in.

Emotions muted all weekend, by a stream of fabricated locales, backseats and public restrooms, generic experiences, polite detachedness, suburbia, a distant world from the one we left on Friday. Emotions gradually drain out after an initial burst; after inadequate sleep, last-minute conclusion paper-delayed start time, narrowly missed trains, misplaced credit card, it was all too much and Alyssa was in tears in the train station. The harrowing descent into the surreal reality: dream-like chance encounter with Tim S-W; crowded standing-room train sitdown standup to let people by; a boy fingering air guitar; taximan takes us for a ride but we arrive in Towson safely, more than eight hours after intended start time. Meet the parents. Mom (Carole) is terrifically warm, down-to-earth, plainly brilliant in a personable way; a intellectual without overt ties to academia, of the sort that makes me hopeful and happy; she reminds me (in appearance and otherwise) of Alex Omo and Nora Schey. Dad (Gary) matter-of-fact, bespectacled, is also extemely likable, if only slightly less so because of the way I find myself beginning to speak like him when I'm around - he makes frequent pithy, meticulous, detached, slightly sarcastic comments, often seemingly for his own benefit, which can come off as blasé and mildly huffy as well as considerably playful. Not particularly representative, but this stuck with me: "one may make the practical arrangements more easily than the emotional ones." I wasn't around long enough to really warm up to him, I think, but we had a good rapport going. G-ma (Laura) Jane is also plenty welcoming, reminds me more of Betts than of Delia (on the Grandma scale). Ken, her husband of fifteen years, suffers a severe hearing deficit that often relegates him to a Selsdon-Mowbray-esque comic relief role in family proceedings (one memorable moment in the mall after Carole had suggested we split into two groups: "maybe we should split into two groups," pitch perfect Selsdon or M. Smart); a frustrating state of being no doubt, but he seems to put a smiling face on it. He would periodically turn to me with quips like: "bet you didn't expect Baltimore could come up with such a wild bunch!" or "did they tell you about the oddball who married into the family?"

These four met us at Ken and Jane's Towson "Ivy Hall luxury apartment," the last private (that is, non-public) place we would see for a while. Even so, it had the same fabricated feel (immaculate retiree neatness, knick-knacks and afghans, Anne Murray on the stereo) as the string of suburban spaces that followed in the next two days: first the local mall, a veritable community center, home of the Italian Garden (eggplant/chicken parmigiana), then the Marriot Hunt Valley Inn (McCabe-esque handrails and cafeteria breakfast), BWI airport (to pick up shock-haired brother Alex, oddly reminiscent of mine, with a sort of constant surprised sunday comics expression and quick to chuckle and rib about working out with me), a highway-side cemetary (the graves of Maj. Milton J. Timin, with a star of david, and aunt Gay, with the puzzling epitaph "for those who love time is not"), Arundel Mills mall for lunch at Fuzio (pad thai and feta-tomato-basil focaccia, not half bad for mall food) and a stroll through the "neighborhoods," a cineplex for Spiderman (really enjoyable, exactly what I'd hoped for, with comfortingly predictable/smirkworthy conspicuous product placement/gratuitous wet tank top/patriotic Sept.11th bits; also a bit of nostalgia for me from my Marvel card days), Chi-Chis (mexican springrolls and quesadilla…), and Patrick's (a stripmall "fancy" restaurant, for the culminating lunch - um, see next sentence) - two long days of eating and sitting, in changing-but-identical suburban settings, interspersed with driving along the wooded highways of Maryland. So Patricks - we had the bizarre back room, an amalgam of decorating styles with hunting and bird sketches, military photos, porcelain gnomes, "hidden passageway" wood paneling, huge stained-glass ceiling light, and bookshelf wallpaper. A luncheon in honor of Gary and Carole's 25th, but no vegetarian options on the three-item menu; I had a surprisingly tasty shrimp salad platter (cole slaw, pasta salad, fruits and veggies) rather than filet mignon or chicken for (effectively) breakfast. There were about sixteen people there, including several distant relations that Alyssa had never met. So I didn't make great efforts to be sociable, just a few mild conversations about college/post-college. It was brilliant outside
(after delicious almond/lemon cream cake rolls) in the parking lot, lingertalking before we piled back in for a long drive into the city for the Walters, which has about tripled in size since I've been there. It's now much more the pma/mfa mold of big city art museum, rather than the quaint little gallery that Meredith and I saw about all of in an afternoon. A and I wandered through some assorted medieval and renaissance galleries, but hung out mostly in the Asian section - Thai buddhas, Chinese "pillows," Japanese ink paintings and ceramics, and especially tons of tiny intricate Japanese figurines and sword-hilt-pieces of amusing scenes "child frightened by mask" "snail on mushrooms" "rat eating fish head" "man fooled by dog-witch dressed as a woman of the court" "rabbit churning butter in the moon." Best of all were some incredibly evocative monochromatic paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi, a Danish artist whose works were somehow featured in an Impressionism exhibit, mostly of vacant interiors, occasionally populated with solitary contemplative figures - reminded Alyssa of Vermeer and me of Chris van Allsburg. Look at this "Four Rooms, Interior from
the Artist's Home." The Walters, of course, is directly adjacent to Peabody, the Washington Monument, that Indian place, the Meredith gallery, and all of these places I spent time at with Meredith, seems so long ago now. And so as we drove past them, strong emotional resonance - maybe I should have contacted her about meeting up this weekend, but I thought it would be a hassle + not to mention weird. As it turned out, maybe it would have worked; we could have met for dinner and avoided this silly business with the trains (albeit forgone the final meal, grandkids at grandmas, of canned tomato soup, mac+cheese, ice cream and cookies), which meant that cousin Jenny (mid-20s, loud and gregarious, very much a family member - she was the most enthusiastic proponent of a roomswitch subterfuge under-the-parents-noses that meant that Alyssa and I could watch Silence of the Lambs in solitude, for the price of a lazy morning switchback) did the awfully nice favor of driving me back in to the train station - another Meredith memory zone. I notice that she's back on the faculty list at HCSMF&I, so maybe I'll send her a birthday note there. That would be nice.

SO: a fine weekend, unemotional, only a brief chance to discuss "summer expectations" (seeing other people - sure, why not), plenty of fun in between snide glances at the suburban establishment, the as I said surreal reality. We left every restaurant full and irritated, and Alyssa thinks that's a fitting description for white America.

the hours will get you
the owls will get you
when I was a swear-word
the hours were shotguns

Friday, May 17

Whell. I'm still here at the barn, typing on Joel's computer because mine is in use - Alyssa is still working on her IT paper, whose unfinished state is the reason that we aren't rapidly approaching Baltimore right now. We'll get there, it will just take a bit of time. She came over last night (after midnight?) to deposit stuff, left promptly again to access paper from network, then returned and hung out at the party a bit and slept. She got up at 5 i guess but the paper's still not done. okay.

