Christmas. I get a warm feeling just from saying it, in the area of my groin. The warm feeling then seeps down my pants and leaves an uncomfortable odor. Christmas. It comes on like a friend with promises of shiny objects and musty paper and sweets, and it leaves me with that feeling you get after someone has driven over a puddle and sprayed you. Some got in your mouth.

My brother put on Van Morrisson today. We were sitting in the living room and discussing the relative virtues of each brilliant song while my grandfather (we call him "Papu" as a joke) mimiced his high crying tone on "Who Was That Masked Man?" and laughed with the insidiousness of trans fat. "He soun's like he's cryin'," he said with a sailor's accent and a shit-eating grin on his face. The kind of grin that could wilt roses. "You're right," I said, "that's what he's going for, actually." He responded, if you want to call it a response, "The music's good. I got no problem wit da music. Guy don't know howta sing, doh." "Well, he's not Frank Sinatra, but maybe that's a good thing. And he wrote the music, you know." "Guy don't know how to sing. 'Eeeh-eeh-eeeh.' Like he's cryin' or sometin'. Heh-heh-heh," he croaked.

I really don't go for it when people say, as this ghoul's second daughter did over dessert, with the heaviest Bronx accent there is, "Van Morrisson is a little better than Bob Dylan, but I just don't like his vo-wace. Other people sing his sowngs and they're gowd, but when he sings . . . I don't really like it," she said ironically, with a huge shit-eating grin (runs in the family) as if the person she was talking to would agree. "Who do you like?" I asked. I should have refrained. "Barbara Streisand, or Celine Dion, Frank Sinatra, they have real voices." I won't go on. My heart died today, as a little bit dies every day. Soon it will be gone, and then the world will be sorry, let me tell you. Or, alternately, the world will go on just as it does.

And now, in the same vein as Scott's blog, the top 10 albums I bought this year (because the albums I bought that came out this year were all disappointing, with few exceptions, and the exceptions aren't worth mentioning); there should be absolutely no surprises on this list. I could have included plenty of other albums (I bought hundreds) but it would be lying. So, truly the best albums I bought this year:

Morrissey, Bona Drag
Yo La Tengo, Electro Pura
Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
Belle and Sebastian, Lazy Line Painter Jane EP collection
Modest Mouse, Building Nothing out of Something
The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground
Spiritualized, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs

There is no tenth, because I can't think of one without looking at everythng I bought this year, and that's probably a good way to judge. These albums are the ones which have stayed with me, which I have listened to for longer than the week after I bought them, which I will continue to listen to for a long time. It's a boring list, but it's as accurate as I can make it. I would most likely have been able to include the Beat Happening box set if I hadn't lent it to a friend soon after getting to Santa Fe. I really haven't spent any time with it.

This blog is now officially once again active, now that I have lost each and every last one of my readers. I only ever had three, so I'm not that concerned. This just means I can spend more time with myself. And, by the way, for anyone who doesn't know (because Scott fucking knows), I am back in Maryland. I will be here until the middle of January, unless I can find some way out of here. This state does nothing to fill the hole. Instead, it rips it open and makes it a bit more gaping every hour.

The night I got home, my father said to my brother and me, as he was going to bed, "No walks." I imagine everyone who reads this (all three of you, god bless you) knows what this means. I'll elaborate for my own benefit anyway. It means, "don't escape from my evil grimy clutches; I've had you for twenty-one years and I'll be fucked if I'm letting you out now. You are not permitted to leave my cloying, soul-killing house, because when you do so, the only thing you do is smoke, which makes you morally disgraceful as well as offensive to me personally. I cannot legally kill you physically, so I will do so mentally. Wallow in the psychological pit of boiling blood which I have created for you. Good night." That 'good night' I just threw in there to remind you that this is, after all, my father, and that's what a normal father may reasonably be expected to say. That's what my father presumably considered, only to replace it with "no walks."

Oh, and Eric is home too, and today we both took a bus to Manhattan. I found out that we had this ability just the day before, when my mother called and asked if we wanted to go with her coworkers to Manhattan because someone had given up two tickets. I haven't slept for about thirty eight hours, and I have seen altogether too much to even remember, but here are some poems I wrote in the Klee room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On "Portrait of a Yellow Man":

Although you might think
Dignity is expensive
You ain't seen nothing

My lips are bovine
My features are painted on
I am still a man

On "Small Portrait of Girl in Yellow":

Do you like my smile?
I am not looking at you.
Like it if you must.

