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Grizzly Bear has been one of my favorite indie bands ever since their debut, Horn of Plenty. Plus, they're my neighbors. Not literally, but they all live within a mile. I did a quick interview with Ed Droste over at FREEwilliamsburg. Check it out.
This puts everything in perspective.
I've got a new featured article over at The Huffington Post.
"With all due respect to the president, he shouldn't have his arms and feet blocking the aisle," said Boehner, who sustained minor injuries. "Everyone knows he's lanky."You can check it out here."If you ask me," Boehner continued, "this liberal concept of reaching across the aisle is dangerous. We need to keep those aisles clear. What if there was a fire and people needed a clear passage to the exits? We need to refocus our energies on tax cuts, not liberal spending and aisle-reaching."
As I alluded to in the previous post, Salon posted a cover story last weekend by yours truly called "The random beauty of '25 Random Things'" (2-7-09). Here a taste:
I was in the middle of typing up my "25 Random Things About Me" list on Facebook when a funny thing happened. I hit clear and decided to abandon the whole time-wasting endeavor. I'd made it through what I intended to be my sole entry before coming to my senses:KEEP READING.1. I like certain books and films and things that taste good. Also, kittens. Thanks for including me in this important social experiment. Now, please stop tagging me.
As I mention in Saturday's Salon, the trend has slowly grown on me. Here's my contribution:
1. I met my wonderful, beautiful wife eleven years ago. I feel inspired daily by her creativity, am in awe of her wonderfully twisted sense of humor, and am looking forward to traveling the world with her.
2. I've read all of Haruki Murakami's novels multiple times.
3. I moved to New York from Virginia in 1996 not knowing anyone. I had no job and $800 in the bank. I knew the city was the place I wanted to live after watching the opening four minutes of Woody Allen's Manhattan. I still get chills when I hear the Gershwin score crescendo as the fireworks go off.
4. I often wonder why people enjoy "Car Talk."
5. I love the film "Donnie Darko" and feel it somehow captures the surrealism of my high school years. I later learned that the director grew up in my neighborhood and attended the same high school.
6. I've been a pescetarian for 16 years, but I cheat when traveling abroad, at weddings, and I have a don't-ask don't-tell policy with soup broths.
7. Yes, I know... saying I'm a pescetarian is incredibly dorky and borderline pretentious.
8. Silence makes me uncomfortable so I always have music playing or the television on. I need some type of white noise at night to sleep well.
9. I went through an evangelical phase when I was in high school. I tried to speak in tongues many times but never had any success, unlike my buddy Chip who was fluent.
10. I read a book called The Late Great Planet Earth during this phase. It predicted the Rapture was going to occur before 1989. I was opposed to premarital sex, but made sure I lost my virginity in 1988, as to not be shortchanged.
11. Now, I consider myself to be an agnostic, though I do pay attention to astrology sometimes even if I think it's a bunch of hooey.
12. I was the manager and bartender of an all-night restaurant when I was in college. I typically worked the graveyard shift side-by-side with a guy named John who is the founding bass player of Lamb of God.
13. Even when working on jobs/projects I'm proud of, it makes me uncomfortable to respond to the question "so what do you do for a living."
14. I could never live with someone who owned a ferret, or any other animal that requires cedar chips.
15. I hate it when people try to tell me about "that crazy dream they had last night."
16. My favorite place on earth is Spain.
17. I find it difficult knowing that my relationship with my fundamentalist Christian parents will always be compromised by their inability to accept my sister, since she is gay.
18. I love all food with one exception: maraschino cherries.
19. Before meeting my wife, I was in a relationship with someone who is currently a cast member of "All My Children."
20. "The body's blood vessels... would be 60,000 miles long if they were laid out end to end. That's approximately the distance you'd need to travel if you wanted to circle the globe two and a half times." Heard that when I was a kid. Still don't believe it.
21. The fact that Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans were the top two movies in America last weekend makes me question all this "we've entered a new era of Hope" talk.
22. Who is Paul Blart?
23. And what the hell is a Lycan?
24. My concerns about aging manifest themselves in weird ways. For instance, I wonder sometimes if I've gotten too old to wear shoes with athletic stripes on them when I'm not running.
25. Though I love New York, I hope to live overseas in the near future. Top contenders: Japan, Dubai, Hong Kong, and (of course) Spain.
I guess Kool Keith cursed himself by being too prolific, but his latest Dr. Dooom 2 has been completely ignored. Too bad because it's totally demented, in a great Kool Keith kind-of-way. Not as good as the original Dr. Dooom—Keith's best record—but how could it be?
From the Canadian wire (Canwest News Service):
Business suits are the new shorthand for sexy, according to a survey released Thursday indicating Canadian men and women alike fantasize more about white-collar workers than such perennial objects of desire as firefighters, rock stars and models."Given the global financial crisis, suits and business attire are the new hot uniforms, since they remind us of what really turns us on: employment," says Robert Lanham, a humorist who has written three books on North American idiosyncrasies.
"When fantasy becomes dull, we begin to long for the real thing. So it makes perfect sense that the corporate uniforms we wear and see every day would become the new fetish."