The party last night was fun, definitely a success, even though a lot of folks I was hoping to see didn't come. It was mostly Nori-folk, especially towards the beginning; her quintet members (inc. Camilla, such a belligerent drunk, she left without her shoes), Jack, Dan Blim, Paul, EJ, Olivia and Chris Keary (who asked me about WIWC and other music stuff) and so on. Brief cameos from Ben and Jedd. Elena, Jessie. Sarah Kelly showed up with a freshman Paul whom I'd never seen, and I didn't believe him when he said he was living in this apartment next year, but apparently it's true. Skelly urged me to come down for Newport folk festival this summer, which sounds like a fun time. Amy and her bf Johnny, whom we ran into in Genuardi's, were here for quite a while. And later on Jonah and Dan, who I had a good time talking to. Laurel, Claire, Jenny, Rae of course and Renee towards the end. Melanie, Dan Finkel (dance and aphex twin), Dan Sproul, (we briefly discussed his para(dy)site, he basically shrugged it off, ridiculous amount of work put in notwithstanding. anyway, yeah…) Come to think of it, almost none of my good friends showed up. Which is a shame, because I probably won't see a lot of them for a while.

Rebecca was mixing drinks like a fiend - everything I had was her handiwork, and it seemed like she was pretty much supplying the entire party as well. Lots of blenderwork, lots of alcohol. We had a sizable amount, and then we paid $25 for 2S's collection, which probably doubled it. And there's more left now than when we started. I drank: a strawberry dacquiri (in fancy glass), a jingle (my own concoction of ginger beer, creme de menthe, vodka, and lemon - it got highly mixed reviews from those brave enough to try it, comparisons to listerine and so forth, but I'm quite fond of it), the last half of Skelly's grasshopper, a piña colada, the bulk of Rae's margarita, and another jingle or so. That's quite a lot of alcohol. And I was certainly feeling it, but I wouldn't call myself positively drunk. I thought it was a pretty good effort. The food was terrific too: I made a ridiculous quantity of whipped cream, heavenly for dipping strawberries in - or Becca's pumpkin muffcakes (which Ben lauded before he left - "I think this is the perfect size and shape for a MUFFIN!!"), while Mark made some guacamole. There's still a ton of food left. Not so successful as a getting-rid-of-stuff party.

Our shopping trip had been delayed (working in haphazard reverse chronology here) by inertia and muffcakebaking, but we made a recycling run, then checked out the produce guy (closed again), and raided Genuardi's (in the meantime there was a phone call from Elaine Allard - what? what!?). Then Sharples for a fast dinner date with Alyssa, which turned out not to really be a date, but okay. She and Murrik the Mighty helped me move my drums to the basement of the banana house - cases out of lodge 2, drums out of the LPAC pit (they just told me I couldn't keep them there over the summer). I'm still missing my cracked ride and one mounted tom (with case) - hopefully they're just hidden in the pit somewhere. And then there's my accordion, which was locked in a cage, so I couldn't get at it. That was… a good use of time. I had then about a half hour before the party to clean my room double-speed, with Ben around, listening to the Biz on Byron, that track cracks me up every time (yo, his stuff is available on CD, check it out.) I had been cleaning/organizing/packing for most of the day. Much of the week actually. Man, I haven't written in a while. Clearly. Except it doesn't even seem like that long. Three full days I guess. Not too bad. I'll pack now, maybe write a bit more later. Oh, and I guess I never published this playlist from Monday.

you got what i need
but you say he's just a friend
but you say he's just a friend

Monday, May 13

Radio broadcast is nearly finished. Here's what was played:

do make say think - classic noodlanding; end of music
elvis presley - That's All Right, Mama

ELVIS COSTELLO - Welcome to the Working Week
Miracle Man
No Dancing
Blame it on Cain
Alison
Sneaky Feelings
(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
Less Than Zero
Mystery Dance
Pay it Back
I'm Not Angry
Waiting for the End of the World
Watching the Detectives

No Action
This Year's Girl
The Beat
Pump it Up
Little Triggers
You Belong to Me
Hand in Hand
(I Don't Want to Go To) Chelsea
Lip Service
Living in Paradise
Lipstick Vogue
Night Rally
Radio Radio

Accidents Will Happen
Senior Service
Oliver's Army
Big Boys
Green Shirt
Party Girl
Goon Squad
Busy Bodies
Sunday's Best
Moods for Moderns
Chemistry Class
Two Little Hitlers
(What's So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding?

Love for Tender
Opportunity
The Impostor
Secondary Modern
King Horse
Possession
Men Called Uncle
Clowntime is Over
New Amsterdam
High Fidelity
I Can't Stand Up (For Falling Down)
Black and White World
5ive Gears in Reverse
B Movie
Motel Matches
Human Touch
Beaten to the Punch
Temptation
I Stand Accused
Riot Act

Clubland
Lovers' Walk
You'll Never Be A Man
Pretty Words
Strict Time
Luxembourg
Watch Your Step
New Lace Sleeves
From a Whisper to a Scream
Different Finger
White Knuckles
Shot With His Own Gun
Fish ‘n' Chip Paper
Big Sister's Clothes

Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do)?
Sweet Dreams
Success
I'm Your Toy
Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
Brown to Blue
Good Year for the Roses
Sittin' and Thinkin'
Colour of the Blues
Too Far Gone
Honey Hush
How Much I Lied

Beyond Belief
Tears Before Bedtime
Shabby Doll
The Long Honeymoon
Man Out Of Time
Almost Blue
…And In Every Home
The Loved Ones
Human Hands
Kid About It
Little Savage
Boy With a Problem
Pidgin English
You Little Fool
Town Cryer

Let Them All Talk
Everyday I Write the Book
The Greatest Thing
The Element Within Her
Love Went Mad
Shipbuilding
TKO (Boxing Day)
Charm School
The Invisible Man
Mouth Almighty
King of Thieves
Pills and Soap
The World and his Wife

The Only Flame in Town
Home Truth
Room With No Number
Inch by Inch
Worthless Thing
Love Field
I Wanna Be Loved
The Comedians
Joe Porterhouse
Sour Milk-Cow Blues
The Great Unknown
The Deportees Club
Peace in Our Time

Brilliant Mistake
Lovable
Our Little Angel
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Glitter Gulch
Indoor Fireworks
Little Palaces
I'll Wear it Proudly
American Without Tears
Eisenhower Blues
Poisoned Rose
The Big Light
Jack of All Parades
Suit of Lights
Sleep of the Just

Uncomplicated
I Hope You're Happy Now
Tokyo Storm Warning
Home is Anywhere You Hang Your Head
I Want You
Honey Are You Straight or Are You Blind?
Blue Chair
Battered Old Bird
Crimes of Paris
Poor Napoleon
Next Time Round

…This Town…
Let Him Dangle
Deep Dark Truthful Mirror
Veronica
God's Comic
Chewing Gum
Stalin Malone
Satellite
Pads Paws and Claws
Baby Plays Around
Miss Macbeth
Any Kings Shilling
Coal Train Robberies
Last Boat Leaving

