Life with an Apostrophe

So I just quit my job. Then I made a video about it, while Jonathan soaked up the limelight and Amy hid from it. Like the self-important prick I am, I played my own music in the background (I decided this was acceptable since we broke up and I never get to play/hear this song anymore) as life imitated art. Dig:

Last night I had a falafel sandwich from Lebanese Taverna that I washed down with one of those "naked" mighty mango smoothies with no sugar added (that cost about three dollars and twenty cents each, no one warned me) and the combination somehow gave me hiccups FROM HELL. I blame the combination because the smoothie had this kind of weirdo after taste that seems comparable to the tahini sauce from the falafel (this was a decidedly gross aspect of the drink, but maybe a little less gross than I'm making it sound) and when I think about how they taste together, I hiccup reflexively as an involuntary reaction to the thought. Weird, right? These hiccups literally kept me up last night while my fellow Kerouacian adventurer Chris snored and spoke Arabic to himself loudly a few feet away. I'm not lying- Chris actually speaks Arabic in his sleep, though not especially well when he's awake.

I mean damn, aren't I little old for the hiccups?

I think I want to hold a "royal ball" for my birthday this year. There will be a strict dress code, we will dance to supposedly "undanceable" punk music, and cute invitations made to look like scrolls will be send to the highly exclusive guest list next week. Except I live in an apartment right now, so I don't know how well that'd go over with the neighbors. I shouldn't care, actually, because my neighbors on the left ritualistically play Spanish music every Friday night and Saturday morning at impossibly inconsiderate decibel levels and my neighbors on the right do something comparably annoying with Hot 99.5 (obnoxious top 40 station in Washington Metropolitan Area) over the course of various weeknights. This ball might be worth a shot.

Sisters, today I felt what I realize is but a taste of your pain.

A few minutes ago at work, I totally got gamed up by a girl. That is to say, I feel like a girl effectively did to me what I usually (at least attempt to) do with girls. I approached my friend Leah (of birthday song fame) with mock-jealousy after hearing that she planned to allow one of our co-workers to take her out to see the movie "Notorious", and before I could even blink, she had shut down my accusations of infidelity (in the context of our fictional relationship) with a series of well-worded, calmly and sincerely delivered, flattering and (more than likely) completely empty statements designed to reassure me of my place in her heart. Among them were the sentiments that the guy she was going out with was someone she "was just using in a way she would never use me" and that the dude in question *had* to pay for her time, whereas I "could spend time with her any time free of charge". It was so smooth and so unassailable that I really had no choice but to stammer for a little bit, wonder how the hell that just happened, and then fall for it. I felt totally outfoxed, but I was cool with it. This conjured, for the first time in my life, the idea that if dudes really want to learn how to be smooth operators, a key move would be to study certain kinds of girls. Leah should write a book on this. I know several no-game-having clowns who could learn loads from her.

Everywhere I look, I see Obama's impending historic inauguration being exploited commercially in a shameless and unrelenting way. On the one hand, I imagine that it must pain him on some level to be commodified so insistently, but the on the other, I'm sure he anticipated this kind of fervor if he has actually believed he could win from the beginning. I saw a dude with a John Kerry bumper sticker driving past me on my way home, and the sight of it provoked a reflexive reaction of contempt the way a fashion savvy junior high queen bee might look down on a math team captain's choice of long out of style jeans. I felt more than a little ashamed once I caught myself, but I guess this is what happens when politics and popular culture cross-pollinate.

One of the first episodes of Nickelodeon's quirky nineties sitcom "Pete and Pete" involved little Pete's favorite song, which was some tune that he heard the band on the opening credits play once in a neighbor's garage, and due to some mildly complicated circumstances I can no longer remember, he never got to hear it again, or at least not until the end of the episode or something, right? So the premise of the whole thing was something about hearing a song that you absolutely loved on first listen but would never get to hear again. Possibly because seeing that episode and internalizing it's theme primed me to do this subconsciously, I have had comparable experiences with two different songs. Once, when I was fifteen and on vacation with my family in (on maybe?) Emerald Island, North Carolina I heard the coolest fucking Smashing Pumpkins single *ever* in some random souvenir shop while I was alone, and I have never been able to figure out what it was, nor have I been able to recall a note of it.

