Will you just tell me how many times I have to ask before you say yes? I can ask that many times.

Today I’ve totally been cranking on [Untitled] by the great Neutral Milk Hotel. Go listen to it right now.

<two minute sixteen second pause>

Ok, see? Now don’t you feel better. I know I do. Last night went to see Morrissey and within 90 seconds of sitting down in my terribly comfy chair, I got a call from work and had to go back in. Spent the next several hours in the office, and when I got home, discovered he had played one of my all time favorite Smiths songs, ‘The Death of a Disco Dancer’ from the wildly underrated final album, ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’.

This being the third time I’ve had tickets to see the man, I was more than a little bummed. Of course, two large bottles of Bass seemed to clear that up quickly, or at least, knock me out sufficiently that I didn’t mind quite so much

Have discovered the joy of podcasts (thanks Will) and have been sort of freaking out a lot on the Ricky Gervais set of podcasts. If you haven’t heard it, download it and listen. Anyway, I’ve discovered that I actually agree with too much of Karl Pilkington to really be comfortable. Also, when I’m iming now, I do it in the voice of Stephen Merchant. Interestingly, Ricky Gervais is by far the least interesting part of experience, and in someways detracts from it.

Also discovered Sound Opinions, a weekly talk show about music from Chicago public radio. It’s quite good. I don’t always agree with the fellows, but it’s a very well done show, so that’s nice.

Lastly, as a Halloween treat, you should listen to Jonathan Coulton’s ‘Re: Your Brains‘. Great song about zombies, and god knows we need more of those.

Round up of search terms that brought people here in the last couple of days:

‘jasper johns’, ‘door knocking’, ‘cool kegerator’, ’sister friend forever’, ‘my brother f*cked me’, and this week’s best, ‘massive hamper‘

Soundtrack while writing today:

Re: Your Brains - Jonathan Coulton
Death of a Disco Dancer, Paint a Vulgar Picture - The Smiths
[Untitled] - Neutral Milk Hotel

Cheers.

It was the blurst of times, or, The Joy of Comix

Today I thought it would be nice to partake in my favorite weekend combo of record and comic shopping. And since I’m in Boston right now, it seemed right to go hit up some of my favorite old haunts. I lived in Boston from the Spring of 97 through the fall of ‘99 and had a route of bookstores, record stores, and comic shops I frequented.

So I took the orange line up to the red line, and then the red line up to Central Square. Even when I lived in Boston, Central Square was a point of some controversy. For ages it had been sort of a radical hotspot/grungy part of Cambridge, but in the late 90’s the funky bookstores were getting kicked out to build condos. I was saddened to see one of my three or four record stores had shut down. Across the street, Looney Tunes was still active so I went in and poked around. I didn’t find any records, but did pick up a Glenn Gould biography for $2, which I’m terribly excited to read.

I kept walking up Mass Ave into Harvard Square, and was saddened to notice that my OTHER favorite record shop had shut down, and is now an eye-glasses place.  Walking further down the street, I realized the shitty townie bar (who’s name I’m forgetting right now, but was something like, ‘The Hammer and Nail’ and where I used to play darts occasionally until someone was stabbed with a screwdriver) had closed down, and was now a chain of some sort. Walking even further, I discovered that Toscini’s (I think that was the name, I might be off) Ice Cream wasn’t there anymore either.

Obviously, and you can see this coming, I got pretty nostalgic for these places I remember so well and so fondly, and which no longer exist.  It was capped when I went into Newbury Comics to discover they no longer sell vinyl at all, and then crossing the street, saw that the other vinyl shop (where Damon Krukowski used to shop, and which was my favorite of all) had also closed, and I think is now yet another coffee shop.

None of this is shocking. It’s just that when you live in a place, it changes gradually and you don’t notice it so much. But when you revisit a place after many years it is radically different, and a little sad. It would be like if you ran into your high school girlfriend, and not only was she married, but she had four kids and a PhD, and you’re sort of remembering when she wore knee high argyle socks.

Everything was made better, however, by spending an hour pouring through comix at Million Year Picnic, one of the fines comic shops in the US, in my humble opinion. I picked up a Jeffrey Brown comic (feeble attempts), three Peter Bagge comics (apocalypse nerd, and hate annual #6), and I FINALLY bought Seth’s Wimbledon Green.

So I’m opening this up to you all, since I know many of you have moved around a lot. What place are you most sad about changing? What place has been most different when you went back?

Such a very long time for such a short short time.

Couple tidbits.

First, ole Dirt may have a letter published in the Denver Post about rooting for the Rockies in the series whilst being stuck in Boston.  That kind of rules.

Also, I’ve listened to Scenic World by Beirut about 250 times this week. That’s 500 minutes of pure joy. Check it out.

Then Mac from Superchunk, Portastatic, and Merge Records responded to the interview questions I sent out just a couple short weeks ago. In the interview he is friendly, sweet, and basically all the things I love about this indie rock hero.

On the depressing side, Lance Hahn of J Church died this week.  J Church is an excellent punk band from the BayArea, named after the train in San Francisco I used to ride to and from work. I was really sad to hear of his passing.

Lastly, I’ve been thinking a lot over the last 24 hours about attempting to complete two major writing projects this fall–>winter–>spring.  I won’t spill too much except to say that one involves some level of multiple personality disorder, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the other is such a good idea I get a little aroused just thinking about it.

I hope the team with the uniforms wins.

As I am still on sabbatical, I am only making sporadic updates on things. But have to share two excellent things.

a) Ian MacKaye evidently responded to my interview request, though not by answering questions. I have yet to read the letter, but it reportedly includes the line, ‘this seems like homework -I didn’t do homework in high school, and I’m damn sure not going to start now,’ which cracked me up pretty thoroughly.

b) On the Orange line today, I over heard a conversation and was inspired to write up a Will-like report on it. The line is getting work done on it, and so you have to take a shuttle between the Back Bay and Ruggles stops. A group of young(ish) people got on and discovered this, much to their chagrin.

Girl : Yo, I had this shit yesterday and figured someone jumped in front of the train.

Boy : Yah, probably.

Girl : Seriously. I remember one time this guy, this Dominican just fuckin’ jumped in front of the train, and I was like, ‘Oh shit!’

Boy : Damn!

Girl : Yah, he was just standing there, and borrowed someone’s phone, made a call and said, ‘I hope you’re happy now’ and fucking jumped in front of the train!

Boy : With the phone!?!?!

Girl : No, he gave it back before he jumped.

Boy : Whew, cuz if some mother fucker did that to my phone, I’d be pissed!

Girl : Hell yah!

I just sort of laughed/cringed that what this young man took from the story was ‘never loan your phone to someone waiting for the T’.