I spent centuries
Sitting with my gaze just so
Can I get up now?

On "Collection of Figurines"

left
Fear is perverse in the face of so much indifference. Keep half an Eye on everything and cook it in your glowing blue third eye opening inward and outward, rising like an ecstatic cold sun. Eating fire only leads to a frozen stomach. Material is interconnected, but spirit spills all over the place. Nothing stays still.
opposite
Jumping blind leads to unmitigated joy. You might as well laugh at danger because nothing bad is possible or even conceivable. What would "bad" mean when the world is you? Play with yourself. It's fun. Whee! (splash)
center
The senses are limiting and unnecessarily stern. Experience everything that exists with a single simultaneous sense organ at the center of your being. Knowledge is neither subjective or objective; truth is meaningless, if beautiful, but sensation is an endless shot of whiskey burning everything with sheer all-encompassing intoxication of knowledge, like a circular angle. Which do you choose?

On "The man under the pear tree"

Fruit hangs like boobs practically forcing you to pick it, so you do. Glaring vulgar sexuality of desirable juices which proves you are not innocent, because if you were you wouldn't understand. A single inch of earth produces a mile of flowing plant energy. Man sees spot for self in universe, takes it. Even if the fruit never falls, he's satisfied. Tree thrusts growing limbs to eagerly dispelof its masterpieces, so readily it must have a slave mentality.

Some other one-liners:
"My bellybutton is the only proff that I, too, was once human."
"I gaze at the constant spectacle of nothing going on."
"My head is a melting former ice sculpture."
"My tadpole body slithers down the chair of myself while you politely suppress peals of laughter."
"The sun falls beneath my knees to fully illuminate my sordid, unhappy genitals."
"Slothfully, we will devour your oozing, suculent enthusiasm with fishlike gracelessness."

Klee is awesome.

This post will be against my standards for a good blog, but I haven't posted in too long, and something is better than nothing.

Noah has gone home, finally bringing to a close a two-day trip to Pennsylvania that extended to a five-day visiting fest (Noah and I spent nearly all Tuesday with Cassie. It was cool. When I asked her to give me something to buy in Rec & Tape, she made me buy Sleater Kinney, and, hey, they really are good. Who knew). I haven't left the house except to smoke today, and am suffering the effects of withdrawal from society. I am leaving Maryland in two and a half days, and experiencing an anxiety attack. As I sit in my living room, once again attempting to catch up on newspapers (I had to start with Sunday's) and listening to music, I feel a great sense of unlocalized dread. I was tired at 1 a.m., and felt afraid.

Jeff requested that I listen to the soundtrack for 28 Days Later, and give him my opinion. He has bought a lot of soundtracks lately; really this has been a trend with him for several years. Like most soundtracks, it didn't extend much past atmospheric music, mainly sounding like intros and outros with no songs to lead into and out of. It does, however, include a cool Grandaddy song. Why Jeff had me listen to it, I'll never know.

Oh, and "Information Travels Faster" is, indeed, a good song. I wouldn't call it inspired, but I can no longer say that the entirety of The Photo Album is disappointing.

This Summer, April truly is the cruelest month.
"Oh my God! He's coming over the Starnbergersee with a shower of rain!"

A movie that will show you fear in a handful of dust.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! The Hanged Man! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Arnold Schwarzenegger is:

The Wastelander

I'd like to have an intervention for my brother about his video game playing. Unfortunately, all of his (few) friends are video game players, as hard core at it as he is. (He plays about six hours a day, if he can be believed.) Thus, the only logical people to hold this intervention would be his family members. There are only three of us here, and he doesn't respect our opinion. I can see it now. My mother goes down to Jeff's room and asks him to come to the living room for a minute. He says, "Why?" She says, "I want your opinion on something." He's not listening because he's playing a computer game, so she repeats it and he says, "Not right now!" She says, "Just come upstairs," and he says, "Did you hear me? Not right now!" This goes on for several minutes, devolving into a screaming match. She comes up and says to me, "The intervention is off."