The Other Side of Summer
Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs are Taking Over)
How to Be Dumb
All Grown Up
Invasion Hit Parade
Harpies Bizarre
After the Fall
Georgie and her Rival
So Like Candy
Interlude: Couldn't Call it Unexpected No. 2
Playboy To A Man
Sweet Pear
Broken
Couldn't Call it Unexpected No. 4

Deliver Us
For Other Eyes
Swine
Expert Rites
Dead Letter
I Almost Had a Weakness
Why?
Who Do You Think You Are?
Taking My Life in your Hands
This Offer is Unrepeatable
Dear Sweet Filthy World
The Letter Home
Jacksons Monk and Rowe
This Sad Burlesque
Romeo's Seance
I Thought I'd Write to Juliet
Last Post
The First to Leave
Damnation's Cellar
The Birds Will Still Be Singing

Pony St.
Kinder Murder
13 Steps Lead Down
This is Hell
Clown Strike
You Tripped At Every Step
Still Too Soon to Know
20% Amnesia
Sulky Girl
London's Brilliant Parade
My Science Fiction Twin
Rocking Horse Road
Just About Glad
All the Rage
Favorite Hour

The Other End of the Telescope
Little Atoms
All This Useless Beauty
Complicated Shadows
Why Can't a Man Stand Alone
Distorted Angel
Shallow Grave
Poor Fractured Atlas
Starting to Come to Me
You Bowed Down
It's Time
I Want to Vanish

The Bridge I Burned
Almost Ideal Eyes

45
Spooky Girlfriend
Tear Off Your Own Head (It's a Doll Revolution)
When I Was Cruel No. 2
Soul for Hire
15 Petals
Tart
Dust 2…
Dissolve
Alibi
…Dust
Daddy Can I Turn This?
My Little Blue Window
Episode of Blonde
Radio Silence

ahem…

Yesterday was one of some emotional content, positive and negative. Not much in the morning - Mark came over to make guacamole, I played him Ming + FS, and then I met Alyssa at Sharples where I put up some of my flyers. We walked home and finally talked about stuff that had been in the air, not pronouncedly, but there. Her stuff. Our stuff too, but I feel largely passive in this; my role is to help find sense in her emotions, and determine what can be done, how we can think about things. Opening parry: i think i want to be single this summer. But it seems rather that we'll try something less drastic; as she phrased it oxymoronically, change our expectations and let things be what they are. How do I feel? Conflicted - on one hand terrifically affected, confused, hurt, uncertain, desperate, and I expressed (genuine) great emotional involvement - at the same time scarily willing for what comes, regardless, resigned, impassionedly indifferent. If we have always been about what's fun, easy, grounded, does that mean there can't be anything else? I don't believe so. It goes, it's okay.

I called my folks - for mothers day, and for logistics, which were less satisfactory; dad doesn't want to come pick me up, and i don't know how all of this is going to happen. Then to the Lodge (1) to meet some folks for dinner. Others were in the middle of exchanging words that rhyme with "kate" - three-syllable verbs to be specific. A foursome assembled, we headed across the fields of the adjacent lower school, making rapid progress towards Ali's car until we arrived at a chain fence. I hoisted myself across it without much trouble, as did Brigid once I lent her my shoes, and Elizabeth although she complained about pain from the wire. As for Stef, she mulled over it for a while, made a few abortive attempts, walked away to another part of the fence which was far more difficult to surmount, returned, and finally made it over when I suggested we pass her a writing desk that was inexplicably on our side of the fence, to use as a stepping platform. Problem-solving challenge number one for the evening accomplished, we got in the car and headed downtown, Brig meting out Fiona Apple and Jets to Brazil.

The vegan joint that was our destination turned out to be closed, as were the next five or six restaurants we tried. Wandering around aimlessly for several blocks, we eventually hit on the Taj Mahal Indian (duh) restaurant on Walnut, which strangely does not have a citysearch entry, but does have I think the best Indian food I've had in Philly - probably on par with the India House (my hometown favorite). And very similar. mmm mmm pakora/samosa/papadam sampler garlic naan onion kulcha aloo paratha lamb curry chicken tikka masala bartha palak paneer mango lassi rice mix it all together (well not the lassi.) We talked about various things, but I told a medium-length version of the Meredith story. It was raining when we left, drove home with only one missed exit, talking about sexuality labels, and so on, got back. The dinner was everything I had hoped for - just a decent chunk of time to really spend with those girls, and the positive goofy vibes were really there, in a way that maybe I haven't had much of for a while. That kind of love is maybe the best.

I tried to clean my room, managed to organize and throw out a lot of papers (including french detritus which I will be studying as soon as I'm done this), but Rae distracted me by dragging me downstairs to listen to Nina Simone and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. I brought the R. Dean Taylor single for her to play as well. And then I ended up playing her guitar and singing a bunch of things - the current state of the Jess/Dave and Liza/Alyssa songs, then "Angeles," "Little Palaces," "I'll Wear it Proudly," "Other End of the Telescope." Upstairs, "Beyond Belief" as well, and "Human Hands" on the piano, as we waited for Stef to arrive. Alyssa did, but no Stef for another hour, so we called and started the movie without her. miscommunication; she and Zab arrived not much later. Paris, Texas, only the first three-quarters (?) of which we watched (so far) is good. Recognizably German for all its monument valley stock-shots. Also recognizably Shepard. But not in a bad way. I want to know what happens next.

she looks like she learned to dance from a series of still pictures
she's madly excited now, she throws her hands up like a tulip
she looks like an illustration of a cocktail party
where cartoon bubbles burst in the air
champagne rolls off her tongue like a second language


Hello. It's 3:45 and we're nearing the end of Goodbye Cruel World, and the middle of the broadcast, if you count by number of albums rather than time. There was a flurry of activity a while back but it's settled down some (and started to rain). Calls from Duffy, Karl, Benj, Nori (thinking "Shot with his own gun" sounded like "Castle on a cloud") and visitors. Visits from Sydney, Alyssa (who brought a bagel and a pb+j and lemonade and raspberry drink) and Rae, who cut my hair in the rock library, very significantly shorter than it was. At first I liked it, and now I sometimes think it's too boring, but I'll either get to like it more or it will grow out. It's a good haircut though. Peter was here to copy a stack of discs, and Kate is in the back room making a mix tape. I've left the studio only a few times - to wet my hair, fetch and return a broom and dustpan, and to check my mail, which consisted of numerous CDs that I order, including two earlier Super Furry Animals albums and the rave-earning new Wilco. My addresses in between albums have been getting a bit longer, with general overall descriptions of the albums and how they fall in with the rest of his career. I really ought to start studying French, but I think I'll at least write about yesterday first, and maybe read some Spike. Okay.

my long baby has egyptian eyes
and a wicked look beyond compare

So I'm doing this perhaps preposterous thing of sitting here in the WSRN studio all day today, broadcasting and listening to Elvis Costello. Eighteen albums worth to be precise. The eighteen albums that count - that is, not Painted from Memory or (for god's sake) For the Stars, but including Juliet Letters and the covers albums. I'm up to "This Year's Girl" so far (chronological order - just albums.) I got off to a bit of a late start: I woke up in time, showered, gathered CDs and papers, ate some bad granola, and got to Parrish by about five of five. I struggled with the key for a few minutes, couldn't get the door open, and then tried the fire escape door to see if the studio window was openable. It was, and so I crawled in, but I stupidly let the door close behind me, thinking I'd be able to open the studio door from inside. Nope. So I was stuck in here without my CDs and stuff, since I'd left my backpack in the hallway. I called a few people before I reached Ali, who was up studying for chem. She came up and opened the door, and struggled with the key for a while too, as I started the broadcast.