All I know is, it was the perfect song to hear when the rest of your family is out doing some kiddie activity and you are dicking around in a gift shop somewhere alone in a town and state where you don't know anyone and cliques of teenagers who remind you of your friends back home are laughing and having fun nearby and you know you're gonna lie awake chatting up the girl you're crushing on from home on the phone all that night when you get back to the beach house and you simultaneously know that as soon as you get back to your town for more than a few days it'll be old to you again and you won't even want anything to do with your real crew that the counterpart group in the gift shop reminded you of. It had this epic instrumental opening that caught my attention immediately, and I knew before the vocals ever came in that I was going to love it. Maybe the vocals were distinctly Billy Corgan or something but I know when I heard it that I immediately assumed it was the Pumpkins, but I know for a fact the song is not on their greatest hits cd. My only theory was that maybe it was an album track that some maverick (John McCain perhaps?) dj was giving run for his own reasons. A friend of mine once suggested that maybe it was a single from Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain's post-Pumpkins project Zwan, which would totally make sense, but I almost don't want to find out and ruin the mystery/fun. I've never heard it once since.

More recently, I have heard a song at PF Chang's at sporadic times over the last two or three years that I totally love but sounds completely unfamiliar to me and no one who works with me ever pays enough attention to nail down what it is. Not to get all dick thumpy about it, but I'm reasonably knowledgeable about pop music and the fact that this band or artist caught my attention so easily but rang no bells of recognition completely boggles me. It sounds kind of like it may be an alternative piano trio-that isn't Ben Folds Five- but with a pop punky kind of vocalist who is somehow vaguely reminiscent of Matt Thiessen from Relient K. I can sing the chorus melody and can even remember a stray word here or there, but not enough to successfully google it or even communicate it well enough to my colleagues that they might know what the hell I'm talking about. All of our music is streamed through a series of satellite radio stations, but none of the managers have been able to tell me what format it might've been on or how to track it down, largely because I can hardly tell them anything about. Funnily enough, when I heard the lead-off Motion City Soundtrack single ("This is For Real") from their latest album for the first time last year, the first thing I thought of was that something about the bass line reminded me of the piano progression from the mystery Chang's song.

But wait- it gets worse than that! I've had a similar phenomenon with a mysterious flavor of Doritos that I had on one occasion the weekend of my twenty-first birthday when I was celebrating my pal's twentieth birthday (which was three days later) at my apartment with some shitty horror movie and Ledo's pizza. Whatever flavor they were, these Doritos kicked ass in a way that none others ever have. I spent all of 2008 checking for them in the snack aisles of every convenience or grocery store I might've stumbled into with no luck, but of course, part of the problem is that I might not know them upon sight only. Currently I am eating "spicy sweet chili" flavor Doritos which are really good themselves, and might even be the ones in question, but alas, I may have idealized them so much from one experience that none will ever compare to what they taste like in my feeble mind.

Where ever you may be, my dear sweet Dorito variety, know that I will remember our sweet but heatbreakingly brief time together forever.

My favorite song right now is a tune called "I Could Be With Anyone" by a gentleman named Kevin Devine. It pretty perfectly describes a blog entry I wrote here titled "99 Problems But- Ah, Never Mind" (or something to that effect, I don't remember ha ha) which several of my personal friends have recalled to me recently in seemingly unrrelated conversations, and I guess that fact has something to do with why I like the song so much, because so many people have treated that sentiment like it's the dumbest thing a person can say, and it makes me feel good that at least one other person (Kevin Devine in this case) knows what I mean. I have heard alot of hype about Kevin Devine and I have even seen him play twice, but both times I was distracted by the imminent performances of the headliners, so I've only recently started listening to him closely. Once, I even spoke to him briefly, when my band opened for him on a tour with Ace Enders and Steel Train, and I can't remember what I said, but I have the distinct impression that he acted like he thought I was a dick.

Now I totally wish I could talk to him again and tell him how much I like "I Could Be With Anyone", and that in fact, I, too, could be with anyone. Thanks for setting 'em straight, dude.

I was very close to booking a week with Producer-Who-Will-Not-Yet-Be-Named, but when I spoke with my momma dearest to get the final go ahead, she told me that I should spend some time with a voice teacher first. This totally deflated me at first, not because I disagree about the importance of developing my singing technique correctly, but simply because I was super amped to get started on my next project, especially the day after my birthday, which was when the recording block was supposed to start. Now that I've had some time to think about it, I realize this is the right move, and I figure I'll take advantage of the delay by coming up with a buttload more material to choose from. There's no real rush, and even though there's nothing punk rock about voice lessons at all, I think the work will be better for it..

