'i'll dig a tunnel, from my window to yours...'

i had the distinct pleasure of seeing the arcade fire live in d.c. at the 9:30 club last evening, and my lord did they rock. it was quite a spectacle- there were accordians and violins and plastic horns and members of the band climbing on amps and speakers and up onto the balcony to hit things with drumsticks, and everyone sang, and they paraded through the audience at the end...really incredible, the whole thing. they switched instruments on a song by song basis; it seemed the stage was constantly alive with movement and ingenuity. i am always excited to be in the presence of musicians who seem geniunely psyched to be on stage, and these guys were just going at it full force.

not to mention that their album, which is their first and is called funeral, is absolutely magnificent. from the mounting excitement of "neighborhood #1 (tunnels)" to the amped-up chanting of "rebellion(lies)" to the final eerie beauty of "in the backseat", it's a wild ride through a healthy spectrum of emotions, so zealously melodramatic that it's actually cathartic. win and regine's voices lilt this way and that through sweeping verses, one effortlessly complementing the other; the rest of the band backs them up with bursting, inspired choruses; it's just craziness. the best kind.

the camera wasn't working so well, so this isn't quite the picture to do the whole thing justice, but it will simply have to do.


the arcade fire...kickin' arse in d.c.


their tour is almost over, but i can't imagine it'll be long before they're out again. the band will be on conan o'brien sometime this week(perhaps tonight? oops.) "we're filling in for maroon5," win announced, and the audience laughed. "no, i'm fucking serious. they couldn't make it or something, so they called us. but we have to play maroon5 songs. that's the deal."

'let some mysterious chunk of space debris puncture the roof, and set me free'

winter and i have a love-hate relationship: i think it's pretty, it tries to kill me. every year. i usually make it through the holiday-related madness by applying liberal amounts of liquor to situations that might prove difficult, and then coast through the first half of january, temporarily placated by the calm that follows that chaos. however, the late january-into-february span inevitably manifests itself as an insidious, slow-motion slide on black ice, emotionally speaking, and all i can do is try like hell not to hit anything. some years, i get lucky. others, i wake up in late march, covered in scratches and bruises, and have to take comfort in the fact that i am still alive and kicking. i don't know how this year is going to go. that's the nature of it, really; there's no way to call it ahead of time. if anything, a false sense of security is the fastest way to sink the whole damn operation. it seems that the best thing to do, after twenty-eight years of trial and error, is to just keep my head down and hit the gas, and hope that my spinning tires will eventually gain enough traction to propel me into the springtime.

i wrote an essay on this topic. check it out here: http://amcircworksinprogress.blogspot.com

and for christ's sake, wear a coat. it's frickin' freezing out there.


charles is cold.

first list ever

there are great songs, there are songs, and then there are really, really bad songs. really bad. after prolonged exposure to a satellite radio channel dealing exclusively with the latter two categories, i have compiled a list of the three worst songs that i have ever heard. there may be worse songs, but i think i've managed to avoid them. and i'd like to keep it that way; these three are quite enough.

1. 'kiss from a rose' by seal. this is playing right now through enormous speakers, on a merry-go-round in hell.
2. 'what's up' by four non-blondes. this is a double whammy, as this band also happens to have one of the worst band names in history. this song does to me what mary hart's voice does to epileptics; sends me into a seizure. seriously. now that linda perry is all up in everyone's biz, writing songs for christina aguliera and gwen stefani and the like, i keep coming across her name in various magazine articles. it makes me twitch. sometimes i worry that she's just using these people, trying to find the perfect vehicle for the super-mecca-version of 'what's up', which she will use to bring about the end of humanity.
3. 'mmm,mmm,mmm,mmm' by the crash test dummies. they share the dual honor of horrific song/horrific band name with the non-blondes. incredibly inane lyrics sung as a dirge by the guy who plays the brother on 'everybody loves raymond'.

unfortunately, i've missed the season for listing the three worst christmas songs i've ever heard, but there's always next year, and amy grant isn't going anywhere.

ps- i dedicate this entry to jim hill, who has heard this list many, many more times than i'm sure he could've possibly cared to. and yet he continues to feign interest, and for that, he is the man. thanks for listening, jim.