I'm thinking that to actually have an intervention, we'd need to have my friends to do it. So . . . anyone interested in helping me have an intervention? We can have catering, and cool banners saying "Jeff's Intervention, 2003", and we can rent ponies, and a band (I'm shooting for Modest Mouse), maybe some guest speakers like David Fostor Wallace and Maureen Dowd, get funding for television and radio commercials (Jeff Green's action packed intervention is being held at the Patriot Center Arena this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!) and broadcast the event to a significant portion of the country (say, 35% of the population, seeing as Congress will likely revise the FCC ruling . . .), and we can all go out for ice cream afterwards. Who's with me?

. . . . . . .



. . . . . . .



. . . . . . .


Screw you guys.

The New York Times, I am beginning to discover, are decently awesome indie rock critics. Their Arts page has album review on Tuesdays (which makes sense, seeing as albums, for some unknown reason which I am sure relates to the international Jewish conspiracy, always come out on . . . Tuesday); they almost always review indie albums. Last week it was The Thrills, The Sleepy Jackson, and Super Furry Animals. They also reviewed the Siren music festival and commented on the bands' tendency to imitate previous genres (Datsuns=slick seventies metal; The Kills=blues rock); then it mentioned how Modest Mouse was the anamoly, "an old-fashioned indie-rock band from the days before all the new bands wanted to sound like old bands."

Pardon me while I quote something beautiful.

"For better and for worse Isaac Brock is a front man who seems to live in a world of his own invention, a place where folk music means grinding dissonance and off-kilter riffs and sudden musical shifts and shouted rants . . .. (H)is best songs can make you feel as if you're peering into a vast, weird world full of warped parables and cryptic observations.

"While the other acts wanted to inspire a dance party, it seemed Mr. Brock wanted to inspire a mass delusion. . .."

It is 4:48 am. This is important, so I'm stating it even though it will be in the dateline, because I don't pay much attention to blog datelines. Anyway, I've just come inside from smoking a cigarette. I think my neighbors, the Koenigs, might be massacring several teenage girls; it seems that they've installed a series of timed strobe lights, blue and white, to flash at seemingly random intervals, in order to provide a suitable setting while they terrorize and attack these teenage girls. Either that or (and I find this unlikely) they're watching a horror movie. I'm thinking maybe I should call the cops.

Anyway, Anne and Martin, you missed a beautiful show. You shouldn't have let the rain scare you off. The D-Plan rocked the fort tonight after the rain tapered off. Travis came on at about 7:20 and told us they were waiting it out, and would play if the weather lightened up to a drizzle. He thanked The Aquarium for being their guinea pig, and since that band's keyboard had broken down because of the water, they would wait. "We don't have anything else to do tonight."

I needed cigarettes, so Scott, Andy and I began travelling under one umbrella toward the place Scott recalled seeing a Rite Aid. It ended up being a Whole Foods Mart, only their store appeared to have been swallowed by a parking garage. We went up the three floors, seeing only concrete and cars at each level, and when we reached the third floor with the same result, decided we'd ridden that pony as far as it would go. The rain had let up, but we still went to the CVS next door to purchase my Jades and then ran back to Fort Reno in time to see the band setting up. And then they rocked, and the rocking kept up for the next hour.

"The City", "What Do You Want Me to Say?", "Ice of Boston" (without, unfortunately, a call to go up on stage), and and and "You Are Invited" and more and and then "OK Jokes Over", with covers of Elton John, "Back That Ass Up", and "(Can You Tell Me How to Get to) Sesame Street", and, man, a trombone, and much ass-shaking, and the drummer threw like fifteen sticks into the crowd, and a mother was dancing onstage with her baby, and, shit, man, it was, like, dood, you know, dood. Travis said they'd be playing a club show to make up for the "bullshit" of the nearly rained out event, in about six weeks, so you didn't miss their final show. But man, you should have been there anyway. Man.

Also, Scott, you shouldn't tell me so many things in the bathroom, even if they are "in confidence." Next time I'm going to have to bring a tape recorder. And for god's sake, will you stop touching me.

(Also, I'm approaching the one-week gap in my New York Times. I'm very pleased.)

I have just discovered an open, nearly full bottle of ouzo in my house. It is party time.

"My God, it's from Waldo."
"That shmuck," said Shelia.

Wow. I've changed a lot since February. And I do actually get comments. I just didn't know it because of the magic of YAACS-suck (TM Martin Marks).

After Ottobar, Two If By Sea, supposed to be Earlimart but no Earlimart, got TIBS's singer Chris to give e-mail for basement show at Scott's house . . .

