heat strokes of genius

hello friends. i have been away for a hot minute, true, but it's been hot. for more than a minute. and it makes me not want to do anything.

while i have been off trying to sit absolutely still while eyeing the air conditioner longingly and contemplating whether i should just turn it on and leave it on all summer, there has been quite a bit going on. especially in sports, where, if you haven't figured it out by now, i usually focus the majority of my attention. with the way the world has turned, i think this is a pretty permanent condition. i sure as hell ain't going to spend too much time on politics, the whole lot of it makes me ill. less out of partisan desire and more because it would be hilarious, i would like it if al gore just turned into some sort of eco-godzilla and swallowed up the competition, won the white house, filled it with crazy, eco-guerillas and that's what the u.s. became known for. we could shift the entire focus of our operation away from trying to fight a holy war in the middle east and just become this exceptionally well-funded army of eco-fighters, going around the world trying to stop global warming and conquering nations that refuse to drive hybrid cars. it would be just as obnoxious, but it would mix things up a bit. oh, and we could affix the "eco-" to everything. we could be "eco-citizens" of an "eco-nation", and on and on...that would keep the msnbcs and fox news people happy. they love monikers, and it would give them new things to make graphics for. yay!

oh, right. sports. so, the big news of the day concerns the following:

michael vick and dogfighting. which i have no doubt he is/was heavily involved in, and which makes me want to vomit, and which makes me sad, 'cause i liked watching michael vick play(even though he wasn't doing too much in that department of late) and now i have to hate him. dumb ass.

a rod and strippers in canada that look like zap from american gladiators.

thank god for google images. they make finding american gladiators cast pictures possible, and i salute them. ok. here's what i'm saying: if you want to chill with zap, or lazer, or whoever you have there, fine. but have you heard of the offseason? what about being 34 games back? have you heard about that? what about your job? new york yankees? third base? ring any bells? can we fuck strippers in the offseason please? unless we are rocking it out and leading the al east and clinching the division and telling all the other (boston redsox) motherfuckers to step off? 'cause last time i checked, that's not what we are doing. by any means. what we are doing is having our worst season since 1995. and we are on our way to having our worst season since 1993. and i do not like the words "worst" and "season" together. at all. and while we are having the worst season ever, i would appreciate it if you didn't show up on the back of the new york post in pictures taken in the wee hours of the morning of you with a stripper going to your hotel when you have a game the next day! is that too much to ask? i just paid 150 for two tickets to watch y'all lose this past sunday. i don't think that is too much to ask.

whew.

finally, we have this: mark cuban, who might think of focusing on the mav's and their spectacular meltdown in round one of this years nba playoffs, is instead drowning his sorrows in this atrocious idea: a football league to compete with the nfl.

a few things immediately come to mind. such as, was mark cuban in a coma for the three months that the xfl lasted in 2001? perhaps. but more importantly, i would like to know why anyone in their right mind would think there could be competition with the nfl when the league cuban is proposing would only be able to pick up draftees from the second round and beyond. that's like saying the nba d-league is poised to compete with the nba. as far as i can discern from the article, cubes thinks that having the games on friday nights will make the difference. the nfl doesn't have games on friday nights because of potential conflict with high school football. listen up, mark cuban. cause i have a feeling high school football generates far more interest than will your xfl redux. and you won't even have "he hate me".

god, it's hot in here. i'm out. and remember: "eco-" is the new "freedom".

more shuffle.

i need something to do while i drink my coffee and get ready for the shopping madness i am about to undertake, so i am shuffling the i-pod again and discussing. shuffle. discuss. repeat.

also, while i'm thinking of it, i just want to take a moment and say happy birthday to alec ali baba, who i love very much and who just had a birthday on the 22nd. happy birthday, lady. and remember the big table people? and gloom and doom? i thought of them the other day.

anyhow, here's the ipod on shuffle:

the moldy peaches: downloading porn with dave- certainly a weird song, but how cute is kimya dawson? i mean, really...

jonny greenwood: nudnik headache- this is one of those things that i don't really know is on my ipod till i hear it, and then i am not quite sure exactly how it got there... this song is comprised of a lot of sounds, no words and a drip noise that sounds like it was recorded in a leaky moldy old basement. but not the moldy peaches old basement.

david byrne: pirates- i love david byrne. his songs are so funky, and he makes his voice like an instrument. i personally think of something stringed. a viola maybe? this song is fun. about pirates.

diskothi-q: cowboys- diskothi-q is the super low fi alter ego of peter hughes, and a few years ago he wrote two albums, one each about each conference in the nfl. and every song is about a different team. some of them are fucking hilarious: namely the saints, the packers, the falcons, the redskins, the st. louis rams... and actually this one is pretty rockin' too. "if you only understood how rare and brief and precious is this moment, then you'd work harder..."