I can't find the nail clippers in this lousy apartment, so my fingernails are inhumanly long, so much so that it actually hurts a little to type. As such, I'm going to stop. More soon. I ain't no glutton for punishment!

Ok, ok, ok,
what about this?

Fall Out Boy's "She's My Winona" as the theme song for the Oklahoma City Thunder? Yeah? Just imagine hitting the court to the tune of Patrick Stump wailing "Daddy said you gotta show the world the thunder!"

I'm pretty sure this is a good idea.

So I just got off the phone with the dude who may be producing my next musical endeavor, which for all significant intents and purposes, is likely going to be my maiden voyage into a solo career. My plan at this point is to link up with him and record three carefully selected songs, evaluate the experience, and determine if I'm going to do more with him or experiment with some other producers. After these initial three tracks, there is a chance I could also decide that writing songs ain't where it's at for me and I should go be a garbage man.

At some point in Some Like it Hot's tenure, I told myself that the ideal project for me would be one where all facets of my musical personality could fit, where I was literally free to make whatever kind of song I wanted, and a cohesive limitation or genre boundary would be unnecessary. I still feel like this is the case to some degree. I'm interested in doing full-blown quirky rock songs with relatively complex arrangements, stripped down acousticy indie kind of singer-songwriter tunes kinda like Kevin Devine, my voice over dancy beats a la Kanye West or the Postal Service, and show tuneish kinds of things where I may share vocals with a female singer. I believe that there is a chance that I'm alternately talented enough or weird enough to pull all of these things off with some kind of common aesthetic that would keep the variety from distracting people too much.

Trying to boil that grand ambition down to essentials just to give a tentative audience a sampling of a greater scheme reminds me a little bit of how I felt about writing a college essay; you get this limited amount of space to make an impression so that you might earn the possibility of leaving your mark in a more lasting and profound way. Picking three songs to start with is proving daunting because I feel like I have so many ideas and so much to say. These three recordings should definitely come out money; should I do straight-ahead pop tracks to establish my credibility before I venture off into weirder fare, or should I obey my weirder impulses to begin with and pick three songs that are unabashedly idiosyncratic? The criticism I got from my first record has kind of made me eager to prove that I can write a simple, bullshit pop song as well as anybody if i really want to, but you know at the same time...

I don't even really want to! I am also toying with the idea of making my debut ep a concept record. I have a ton of these kind of "throwaway" songs if you will that I would like to use somehow; the kinds of songs that amuse me but are not conceptually the kinds of songs I'd envision as hit singles or profile songs on someone's myspace. I think it'd be really cool to work these songs in between the main songs as "skits". They could have dialogue before or after them that connected them all to a story, and I could link them to a viral promotion campaign by recording videos of the song and dialogue in some visually stimulating context that connected with the record's themes and pushing them on youtube. That way, I could give the "skits" away for free so that people could get a taste of what I was doing without giving away any of the album's big guns. With all of these "skit" songs floating around and a single on top of that, I could build some hype without giving away too much of the record itself. I've always been into what I call really high concept songs,and a viral campaign might help my audience to fully understand the complexity of the songs' subject matters and lyrical depth.

Another dumb neurosis that's kind of driving me crazy as I'm preparing songs is this whole idea of trying to circumvent the argument that the songs aren't cohesive before I even record anything. All I can picture is some swoop haired college girl who's got an ego because she books local shows going "these songs definitely don't all fit together". While I don't view "To the Mattresses" as a mistake, I definitely want to keep in mind what I learned last time and use it to improve my art without being so overly concerned with people pleasing that it loses its soul. The problem is, of course, that I don't know exactly how to do that. I always claim that "I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul" (see: Calvin and Hobbes), but I obeyed them with the that record and all I got was alot of people scratching their heads or not being interested or both. Interestingly, I've kind of been thinking of the Neptunes and Kanye as proxies for how to market and cultivate my sound and image, because those dudes are clearly huge weirdos who've figured out how to be daring and unconventional but still sell alot of records and because of my pals Lana and Priska who pointed this out to me.