I had been playing Do Make Say Think just for the sake of putting something on, but as soon as I got my CDs I switched to Elvis Presley, with "That's All Right, Mama" (his first recording.) And then Elvis proper. Started at about 9:14, which isn't too bad all things considered. So. Fourteen hours to go - and I have a lot to get accomplished: I'll blog about yesterday and Saturday in the space I conveniently left last night. And I'll write about last Saturday too - the day of Worthstock (goodness was it only a week ago?). And maybe the Saturday before that, which I also haven't discussed yet. That was the day of the DisPlan show. Beyond that, I will try to do a lot of studying for my French test tomorrow, and hopefully some pre-writing (or even actual writing?) for my Philosophy paper. (I need to let myself do that quickly. I don't care if it's good, it just needs to be over.) Other things to do: read Spike, get a haircut, catch up on e-mail, find out about airplanes and storage and make a plan of attack for leaving this place. And enjoy Elvis. man, he's so good…

Listen, if you're around Swarthmore today: listen to the radio! And call me: 610-328-8335. And above all come up and visit me. But above even that - listen to the radio. I'll be back to report again later on.

Look, this is a list of words that just occured to me spontaneously as I was thinking of words to fill in 25 fields at
this website. I really don't know where these words came from, except a couple from letters. I just typed them as I thought of them. And they alphabetized them for me:

1. beat
2. congress
3. conundrum
4. evolve
5. fortuitous
6. fromage
7. funnel
8. grail
9. leftovers
10. lengthy
11. linen
12. lycanthrope
13. machiotomy
14. pie
15. sinker
16. skunk
17. spelt
18. synchronic
19. thrift
20. thyroid
21. timber
22. topical
23. tungsten
24. undulate
25. yankee

don't act like you're above me
just look at your shoes

Sunday, May 12

Saturday I woke up at eleven-thirty and dawdled around the house, basking in lack of obligations, suffering from lack of energy. I walked to campus a bit before three to make flyers for my costellothon, but all the McCabe computers were taken, and Beardsley was locked due to a mishap, so I sat in Kohlberg reading Spike for a while. Then I went back to Beardsley and spent about an hour making a bunch of flyers; some with all of the album covers and the words "Elvis is King," some with all the album titles and dates and a footer of information, and two series of unique flyers - "fifteen hours of…[his various silly aliases]" and choice lyric quotes, all with the footer. They came out well. I was home again briefly, and then set out to put the flyers up and watch, no, check out, no, take part in, er, well, experience The Tall Green Man.

The story on this one: Morgan sent out an e-mail encouraging folks to come to the Rose Garden at five for the world premiere performance of The Tall Green Man featuring Jedd Cohen with anyone who shows up in supporting roles, and to bring props, costumes, and instruments. When I showed up, admittedly ten minutes late, with my wooden flute from Danny, and my colorful hippie frisbee hat (must have had it for about ten years, and it's still too big for me), and my posters for subsequent postering, I saw Morgan, but few others. Penny and Jeter (eh?) showed up, and Morgan left somewhat inexplicably. No Jedd. Sam and Lillie (sam and lillie!) wandered over to say hello, and after Maria and Louisa arrived, determined to perform, they got involved. M and L went to McCabe to take out two bibles (a Tanakh and a new testament), and stood on benches in the rose garden, selecting verses to read (alternately - they never read at the same time, which might have been nice). I started playing my flute, low long notes at first, then flutterier melodies, while S and L began to move - rolling around in the grass mostly, and spinning and walking. After a while I offered my flute to them; Sam took it and Lillie and I danced, not really playing off each other though. I gathered some rose petals and dropped them into her hair. At some point Liza showed up and moved around a little too. It was, okay. Would have been better with Jedd.

As I walked out of the garden a cluster of cars revealed one to be Mark's, containing him, Alyssa, and Laurel. They commanded me to get in and drove me off to a Hibachi restaurant in a strip mall, where we met John Stancato, Adrienne, Nadav, and Kiran Rikhye (spelled somehow) for basement sushi buffet. Not bad. All we could eat sushi, tempura, salad, noodles, seaweed salad, springrolls, banana cake, and so on, for maybe a bit more than necessary ($20). Interesting talk - lots of stories about parents (how they met, how they parent, their personal lives) and other people, summer theatre project seems like it will create plenty of drama (unintentional as well.) I didn't talk much, but I enjoyed myself. I requested Big Loada on the way home, and Mark obliged for some roof shaking good times. I came with him to Dana and then he came over briefly before we decided to go out again, to the vertigo-go show.

The show was in Palmer lounge, and, especially as we were a little bit late, it was predictably overcrowded. We managed to squeeze in the back way, me wedged next to a keg that nobody tapped while I was there, but someone must have earlier. The whole group, or at least many of them, were rather drunk, and that had a decidedly deletory effect on the humor. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't a very funny show in general. Okay, it was pretty bad. One of the best bits was Sam's confusion of fetishes for feta cheese. Ben and I hung around and tried to get the hammond working, which it sort of did. And then there was a Yale house party. That was really fun, actually, probably more than the others I've been to there. Very laid-back, decent but unintrusive food (chips, mints), music (Blondie, Smiths, Faces, Ozomatli, White Stripes - surprisingly free of Sproul's influence), and drinks (all I had was a piña colada mixed by Daniel - I would have liked to have more, but I didn't have the energy for it), and people. I spent most of the time in one-on-one conversations with various people - Alyssa for a while and interspersed, then Jenny Ku (about profs, classes, academia in general) and Lindsey Brin (freshman spiker, future parrish tripler, possessor of noteworthy hair, and enthusiastic outdoorsperson - we discussed the outdoors, our shared experiences including the Adirondack high peaks and Outward Bound courses, albeit at opposite ends of the country, and also Environmentalism and other forms of activism - I put forward the theory, admittedly something of a cop-out, that environmental activism, insofar as it is primarily concerned with problems for the ways they affect things that are not human, is something of a self-important, presumptious undertaking, assuming as it does that we are capable of changing the earth in a long-range sense. I've just come around over the years to the position that it's probably more important to look out for the interests of people before we turn to aiding the environment. A matter of picking ones battles. Just a thought though.) and also, for brief moments Gabe, Seanius, Sproul, Tiffany. There was some spirited twister featuring at one point seven members of Oscar and Emily, although by the time I got involved there was only enough interest for three player games: me Lindsey Mark, then me Lindsey Alyssa - I won both although Lindsey accused me of playing dirty. Well, yes, aggressively - strategy I gleaned from the danawell twister party last year. Then I hung (out) on the hammock with Alyssa. And we walked to ML, where Claire had some exciting news. And home - I considered following the yellow line on the carless late-night road under the train tracks. I wrote a bit when I was home, but not about all that.