sahara hotnights: mind over matter- i don't listen to sahara hotnights enough. they're good. i just don't ever think of them. probably cause they're not necessarily a compelling band, but they do play good, solid, rock and roll and they're hot chicks. so i should listen to them, or at least put them on playlists for work and stuff.

john vanderslice: underneath the leaves- john vanderslice and scott solter are geniuses. end of story. this song is a very good illustration of that genius. if i were writing an essay on the genius of john vanderslice and scott solter i would use this song as an example and then follow it with sentances that support that statement. but right now, i'm just going to tell you that it's really fucking good.

the mountain goats: hellhound on my trail- look, the smart little ipod knew that jv and jd are friends and wanted to be shuffled together. this thing is super smart. i love the mountain goats. favorite band ever, easy. and jd is my favorite person i don't know ever, no doubt. and this song, from this album is early mg's back when it was just jd and the panasonic boombox. there's a hellhound on his trail, ladies and gents, and he's gotta keep moving. obviously.

damien rice: volcano- i assume that everyone picked up the damien rice album, cause that's the smart thing to do, but if for some reason you were out of town or in the hospital or something, you should take your ass to itunes or wherever you buy your music and pick up "O". just about all of his songs are seductive, sultry odes to lost loves or people who fucked up real bad, and his stylized approach make it seem like it's not so bad to writhe around on the floor and be miserable. his voice is amazing, and he has a lady friend adding breathy backing vocals... it's an amazing album and i rediscover my love for it often. other standout songs include "jolene", "cold water" and "delicate". of course there is "the blower's daughter" which, for those of you who have seen closer, know as the best use of a song in a movie possibly ever.


jay-z: can't knock the hustle- oh, reasonable doubt... jigga back when he was so young you could hear it in his voice, his first song off his first album ever. the incomparable mary j. blige is his backup vocal on this one...can you imagine? her voice is gritty and hungry, not the polished version we know today. one of my favorite lines "my pops knew exactly what he did when he made me, tried to get a nut, and he got a nut and what?" listening to this, you can basically forget that kingdom come ever came out... jay-z is still retired, best rapper alive.

pavement: summer babe(winter version)- holy crap, this is one of those songs that i can still smell and feel the way i did when i first heard it, just by hearing it. i was so young then... that's the overwhelming sensory indication: youth. i was a junior in high school maybe? this is a great song, one of pavement's earliest and best, and like the mountain goats, pavement is one of my long-standing favorite bands. i will always have a place in my heart and mind for the pave. it's really amazing though, how this song can bring me back to my high school bedroom, with its white shag carpet, and purple walls...and the way i felt then, a mixture of fear overwhelming tinged with the sense of invincabilty that is really only possible when one is that young and inexperienced in all things life.

kanye west: get 'em high- kanye rules, it's just that simple. i was on the train yesterday listening to grave shift, which is a great song too and i realized how glad i am that kanye west is in the world and making music. awww...makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

the decemberists: we both go down together- these folks maybe should have been around in another era, when epic poetry and sea shantys were the thing, but i for one am sure happy that they are around now. adjectives that come to mind when i think of the decemberists are: grand, dramatic, sweeping, tragic... there's always something major going down, together...

ok, coffee's finished, gots to run off to buy things in the captial of the whole entire world, new york city... xo

screwed by the nba

this is my second full year as a viewer and fan of the nba, and unfortunately, i am starting to know the frustration that the sports guy(arguably the biggest nba fan ever) has expressed for years about the league and its practices. and it sucks, because i really fucking like basketball, especially pro basketball(although i can't deny college hoops by any means, i am just slightly less attached since i don't really have a team affiliation-of my own, anyhow) and, having identified myself last year as a suns fan, i am in the phase where i am becoming emotionally attached to their successes and failures, and more importantly, to any slights and injustices against them.

for the story, i can simply refer you to the aforementioned sports guy, who really summed all this up perfectly, as usual. i watched last nights game, and the suns really had that game won for most of it; perhaps it's necessary to look at the fact that raja's shots just were not falling and even nash was struggling to make shots, although he was still really effective in assisting an on- fire shawn marion. in the first half, kurt thomas successfully guarded tim duncan and committed only one foul! we still grinding it out against the freaking spurs, up as much as sixteen at some points, all the while missing two critical players. TWO critical players, who, in a game we essentially lost by one point, would have arguably made the difference, and they were out for a BOGUS FUCKING REASON.

i really felt that frustration. this was our season. this IS OUR SEASON. i would love to say that we are still gonna win, and i hope we do, but steve nash played like seven hundred minutes last night, and as you can read in the sports guy article, he has already given three hundred percent this series... it's gonna be rough. AND IT'S UNNECESSARY, if the nba hadn't fucked this all up rule-wise and suspension-wise. it's bullshit.