In the antechamber of the Double T Diner at one
And the flourescent light puts out rays just too perfect for truth
People there for a meal, or for takeout, or smokes
In the too-defined light with their stereotypes also defined
Indie-girl with her cigarettes and short yellow hair
And sitting across from her, her Indie-girl boyfriend, of course
And the deadbeats, too tired even before thirty
Still primping their hair with their pitiful post high-school minds
There's a tootsie pop stuffed in the toilet drain
The next guy comes in, it's hard to resist making comments
That he'd see as racist, and I'd see as weak jokes
The goths have their table, and near them the stoner-hat hippies
They're not up to the lost hippie potential
One asks to borrow Scott's guitar, and I'm sure that he thinks
He's too cool and laid-back for words
Aren't I the same way, does it change anything that I know it?
Scott's inhaling, says that he wants to float
I let him and inform, between laughs, when he's ready to ash
The television plays, and it's Leno, then Conan
They're laughing at us, and we're laughing, we're laughing at them
How nice of the waitress to stop by tonight
How you guys doin', can I get you two something to drink?
Just a milkshake, I say for Scott, who's far gone
And I get no coffee, all I want is a fruit salad sundae
We'd forgotten Blue Thunder at my house,
So Scott calls his parents and tells them he's going to be late
For once, amazingly, they take it cool
No need for head-drooping bouts of pity and anger
Except for our dumbness in forgetting the car
Scott floats and coughs, and promises no more for a month
Then the food comes, we eat under too-defined light
And is this a rest, a short break from the driving all night?
Or self-consciousness taken dead on, anxious and a month of Sundays?

No one has blogged in a day. Not even Anne. What was Anne doing? This is not the venue for Anne to tell me what she was doing. I hope Anne is not dead. (It would be really terrible if Anne were dead, particularly since I'm making these remarks which would be perceived as insensitive about it.)

The Heartbreaking Work "seminar" was spectacular. Everyone missed out. We figured out everything everyone ever wanted or ought to know about the nineties, post-modern literature and the death of seriousness (or irony), the possibility of art in the modern day, where the culture is going, etc. So, um, yeah. Where is everyone, anyway?

She wrote on the exit, "no escape", and laughed, and lost control.

"why did i pick 1979? well, it's either because of the smashing pumpkins song or because of joy division...what's your guess? "
-Polewach

Things are getting interesting.

John Polewach has sent me two e-mails in which he questions Dylan's legacy (with no logical support) and claims to no longer listen to anything pre-1979 except for Astral Weeks and Pet Sounds. He also listed Mark E. Smith as an excellent lyricist, and professed love for the second album by The Verve. This is classic John, and also very disturbing. If anyone would be interested in reading these e-mails, I'd be happy to send them to you.

In other news, three St. John's Annapolis tutors were up for tenure this year. It was granted to Ms. Pheffer and Mr. Badger, and denied to Mr. Larsen (who is appealing). There is no justice in the world.

I am currently reading the New York Times from Saturday, June 14. It is my goal to read all the papers (the A section, anyway) from the month of June. I have not so much as looked at the papers more recent than June 14. Wish me luck, and godspeed.

Also, today I attended a preliminary meeting for a seminar-style bookclub, held at Laura Manion's house. We will be meeting next Sunday at 7 pm, at Laura's house in Olney, MD, to discuss . . . drumroll, please . . . A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I guess that means Dave Eggers may make the Program in our lifetime. Anyone who is interested (well, that would probably be limited to Scott and Anne, possibly Martin--I'm just guessing he wouldn't have time but he's every bit as invited as Scott and Anne, I'd provide transportation; Noah, my only other reader as far as I know, is in all likelihood too far away, and at any rate excluded for being Jewish), let's get it on and make this the indiest bookclub ever.

The ponies were everywhere.

Shit, man, Noah's right. Well, Noah, I do wish your blog were more like a journal, with more storytelling and fewer holes in the narrative, because you have a lot of craft. Start writing more. It seems like a Lovecraft story without the whole cosmic freaky monster continuum thing. Only it's . . . you. And six really strange people. And six other people who are doubtless even more strange. I want to see the movie version.