an important conversation between siblings

the pacman code 

boomer5spd: i believe i have deciphered it
lolan27: what the hell is that
boomer5spd: the one to the left means poisonous
lolan27: k
boomer5spd: the middle one means flammable
lolan27: uh huh
boomer5spd: and i think the right one might mean child supervision
boomer5spd: but i dont know whats up with the eyebrows
lolan27: maybe the first one means only poisonous to pacman,when he's crying
boomer5spd: or maybe pacman is crying because he was poisoned?
lolan27: i think the eyebrows are baby hair
lolan27: yes, i would say that's probably why
lolan27: if i were pacman and i were poisoned, i would cry
boomer5spd: definitely a good reason to cry
boomer5spd: it proves even pacman crys sometimes
lolan27: it seems reasonable to expect that anything shaped like a cube might be poison, if you were pacman
lolan27: yes, pacman can cry
lolan27: when poisoned
lolan27: i really am partial to the fire guy.
lolan27: he looks cool
boomer5spd: i like his hair
lolan27: yeah man
lolan27: he seems allright with the whole thing
lolan27: unlike pacman, who is a sissy
boomer5spd: but fireman is frowning
boomer5spd: i think hes trying to tell us something
lolan27: yeah, but he ain't crying
lolan27: he's trying to tell us not to light our hair on fire
lolan27: cause it sucks
boomer5spd: ha
lolan27: but not to cry about it, cause that makes you look like a pussy
lolan27: like pacman
boomer5spd: pacman hates ghosts
lolan27: the adult supervision seems like a happy affair, however
boomer5spd: yea except for the brows
lolan27: it's hair
lolan27: i'm telling you
lolan27: the kind that no actual baby has, but which is always portrayed in artistic representations of babies
lolan27: where'd you get that, anyway?
boomer5spd: its instructions for a model of my car
lolan27: oh, boy. your car can poison pacman, dude. that's serious.
boomer5spd: sucks to be him

black sheep

everyone has that one member of his or her extended family who is constantly messing shit up. commonly referred to as the black sheep or the bad seed, this is the relative with the longest criminal record, the one who has occasionally fallen prey to pyramid schemes, drug abuse, bad debts, and general irresponsibility. he or she is always on the outs with one or all of the rest of the family, the bane on their existence, responsible for all of their appearances in small claims court after having recently stolen/borrowed/lost money for/on another ridiculously unsound investment.

this person comes in varying degrees, and some are far worse than others, but i’ve always had a small shred of sympathy toward uncle paul, who fills this role in my family. maybe it's because i've always been perplexed by how he became who he is, or maybe it’s because i sometimes feel precariously close to actually being him. although i’ve never gone to jail clad only in my underpants, or called any of my uncles “bitch” while destroying their property, it seems that in some distantly connected fashion, we are of a similar stripe. both our lives lack definition; i don’t really have a discernable career path and i’m absolutely useless with money. the credit bureaus have my name on a watch list that activates the black helicopters whenever i come within ten feet of one of those slide-your-card scanners. my sister, a biologist/chef/general macguyver-type, is light years away from this sort of ambiguity. she would have to fall off the bus and get run over by it to even approach the same highway that uncle paul and i call home.

therefore, i am left to wonder if i am only a few ill-placed drinks away from spray painting profanities on the wall of my brother’s rental property or dumping paint all over the inside of my mom’s garage in an angst filled rage. granted, i was in the cheap seats for all the juicy stuff that went on with uncle paul in my youth, but now that i’m trying to figure out what the hell i’m supposed to do with myself, i can, in an alternative universe sort of way, see where he was coming from all those years ago. and while i’m pretty sure i don’t share his methods, i certainly share his gene pool.