and i sat there last night as i watched my team claw their way through the fourth quarter, maintaining the lead and then losing it to a tie for the final minutes, i thought, this is it. this is so fucking FRUSTRATING. because it would be one thing if my team were out there losing with their full staff, for their own reasons, but they lost because the skeleton crew that the nba forced us to play with couldn't hang on in those last moments.

a few images in particular stick out in my mind, in the fourth, right when the struggling was really starting, i could see the fatigue in steve nash as he just kept trying and trying...i mean this dude has had his nose split wide open, been battling back issues, gotten knocked all over the court, kneed in the sack by douchebag bruce bowen...but anyhow he tried one of his signature steve nash passes to kurt thomas who missed it, and then as they were running back up the court, he caught up with thomas who was shaking his head and cursing himself out and nash put his hand on his head and told him don't worry about it... it was touching. i know, i'm a fucking sap, but i really felt for these guys last night. i guess that's because i am a fan of their team. but i know they really gave it everything- it's not like we got steamrolled off the court by the spurs. we made them work for it, and then when they win they say shit like "well that's what bruce does" about bowen's late game three. yes i think we all know what BRUCE DOES, and it involves kneeing my point guard in the sack! ugh. i'm not even going into it. i'm mad.

in those last few minutes, i kept having to change the channel, i was watching the cosby show of all things, just to calm my nerves, because i was SO FRUSTRATED. and it wasn't the kind of frustration where your team loses and you are upset and frustrated because they blew it. it was the kind of frustrated where someone ties two of your players hands behind their backs and then sends you out there, all while you are left to bounce off the walls and think of how unnecessary and fucked up that is.

shawn marion, who had a stellar game last night, summed it up: "we left it on the floor. what more can you ask of this team?"

read the sports guy's column

from the vault.

i spent part of today reading through some old journals, because they're fucking great. aside from registering about 1 trillion on the amusement scale, it is also amazing to see how my voice has changed over the years, and how different i am, yet fundamentally the same, in all those inceptions of me. when i first started writing a journal way back in the tenth grade, i thought about what it would be like to be able to read about myself in years to come. i had no idea how valuable it would be, both in the present as a therapeutic tool, and in retrospect as a remembrance of my past. good shit.

anyhow, i had to post this, because it is hysterical, and at 31 i can certainly laugh at my sixteen-year-old self. it's really sweet to see what i thought of myself and my present and my future back then...

in july of 1993, i compiled a list in my journal of men i loved, all of them famous and impossible to attain(for various reasons, as you will soon see, some of them far more daunting than just fame) which was both a reflection of my love of making lists and my romantic and very unrealistic personal dreamworld. my life at that point was lived mostly in my head, and i denied myself little within it's confines, which again is very sweet and endearing of me to me.

i present to you my top ten:

10. Kevin McDonald: my favorite Kid In The Hall, a show i was utterly in love with at the time(and still am). I just saw Brain Candy last night, actually and I can assure you that I am probably the only 16 year old girl to ever drool over this man, who is skinny, pasty and has a penchant for cross-dressing. obviously, it was a cerebral thing.

9.Ice-T: I loved me some Ice-T, yo. I really didn't remember this, but he shows up in my diaries a LOT, mostly in quote form(so get your mind out of the gutter). i know that i did think that he had massive amounts of integrity, although i have no idea if i had any basis for than other than some stuff i read about him in magazines and that whole time warner thing. again, i'm not sure Ice was so much of a heartthrob, to anyone but me...

8.Michael Stipe: are you starting to notice a theme here? not exactly tiger beat material, my list. in my journal i actually made a note of the fact that i didn't care if he was 95 pounds and had a crater face. did i care that he was interested in men? not sure.

7.Eddie Vedder: here you go. this one is fairly obvious. he has all the things that would drive a 16 year old girl into a pubescent lustful frenzy...baby face, nice hair, flannel, a band, and for the more discerning teens such as myself, a buttload of social conscience and that coveted integrity. i was so serious back then...

6.Henry Rollins: i loved hank. LOVED HIM. this was before he was all over MTV like a jackass, but he was probably on his way there already, i just didn't see it. again, i just though he was the bees knees for all that powerful talking he did. by that equation i probably should have been infatuated with that tony rich dude, but i liked me some boys in bands. i remember my sister and i broke all the rules and unlocked the parental controls on our cable box(don't even fucking ask, dude. that is an entire post or twelve unto itself) in order to watch hank's first MTV special spoken word thing. yes, that was how i got myself in trouble in my youth, attempting to watch/listen to artists express themselves. my family was fucked.

5.Warren Zevon: again, i would have sold my soul to the devil to have Warren, who was like fifty years old at this point, stop by my parents house and ask for my hand in marriage. i would have dropped everything and taken up with the man who wrote "lawyers guns and money" and "excitable boy". i was a weird fucking girl.