I'll post this now, and write about yesterday (Sunday) afterwards.

how'd you
get your
teeth so
pearly

It's…late and getting later (3:41 now), but I'm feeling okay, so I think I'll just write this thing here and listen to this music. Right now it's Spiderland by Slint, which on first listen isn't as life-altering as all that, but is pretty nice I'll the same. I'm toying with the idea of opening up another album I just bought, Scott Walker's Tilt, and turning off the lights and listening to it, but I think I'll have to finish writing first, since I want to give it my full attention. Just look at what some folks at amazon have to say about it. Pretty intense. We'll see whether or not this is really the night for it. Ahhhhh. Funny that we spell relieved sighs "ahhh" and screams "aaaah," when it could conceivably work either way.

Where was I last? Oh yeah, I went to campus. Sat on the grass with Jenny and Stef and Al and others, and came home laden with material possessions: a roll of photos, including some of InFlight practice, Joel's birthday at TJs, me before Sager; and $200 dollars (I was going to get half of it in two fifties, and then give one each to Rae and Joel, but no), and Spike (x2) and the Slint thing and also Paul Simon's Hearts and Bones, which I have loved and not owned for too long, and also the comments from my jury, which were encouragingly quite positive, some almost glowing, only one critical (but in a constructive way) but markedly varied in what they mentioned. Amy came over pretty soon, as I was eating a mango-cream-cheese-bagel and talking to Joel about Paul and about him coming to Rochester before Ohio, and we chatted a bit about something, too long before we left; made dinner reservations and got inadequate driving directions. It was gorgeous and sunny, a perfect day for a drive except that driving's not as good as really being outside. We listened to the new Blackalicious, which is pretty silly but also good, as far as I can tell so far. It samples "Me and My Arrow" from "The Point," that children's thing from the 70s. Amy and I, it turns out, are both pretty incompetent with going places. No, actually I don't think I am, I just didn't realize that it would all have to be on me. Anyway. We got a late start and there was traffic and we missed an exit, so we would have got to the PMA at 5:30 or so and had to get to Chinatown by 6:30. So we decided to save Barnett Newman for another time (we're definitely going though - say if you're interested), and just to go to the park for a while instead. Fairmont Park, which is big and unkempt and sort of arbitrary, in the way that large urban parks seem to be. We just stopped the car somewhere and climbed up a path up a little hill that got us back to a road, and then we followed that past a sign about Daughters of American something, a pavilion (not a gazebo), and across a field with a horse and buggy to a little playground. We climbed on an unusual abstract concrete/ceramic jungle-gym thing and talked about childhood, or more about the future; relationships with siblings, post-graduation, marriage, clubbing, long-distance relationships (her bf, as she writes it, is in SF), and music. We made it to Chinatown without much fanfare, except an exciting moment on Callowhill, which switches the direction of its "one" way in the middle of the city, not in a very well marked way. And we even found a parking spot around the corner from Penang, and down the block from the Troc, but of course we had to walk around a few more blocks before I figured out that it really was on 10th even though I hadn't seen it.

Rae, Benjamin, and S?rah, Ben's friend from Bryn Mawr, were standing outside the restaurant. Our reservation for six got the five of us (no alyssa…) an eight-seater circular table which is hard to talk around - that's a problem with that place, because I've sat there before. Two meat-eaters and three veggies (a better ratio than I'm used to, mind), and I only ordered an appetizer (roti, mmm) and a dish (singapore rice noodles w/ etc. etc.) (oh, and a pineapple juice), and somehow there was just a ridiculous amount of food on the table. The vegetarians ordered three or four entrées to share, plus some soup that ended up being served to all of us. Yeah, basically there was way way too much food, and now there's a bag full of it in my fridge that could feed four for dinner, generously. I got an ABC for dessert, and tried to share it. (Not as good as chendol, but ok, i was just too full I think.) A nice talk about radio, I think, and other stuff, and R&B slow jams, which Sarah said are her favorite type of music.

We rushed over to get tickets, but it was hurry-up-and-wait, because the doors didn't even open until eight; we got in fine, and there was almost nobody there for the (first) opener, a long-haired mister Jeffrey Lewis (no relation to my first drum teacher of the same name) along with some friends, Abby the electric-drum-pad player with a striped sweater, a bassist, and a guy from a band called the guitar situation (good name). He sang cute songs, "Smiles Make People Happy" - but not cute like that, like a very cleverly written song about striking up a conversation with a girl on the street about a Leonard Cohen song about oral sex in the Chelsea Hotel, and the title track to his album "The last time I did acid I went insane." And a song about zombies - "shoot the head, kill the ghoul." We stood around talking about globalized hip hop culture, and what elements of it would be worth studying on a Watson, and Caitlin from bird class came over and said hello. Nicola Wells was there too. And there was a like 6'2" guy with white-blond hair and a leather jacket and sunglasses, who we called rockstar, behind us, talking about some video with Joy Division and New Order and using the word "fantabulous." We were right in front of the stage, but the Troc stage is so terribly high, and they had big monitor wedges that made it hard to see things. The second opener was Smokey (Hormel, guitarist from Beck's group, who was very clean-looking and hip and played classical-style) and Miho (Hatori, one of the most adorable performers I've seen), along with another singer (who I recognized from the CM show), a percussionist (who played loops, congas, and an awesome contraption of rototoms and mechanically controlled brushes that they called the tamba-rim tree, or something), and a red-haired guy who played fluegelhorn and alto horn. They played authentic bossa nova, including mostly pieces by Brazilian composers, as well as some slightly more modern-sounding stuff of their own. Really great. I would have bought their 5-song ep, but they wanted $10 for it. It's neat to see Yuka going off and doing her experimental-jazz-electro thing with Zorn's people, and Miho exploring this Brazilian thing.