Meanwhile, I'm mostly waiting for this summer to end. I mean, I hope the band starts meeting frequently, and it would be great if we could actually do something with it, but my days are feeling really empty. Weeks go by without anything memorable. At least, without anything that I'd look back on with joy. I always feel tired and emotionally drained, even though I've been sleeping longer than average. The last day that I really remember was the twenty hour period spent at Anne's house when her mother skipped town. Scott, Anne, Eric and I stayed up watching anime (X, no less), drinking and smoking. And smoking. Scott and Eric dropped off pretty early, and Anne and I sat on the porch finishing a pack each, talking about everything possible. Then we woke Scott up, and he doled out his adderal in the kitchen, the light just starting to shine in. We walked over to the Severna Park library and sat on the steps out front, and I began to write what slowly turned into a list of two hundred song titles. What a beautiful day. Then Scott's father called at 2 p.m. because Scott had been due back at 11 (a.m., not p.m. We didn't keep him out that long). And Scott's father said, "I wash my hands of you. I've dropped the stone of shame.") And then Eric and I mournfully drove Scott home.

Everything since that day has been either a modest recreation or a really lugubrious conversation with either Scott, Anne, or Roger, with a variety of settings (an Irish bar in Baltimore, Tastee Diner in Laurel, the Ellicott City train tracks, Double TT in "Pasadena"). Noah called me today. It woke me up, at 4:30 pm. He told me about the events related in his blog, mostly, and I was too sleepy to talk much. And then I immediately had to shower and go to work. (And I worked all night; yeah the boy's all right.) I've just got nothing much going on. I keep spending money on records in the hope that they'll cheer me up, and every time it just gives me a really empty feeling. Get me away from here, I'm dying. New York Times, send me no more news.

And you know what's really sad? I had planned to finish my Japanese book by the end of April. And I haven't studied it at all since Croquet Weekend. And I haven't written any fiction since February. And I don't really think SJC Santa Fe will help very much. Heck, maybe. But just what kind of life is this, anyway?

On a side note, I hope I just beat Noah for Most Heartbroken Blog right now. That's the real competition, anyway.

Scott, you had better stop shaming me with your more frequent blogging. Two nights in a row. One more and you have a pattern. Then where will I be? Where's my distinction? How can I live with myself? Not that I don't enjoy actually being able to read new posts on your blog. As a matter of fact, please do blog every night. Even the nights when you're too lorn to do anything but cry. Just get online and tell the world about it. You'll be a famous writer yet. Then you won't need indie girls, but will have lots of them. You'll forget that you ever knew me, you'll pass by when you see me on the street, and I'll stop by your house every night to peer in the window and watch you blog. Blog, Scott, blog to your heart's content, because you can't possibly satiate me. Blog until your fingers have callouses, and your keyboard is broken; then go to someone else's computer and continue blogging, and I'll come by and fix your keyboard so you can blog more comfortably. May your blogs be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the beaches. Blog like you mean it.

But still you will have Anne to compete with. Yeah, you don't really have a chance at beating Anne. You should really just give up this whole blogging thing.

This post is to ensure that I have a higher frequency of posting than Scott, who posts very infrequently, choosing, instead, to post his tears on the basement floor, wetting his Juliana Theory posters. My excuse is this. Unlike Scott, I spent almost no time in my basement (where the computer is) in the last two weeks. I had relatives over, first my mother's two sisters, and then my father's parents. They slept in the basement on a pullout sofa. This has also meant that I have drummed only once. Anne mentions it in her blog; well, not my drumming specifically, but the first meeting of Satan Tonight, née The Masters of Awesome. Roger Awesome brought his electric piano and played goth-disco chords, to which Scott added his angry-sounding guitar (his amp allowed only feedback noises), and Anne imperceptably played keyboard bass ("it sounded really good from where I was standing").

Apparantly, J. Spaceman heard us play, because he sent me an e-mail offering me a job replacing Spiritualized's touring drummer, who has blood cancer. No, really, he did. I'm not going to give you proof, because I don't want to substantiate any rumors. I only want to start them. Now I only hope someone is out there searching for Spiritualized news, comes upon this page, and posts this information on Spiritualized's messageboard. And then that hipster guy who had just bought a band t-shirt will read it and tell random people at the next show why they only played for an hour, and why they will be playing much longer (and more rocking) shows in the near future once Jason finishes negotiating with me (I'm demanding no fewer than three groupies, songwriting credit on the next album, a more prominent position on stage, at least three shows with GWAR as the opening act, and a studio apartment in New York City, in midtown, within two blocks of my favorite pizza parlor. If you support my efforts, lobby your congresspersons).