4.Lou Reed: eloquent? check. intelligent? check. socially conscious? check. crater face? check. fifty years old? check. musician? check.

3.Lou Barlow: my original indie-rock crush. i figured lou and i had a ton in common: we were both quiet and unpopular and liked songs about love and being quiet and unpopular. and he wore glasses, appeared to shun bathing and drew pictures and stuff; apparently all this was grounds for attraction.

2.Michael Penn: i had a thing for this dude for years...sean's brother who enjoyed moderate success as, you guessed it, a musician. he fit all the criteria...arcane lyrics, relatively unknown, way the fuck older than me...

1.Here it is, your moment of Zen.... MORRISSEY.

that's right, readers. i was head over heels for a 40 year old gay, celibate, severely depressed englishman, who wrote songs called "heaven knows i'm miserable now" and "the boy with the thorn in his side" and i fantasized about the day that someone, hopefully morrissey himself would act out the lyrics to "there is a light that never goes out" at which point i would melt down to a puddle and no longer need anything from this cursed world.

too funny. you can thank me later, friends, for sharing this with you. to summarize, i apparently liked my men to have bad skin and longish hair, and if at all possible, to be gay and old enough to be my grandfather. needless to say, i didn't see a lot of action back then.


*******update**********

i figured i would add a few who were on the list (it was 33 people long-i told you i had no life) but didn't make the coveted top ten:

at #12, falling right into the profile: tom petty
at #15, naturally, trent reznor. two words: leather pants.
at #16, paul westerberg, who i still have a crush on.
at#20, elvis costello. diana krall wound up getting him, that bitch.
at #18, spike jonze, back when he had yet to become an acclaimed director and was just a skater boy with, you guessed it...bad skin
at #25, perry farrell. more gender-bending.
at #27, dave letterman. come on. he's still foxy at 100.
at #29, bob mould. another unlikely teen crush, to understate it greatly.
and finally, at #33...stewart copland. he weighed 75 pounds, had farrah fawcett hair and a.d.h.d., and obviously kept time behind sting when he was still(arguably) cool. perfect.

outstanding achievement in the field of excellence

oh boy! it's monday, which has become my day off and which is super awesome because monday is the best day to have off that isn't a weekend. i think the reason why is obvious.

better than that even is the fact that Roger Fucking Clemens is set to make his return to the bronx. ASK ABOUT IT! in actuality, rocket is just doing what he always does, which is being a princess, but he is a multiple-cy-young-winning princess, so fuck that! welcome back, rocket! please don't hurt yourself.

in other news, yesterday was charles williams iii and my ONE YEAR NY ANNIVERSARY. we made it. we did it. we're awesome.

it really feels amazing to sit here and look back on the past year and really have a sense of accomplishment. we have done an excellent job with limited means and in a place that can certainly eat you alive if you falter, but we have embraced it and loved it and it has loved us back and now we are just one big happy family. me, cw and nyc.

i am being driven half-mad with pop song love over ne-yo's "because of you"... damn you, ne-yo! damn you and your delicious pop-r&b goodness... it drives me crazy. in a good, booty shakin' way, of course.

oh, and nba-wise, i am going with golden state vs. those utah jazz motherfuckers. no matter what stephen a. says.

los jankees and other stories.

whew! it's been an exciting few days in sports... my yanks have finally stopped the bleeding and have a few more W's on the board, moving out of last place to give the rightful owners, the baltimore orioles, their slot back. our rookie, phil "baseball jesus" hughes, was on his way to tossing a no-no when he pulled a hammy on tuesday. now, most would look to the hamstring and say this is a bad thing. i'm looking at what we have to look forward to when he comes off the dl in four to six weeks. it's going to be some sick shit good.

on top of that, it's nba playoff time, and we already have a major upset in the first round, as golden state took down the mavs, previously thought to be beyond reproach. the bulls also took out the defending champion heat, but this mavs-golden state thing is a bit bigger. mark cuban is trashing his half-empty mansion right now, no doubt.

dude. i don't know what that guy is thinking. cubes could totally turn around and kirk out on him at any second. he crazy!!!!!!!!!!

golden state! holy crap. this could get really interesting. especially when and if it comes to a phx/golden state matchup.

i kinda feel bad for mark cuban. we rock the same sneakers, which kinda makes us friends.

speaking of famous friends, charles saw jay-z yesterday, when jigga CAME TO THE BUILDING HE WORKS IN. i give my man a ton of credit, cause i would probably have managed to get myself fired while simultaneously being detained for stalking jay-z by his gigantic bodyguard. charles held it together and merely watched from a fourth-floor window as jay exited the building and took off in his maybach. damn.