It took quite a while for Cornershop to get on, but Alien Lanes was playing to keep us entertained (Love had been on earlier), and we crouched down and wondered about rockstar, as he talked about seeing the 'shop in Vegas, and waved to some of the bandmembers as they came on stage. They entered one by one as "Heavy Soup" played over the speakers, and joined in as best they could - normal-looking bassist; (obligatory) bald drummer, who was more animated than most of them; close-shaved lead guitar guy, who looked like Pete Townsend or the guy from New Order, and had his classic-rock blues hammer-ons note perfect; lengthy-haired third guitarist, who seemed somewhat superfluous except when he went to play the tamboura (maybe 1/3 of the songs) or the little Korg device that was too small to be a keyboard and was hard to determine which sounds were coming from; female sitarist, the only Indian member of the band besides Tjinder, and looked like she was pretty into the music, but she was practically hidden behind some amps; and then with utter lack of fanfare, Tjinder and a percussion got on stage last, at the same time. Tjinder (whose name rockstar pronounced "tuh-jinder" - that's not right, is it?) looked like the "cowboy indian elvis," as one of the girls said - complete with thick sideburns and a purple snap-shirt. He was the most uninspiring, lifeless, rather-be-anywhere-besides-here-on-stage frontman I've seen. Even Stephin Merrit made cocktail talk with the audience. Tjinder just stepped up to the mic, sang his piece (finely sung though it was), and stepped back, looking bored. I talked to rockstar afterwards (turns out he was just a big fan who'd seen them a bunch of times) he said that he's always that "laidback" was the word he used. So that wasn't what I had expected. Furthermore, they used a surprising amount of prerecorded material. I'm pretty sure that "Staging the Plaguing," their real "opener" after jamming on "Soup" for a while, had the record going in the background, and I thought I heard the childrens' voices. And they did things like play "Butter the Soul" by just playing the sample with scratching and everything. They didn't have anyone DJing, although according to the liner of When I was born Tjinder scratches. And the harmonium on "Sleep on the Left Side" was prerecorded. Sort of weird. Also, the set was quite short: only three tunes from the new album ("Rocky" was the closer, and "Spectral Mornings" the encore), just select highlights from the last one ("Good Shit" second, "Sleep," "We're in Yr Corner," "Norwegian Wood," penultimate "Brimful"), and "6am Jullander Shere," which was sort of fun. A lot of them sounded really similar - particularly "Spectral" like "Jullander" and "Rocky" like "Hong Kong Book of Kong Fu" or something - funny to think that they'd be moving back in the direction of the early stuff. Almost every song ended with two minutes of competent but fairly aimless jamming, which was starting to get old but was more fun after I started dancing more energetically (I stood beside rockstar and mimicked his movements along with him, and I think he was too oblivious to notice). They were sortof like hippies. Hey, it was fun, I had a good time, it just wasn't all I was expecting, you know. Rae really liked it.

After, we ran into a V2 street team merch guy who gave us Moby postcards and Elbow matchboxes and Mercury Rev tiny cds, and Sarah missed her train, and we went to a chinese restaurant to get scallion pancakes to kill the time, even though they weren't on the menu. They were crispy and chewy and duck sauce made them more dessertlike, along with tea and weird singalong Chinese theatrical karaoke thing on the TV. People ordered drinks because they felt bad that we weren't getting anything. We picked Nori up at the train station at 1:15. I was glad that I got shotgun, because we ended up in the car for nearly two hours before we got home. A bizarre insistence from the backseat drivers that we should follow 76 East in order to get West wound us up in New Jersey, driving around in a residential neighborhood in Camden. I switched from Blackalicious to Goldberg. We found a strategic place to make an illegal U-turn, which landed us back on 76 West, although we still had to pay a $3 toll. It was almost as difficult getting to Bryn Mawr to drop Sarah off. That took about an hour. St. Joseph's University? God. But we made it home. Okay.

I'm going to stop writing now.

Mar mar o’sharle(h)
Ekuh. Oshart mar mar
Mar mar o’sharle(h)
Ekuh. Oshart mar mar
Raja Rani, Ek kahani
Shorti o’shari mar
Eh mar mar o’shaaaaarrrlllllll
Shorti shorti o’shari mar — hanji

Friday, May 10

Enjoying it. Now there are two days to be written about, but it shouldn't take long because they were dominated by a monolithic activity. The funny thing about writing this paper is how little of a deal it was. I was anticipating big stress and unpleasantness, and maybe feelings of hopelessness and just lots of frustration. And it wasn't even that I sloughed it off. I guess I was expecting it to be a break from what stuff has been lately, of just letting things flow over me, taking care of each thing in turn in stride - that it would be actual work. But I never got worked up about it beforehand (which is always the worst part anyway), even though I perhaps got a late start (or maybe not); and the writing itself was fine, no problems with progress, despite lots of breaks, and like I said, it was mostly pretty enjoyable. And I got over three hours of sleep. And it ended up being 24 pages! I don't even feel like it was an accomplishment, though, because I just went and did it. Okay. How it should be.

I read the article some more, and thought about it I guess, but I didn't even start writing until four or five in the afternoon. I went to Lang at noon to see about juries, and signed up on the sheet which had miraculously reappeared (thanks to Nori) for the final slot at 2:20. I looked for a place to read, and ended up in Sharples (walked in the back and got yelled at, which I feel really bad about, but what can I do?) where I talked with Jedd and big and small music and performances. Of course the juries ran late, and I didn't play until maybe quarter of three. The Bach was decent until the last five or six measures, when I tripped up stupidly, a place I've never had problems with before. I got it back together for the ending, and I don't think it was too terrible - I didn't stop playing or anything, it was just the right hand melody alone for a bar or two. Bartók I was much happier with - it certainly wasn't flawless either, but I didn't flub anything too badly, and I think the dynamics and expressive content were pretty strong. I wasn't feeling very apprehensive, or much of anything, until right after, which is always kind of a disorienting thing.

The paper-writing hours that followed had a nice balance of work and play. Lots of chatting with Rebecca, Rae, Joel, who came in with his exciting new drum machine-sampler. Excellent dofoo stirfry dinner made by him and Michelle, my darjeeling-chai ice tea blend, and plenty of snacking - toast with peanut butter, etc. Ben was over for a while, fretting about housing for June, and made a sign on Joel's computer. I made myself a tasty spinach-bacon-salsa-cilantro omelet-thing fried in a pleasantly tender tortilla, at about 3 in the morning, in the Joel tradition of late-paper-night omelets. Lots of good working music: Preemptive Strike, Sway and King Tech (during dinner), Crooked Fingers, That Skinny Motherfucker…, Plaid, the Six Parts Seven, Hefner (the new one, which is actually not too bad), Califone (really getting into that), Ted Leo, Mic City Sons, Up, a four-song CD by Kent's old punk-ska-ish band (pretty decent), the Lilys (rock on), Jim O'Rourke, and On Avery Island, twice. That was part of the shipment from cheap-cds that arrived in the morning, that Nori plopped in my lap not long after my three-and-a-half hour sleeping break (five to eight:30). Yes yes, CDs! Stuff I'm really excited to explore: a Crystals best-of, the Mountain Goats' Coroner's Gambit, the new Blackalicious record (chosen over the old one on basis of price), the NMH, Bowie's Low (I remembered that Nick Lowe put out an "answer record" called Bowi - ha ha), Scott Walker's Tilt, and most excitingly (for now at least), the Uri Caine Ensemble's Goldberg Variations. This is an exquisitely packaged two-disc set of seventy new variations on the Goldberg aria, created and performed by an incredible assemblage of musicians in styles ranging from authentic baroque instrumentation, haunting choral pieces, contemporary classical compositions, all genres of jazz (some featuring Don Byron), techno, gospel, blues, spoken-word, far-out experimental stuff. It's really crazy to listen to all of those styles jammed up against each other, but somehow it really works. It's not just fun to listen to, it's really beautiful. Incredible. I'm so glad I decided to pick it up - I've been thinking about it for a long time now. Only downside so far: it's not the best working music (rather distracting).