perhaps uncle paul didn’t think he would be that person either. this seems like the sort of thing that sneaks up on you, once you’ve assumed the role of the black sheep. despite the fact that i have yet to exhibit any volatile behavior, it’s disconcerting to think that i might be at risk of becoming the person who cultivates a sense of forboding in the guests at holiday gatherings, as they uneasily await my arrival. that someday i might find myself rambling through the front door of a relative’s house with my current boyfriend, who is in a work release program, and my kid from three boyfriends ago and then start shit with my sister for looking at my man in a manner i find demeaning and have a shouting match at the wet bar while making myself my sixth cocktail in a half an hour, which i will promptly smash, in order to use the broken glass as a weapon as i back out of the house with my posse, screaming slurred profanities at my horrified family members, who watch me go and breathe a sigh of relief when my car finally peals out of the driveway. good times!

like i said, i am not prone to particularly erratic behavior at present, unless you consider wearing legwarmers and spending the majority of my income on compact discs and late fees at the public library erratic, and if you do, fair enough. but that doesn’t mean i’m out of the woods. if anything, i’m only just now entering the danger zone. it’s all well and good at present, but looking ahead to the future, i’m just not that excited about all that time spent in court.

welcome to the commonwealth

it's been snowing in richmond, which means that the good people of my fair city and its environs are out crashing their cars into things. i bitch and moan all the time about how these folks can't drive, but check out this stat: on wednesday, we got approximately an inch of snow between the hours of 11am and 2pm. that day, there were 422 car accidents. that's four hundred and twenty two, for those in the back of the room. car accidents. were meteors falling from the sky and i just missed it? what is wrong with these people? i shudder to think what would happen if richmond got the kind of snowfall that occurs in my native new york. would people just implode, right there behind the wheel on i-95? i don't get it. this isn't south florida, where the appearance of snow might signal the apocolypse. it may not snow here a lot, but it snows. every year.

so it snowed again last night, which just cultivates a new bout of driving-related anxiety in me. it's difficult enough to have to drive on roads that the city refuses to sand, but more worriesome is the thought of all the people who are sharing those roads with me. my drive to work is just one long opportunity for some imbicile take me out, and i'm not looking forward to it.

as i mentioned, i grew up in new york, and one would think that moving from there to the south would have downgraded the percieved threat of sustaining physical injury while in public at least a little. i'm here to tell you that i've never in my life been so aware of its transience as in this crazy town. between the drivers and the popular tradition of randomly shooting off guns on holidays such as new years or the fourth of july, i feel i might need to be wrapped in nerf and given a military-issue helmet to move amongst these people without fearing for my life.

do you believe in something beautiful?

'then get up and be it.'

with all this inauguration nonsense in full swing, it's hard to keep the bad feelings i have lingering since nov. 2nd from rising up again in the back of my throat. i have a wicked case of george w. bush indigestion and i don't suspect it's going to go away any time soon.

however, listening to the new ted leo and the pharmacists album is lifting my spirits considerably. he's managed to write an album of protest songs for this exact minute, and they just rock so hard and have such an undeniably positive tone that they leave hopelessness in the dust. they make me want to drive really fast on my way to kick some republican ass. all this, and the most earnest falsetto i think i have ever heard.

pick your head up and get your brooding, sorry self a copy of shake the sheets. do it now, we've got four long years ahead of us.

the internet must die/long live the internet

i can't quite settle on why, but i've had this weird relationship with the internet ever since i was apprised of its existence way back in the early nineties. i use it all the time, for all manner of research and whatnot and i think it's just grand, but when it comes to actually infusing a part of myself into it, i've always been somewhat wary.

i could blather on endlessly regarding all the back and forth in my brain that it took to actually decide to do this, and if i wanted to blather, by god, this would be the spot for it. but whatever. it's boring. i'm going to blog now. that's all there is to it. from my brain to the electronic page with as little filter as possible. that's the goal. viva la revolution.

in addition to being a location for my random thoughts to languish in print, i will also(hopefully, if i can stop being such a baby about it) post some of the stuff that i am working on, as a passive aggressive way of offering it up for general consumption. feel free to tear my shit to shreds like a pack of wild jackals. any sort of feedback is certainly welcome.

note for the first transmission: i tend not to capitalize. this is not an attempt to align myself with ee cummings, simply a personal aesthetic preference.

should come as no surprise: the new nick cave double album abattoir blues/the lyre of orpheus kicks all sorts of ass.