The paper - it was largely a summary of this article that I read, with plenty of somewhat unfocused commentary, much of it in footnotes (microsoft word does weird thing to footnotes, and there was at least a chunk of one on nearly every page of the paper). I used some examples from the original paper, including the ones I mentioned before, as well as one of my other favorites:

(i) [Observing Ivan playing pretty good ragtime piano]
And he doesn’t even have a left hand!

But had more fun coming up with lots on my own, a couple of which involved people like Roger, Gene, and Sheila, but more often barnlife:

(12) [Rebecca observes Ross struggling to extricate a lid from a jar of Newman’s Own® medium chunky salsa. He finally gives up, and entreats her:]
* Maybe you can.

(24) I cleaned my plate, and Rebecca, the bathroom.
(25) [Ross cleans his plate]
Rebecca: *And I, the bathroom.

(28) [Nori buys yet another jar of Jif® peanut butter]
Rebecca and Ross: we don’t approve.

(17) [Upon discovering that there is no spinach in the fridge]
I don’t believe it!

there was also a fun sequence about making sag, a play on the author's name. Even my brother got in on the fun:

b. [Alex enters the cocktail party, removes some widgets and cogs from his pocket, and proceeds to tamper with them.]
Ross (by way of explanation): He’s a mechanical engineer.

Oh yes. I finished the summary/specific commentary part by about 2:30, and then wrote two more pages (1sp.) of general discussion, pitting this article against (markedly different) Chomsky-style theory, wherein I verged dangerously on just writing out all my frustrations with syntax in general. It's funny, in the course of writing the paper I first regained my enthusiasm for syntax, as I realized that I really liked the article for the intuitiveness of its argument, etc., and then I regained some of the disillusionment with the whole field that has been brewing in me all semester, after talking to Rebecca about grammaticality judgments, etc. But in general it was a nice way to end syntax for the year (or maybe forever).

The paper was done at four. Rae read it through ostensibly to proofread, but mostly to ask me about all the jargon she didn't understand; while I drew some trees on my homework redo, and danced to the Lilys. Then I rushed to Beardsley (having changed into fuzzy fleece grey sweatpants that morning, rather than the black linen dress slacks I'd had on all the day before; but still wearing the white ribbed-tee and again wearing the olive-green linen dress shirt I'd had on the day before for my jury - and with birkenstocks, and full fluffy hair that made me feel like I looked like someone else exciting and not so thin) to print out the paper (24 pages, complete with copious footnotes, out of the printer in under a minute, it seemed) and then to 3 and 5 Whittier to hand it in, only maybe 10 minutes late. Then to the Opera class scenes presentation, which was very amusing. Apparently I missed a Star Wars version of something, but I got to see Eden as forlorn Dido on her deathbed, Matt (introduced as both "scummy" and "studly") as the womanizing Duke from Rigoletto, who prefaced a nicely-executed quartet with a bit of Old 97's, and most bizarrely, Jackie as the leather-jacketed leader of a trio of witches/bad-asses, who screeched and drank Corona and pranced around made special effect baking soda smoke come out of a hat, before the whole class came in and pounded the chorus, meanwhile bashing cardboard boxes around the Presser room floor. It was most entertaining.

From there to the religion department picnic, where I succumbed to my substantial hunger by gnawing on a hamburger bun and devouring some vaguely disgusting thick bbq corn chips, but not getting a veggie burger. Alyssa was there, and Stef and Joel and Sydney and Alison, and I found out what Deutsch and Wallace look like and that one of them used to room with an ex-member of Tortoise, and the other one is concerned about delaying his five-year-old son's future encounters with alcohol. It was really pleasant I thought, and the weather was nicely cool and humid and grey - not extreme enough according to Stefanie, but interesting I thought. I didn't mention this before, but I wasn't invited to my own department picnic. Seriously - the only reason I knew it took place at all was that I happened to walk by it the other day and noticed that there were a bunch of art students and profs, and I hadn't even been notified. I'm not quite sure how to take that.

It took a while to leave religion - first someone had to talk to someone, then someone else to someone else, then me to Alison, and so on - but then Stef and lys and Joel and I tramped over to the barn. Rebecca's cousin was here, a truly impeccable 39-year-old, and we all listened to Goldberg and chatted and read poetry and prepared dinner. And then we ate it - hummus and rice and wine and veggies and more stuff, I don't know it just was tasty and made me full. And we ran off to Dan Blim's composition concert. Except I left after the first piece (albeit a 30-minute long classical music game/joke with a twelve-tone piece performed twelve times by Nori and D. January, with one fewer note each time, as they were voted off á la Survivor; very amusing, but would have worked better with a different piece I think) to see the new Woody Allen movie with Rae and Joel. In Bryn Mawr. What a terrible movie. I mean, it was fun to watch, but just because of Woody Allen. But two hours long, and preposterous, and bizarrely paced, with long boring routine stretches of the same gag, and then screwball plot twists that take a second to buy. Like the long-lost son character who's introduced in the final fifteen minutes; a pierced, blue-haired rockündroller who changed his name to Scumbag X, and waxes all sensitive-artist about eating rats. Yeah, it's silly. So that was a questionable decision, but at least I didn't miss Spiderman (Becca and Sarah didn't go after all, I guess) or Paris Texas (we were going to watch it, but Ben and Stef couldn't, and it was late when we got back anyway.

We got back at eleven thirty or something, and had cake, and a big old common-room fun talking time: Rebecca, Petar, Joel, Rae, Alyssa, me, Renee, Nori sometimes, and Sarah in the corner chair, alternately involved and bemused. I talked to her about music and art a bit, but we didn't get to play word games. The conversation somehow got very gossipy and noisy - Dingman!? Dremeaux!? break-ups! togethers! - and almost turned a bit nasty but not quite. Alyssa and I went to bed, and it wasn't even too late (2?) Yeah. I got up at 8:30 to go birding. I was late because of ambivalence over whether Nori was going to shower or not, and I ended up just leaving without showering, not running into Janet or anyone, but meeting a contractor who's going to replace the platform of the train trestle in the Crum. And I turned in my binoculars, dubnobass in the mailroom, which I was listening to until a minute ago. I went back to sleep for an hour. I'm going to the city for art and food and music with Amy and maybe others, later. But now I think I'll go back to campus for money and pictures. Yeah. Life is good, good, good. I'm listening to the Mountain Goats, and the drums just kicked in for the first time on the record, and it's track 15.

This morning I know who you are

Thursday, May 9

In celebration of the fact that I am well over halfway finished with my paper, with a little less than twelve hours to go before it comes due, I am going to bed. Fifteen pages, double-spaced with a ton of single-spaced footnotes. And you know what? I'm enjoying it.

your esses look like effes to me

Wednesday, May 8

I was unpleasantly reawoken this morning, an hour after Alyssa left, by Matt who understandably wanted me to come help move stuff in order to set up for a rehearsal since he had somewhere else to be between 10 and 11, and we were supposed to play at 11. But what was suposed to be a two hour rehearsal ended up taking five of my time, between 9:30 and 2:30, first hanging out waiting for equipment (and writing new lyrics about Jess and Dave in the meantime), then setting it up, learning Matt's new tune "Dress Up" (it's really great, and the arrangement is beginning to do it justice, although I'm still playing around with drum patterns - taking inspiration from early XTC and especially the Dismemberment Plan, specifically "Follow Through"), struggling with "Inflight Announcement," giving it up, and then finally setting on a six song set to run through. I do wish it hadn't taken so much time.

I came home rather than to Tarble for lunch, just a quesadilla and some m+c, with TimesMag articles, e-mail stuff, and a spot of work if I'm lucky. Back to Olde Club after a few hours to see Recexect, the all-star band of Corey, Erik, Dan Consiglio, Chris Conway, and Jason Skonnect-the-dots (as Tiffany says). They were as great as I had anticipated, mixing in spacey noise, post-rock, screamy punk, Caribbean textures, mechanical funk, and solid playing. Joel was inspired and awestruck in his typical way. I went to the library to do some work, ended up just snagging the '76 LI for personal use, re-read parts of it, and nearly fell asleep on the couch in the lounge. But I jumped up and went out, late for the beginning to the reading, but it time to hear a lot of poems by Keetje, and more importantly three by Alyssa. Not sure why she only did three - they were all from her Times headline series (but she didn't do my favorite, "When the Impostor tries to do the job in earnest.") I liked, especially, the last one about a self-immolating monk. I ran out after that, fifteen or twenty minutes late for our supposed start time.

It was possibly the roughest of Inflight shows yet - when I got in, Matt and Joel were duetting on "Bear Me in Mind," and the whole thing just felt unprofessional and sloppy. Which was the point, of course. Mostly, it was marred by technical problems - a lot of them: broken string, screwy bass-amp connection, mic troubles, balance issues. Musically it was fine, at times quite good - "Dress Up" came off pretty well, although it was a lot noisier and more menacing than it had been in practice. I felt pretty good about my two tunes, although some of the elements need to be more solidified. The audience, which was small but grew, was mostly established supporters, or rather people who had come to see the band after us. Two new faces in the front - Amanda Parrish and Amy Meek - were nice to see. Incidentally, since I or someone else might want to know this later, here are the setlists from all of the Inflight Rock Band shows so far, as best as I can remember:

Halloween Show, Olde Club, Oct. 2001 (opening for LTD?)
Inflight Announcement
Lullaby
Take-off
Radical Honesty

Rose Tattoo Cafe, Paces, March 2002 (opening for impromptu percussion jam)
Composition B with Blue
Lullaby
Metamorphosis
Rhymes with Queer
Save the Homosexuals
Radical Honesty (encore)

Swarthmore Fun Fair, the Ville, April 2002 (opening for 16 Feet)
Radical Honesty
Metamorphosis
Sex Digress
Lullaby
Composition B with Blue

Olde Club Show, April 2002 (opening for Detachment Kit/Dismemberment Plan)
Lullaby
Radical Honesty
Sex Digress
Radical Honesty, Part 2
Save the Homosexuals
Composition B with Blue

Worthstock Music Festival, Outside Olde Club, May 2002 (opening for Jim's Big Ego)
Composition B with Blue
Sex Digress
Take-off
Radical Honesty, Part 2
Shuffle and Bridge
Save the Homosexuals
Metamorphosis
Radical Honesty

Student Bands Concert, Olde Club, May 2002 (opening for the Enlightenment Project)
Dress Up (With Your Girlfriend)
Take-Off
Radical Honesty, Part 2
Shuffle and Bridge
Lullaby
Sex Digress

We've debuted at least one new song at every show. And there isn't a song that we've played at every show. It's been a very good year. We're trying to figure out about recording. Oh yeah, the band after us - it was Jessie Colman screaming like a girl-punker ought, Jonah Gold banging the drums, quite convincingly, with fish-cheeks and a SF Mime Troupe tee, and Kent Bassett banging out that poppy punk and jumping and thrashing himself around. They did three tunes, all covers (one of Bikini Kill, I'm not sure about the others), and were unanimously declared "cute." I'll concede that. It was fun.

I took off pretty soon afterwards, to Lodge 1 for a deviously plotted late surprise birthday party for Elizabeth (a funny sort of mirror image to the consipiracy against me). Nearly twenty people, almost all girls, and even more, apparently, femmes, crammed in the lodge, around in a circle. Rebecca aborted the name game for us, I rested on Stef's bed, and Zabby came in, suitably stunned and ecstatic. Good tiramisu and pineapple too. All the people you'd expect were there. I wonder how Ester would have felt - all her friends, but that sort of big group party atmosphere that she doesn't take too well to; and I was feeling it from her end this time. But it was fun; the first time I've even seen Zabby since her birthday, and a chance to talk to Brigid, in a refreshingly summery dress, somewhat reminiscent of Jamie Lee Curtis, what with hair and drapery. We talked about hanging in Cleveland this summer - I'm quite looking forward to it. Hopefully it will avoid those pesky tensions, and focus on the good ones. I started to head home, but thought I ought to go to Lang to sign up for a jury slot tomorrow. Except that they had taken the sign-up sheet down. Durnit. I guess I'll just have to go and ask for a time. I practiced again, at least. And pieced together ling stuff.

When I got home, talked with Joel (and Rae) about the show, and the band, and Cleveland, and then worked on my redo option HW for Ling (the Chomsky one, shawnuff), which I figure will probably contribute more to boosting my grade than a comparable amount of time working on this ominous paper. Hmm. I'm glad that it hasn't been causing me grief yet (even though that's because I've been putting off starting in earnest) - at the most, now, I'll only have between now and Thursday afternoon to fret and feel bad because of that nasty nasty linguistics. Perhaps I'll meet with Kari tomorrow to talk about stuff. In any case, I'd better get to sleep. It's ten of three. Yipes!

what went wrong, your grades were good
it would take a left-wing robin hood to pay for school
your dad's a boozer and you keep him alive

(i always think it's "an F-ing robin hood"