On top of all this crap I have to adjust to singing my own songs. What a concept! And I'm also trying to work out whether I should move into my parents' house in IL while I focus on this or if I should continue to pay for a residence here in Rockville even while I'm away tracking. On the one hand, I'll be so bored out in Bumfuck, Il living with my parents that I'll have no choice but to focus on my art (I'm not just being a tool who repeatedly refers to pop music as "art"- I'll be focusing on my writing alot in the coming months as well, it's an umbrella term, see?). On the other hand, living out here is more logistically challenging, involves having a job, and is more distracting because I have an actual social life- one I do not wish to give up if it can be helped.

Decisions.

I'm under the impression that the Two Tongues record comes out three days after my birthday. This is pretty cool to me. If you don't know, that band is a collaboration between the two longest-tenured members of Saves the Day and the two studio members of Say Anything, and while the two songs they've released are a bit underwhelming, this record will at least be cool to listen to if not flat-out brilliant.

I just read some interesting facts about the music industry on Anthony Raneri's (singer/songwriter in the band Bayside) blog. The more I learn about the current state of record-buying, the more discouraging it becomes to me to try modeling a career after proxies from earlier eras. One thing I found extremely frustrating in my band was the fact that we made a very limited effort to circumvent the public's fickleness and inclination not to pay for music. From what I can tell, if you can make real, personal connections with your fans, you can develop a group of people who will support you and take care of you, and while you may not be selling out arenas, you can make your art comfortably. The problem with this is that many would-be musicians seem to have these bloated conceptions of what making money off of music is supposed to be like, and also don't realize that developing bonds with people who are financially supporting your music involves more from the artist these days.

A simple thing I think about alot is that if you want people to pay for physical copies of records, you need to give them more. Not having a lyric sheet is shameful, but liner notes and elaborate and stimulating album art are big pluses, too. I wholeheartedly advocate buying physical copies of albums, but since we're in an age in which that is no longer the standard approach, physical records need to have some more attractive attributes (thus the resurgence of vinyl, of course) I have been thinking hard about what this means for my own attempt to carve a niche for myself in the collective pop music consciousness that now spans continents and timezones in an ever more immediate way thanks to -your friend and mine- the interweb. For one, I think I'm realizing more that my sensibility as an artist is better supported by the hanging posters, handing out flyers, busking sort of promotional paradigm than the systematic addition of Palahniuk-quoting, eyeliner-wearing, Blink-182 nostalgic teenage chicks to an online friends list. I mean, I love the people who make up the latter, too,- and I hope that group and I can still be friends, online and otherwise, but the digital music boom has given birth to a culture that has blown the former asunder and I believe that part of the way to finding the people my music should get to involves some level of a reversal of that.

Or so I theorize at the moment. See, I want to connect with people through my art for personal, aesthetic and getting laid-related reasons anyway. So making that a mission statement for the professional benefits as well seems like a no-brainer. "Kicking Ass and Taking Names", nee the name song, which appeared on the "limited edition" version of my band's only full-length, is something of an example of the kind of approach that I feel will suit a promotional and artistic paradigm that is conducive to being successful in the wilderness that the music industry has become. It was a concession as an artist to actually put even more work into our record by promising to include your name in a song if you pre-ordered our record, but it encouraged more people to pre-order our record, and now when I listen to the song, I have a keepsake that immortalizes in some small way the people who supported and invested interest and money in our band. That one instance of a successful hybrid of art and commerce is a foundation to build on, and with my new ventures, I intend to do just that.

So with that in mind, I'm on a quest to find a new path, a new approach, and a new sound.
Or at the very least, something else to brag about.

Althought alot of these blogs are incomplete thoughts, I always feel this silly urge to say something that sounds conclusive or foreshadows something worth sticking around for, like it's the end of a chapter in a petty YA novel.
I wholeheartedly blame R.L. Stine for this.

I think it was Colin Quinn who said that if no one gets your humor, you're not funny. So if you're an artist and no one gets your art, are you still making a statement?

At the end of the month, I will be 22 years old. I have enough college credits to scarcely qualify me as a freshman, no money saved up, an unimpressive apartment, lots of dirty laundry, no girl, no car, some mediocre guitar equipment, an unkempt and thinning "half-fro", a handful of friends, and a battered sense of idealism that manifests itself as a short circuiting gleam in my eye that is alternately sparkling or suddenly going black like a dying star or bad satellite television signal.

But, hey-I feel fucking great!

Some Like it Hot ended this weekend- and the reasons for it are myriad. I would point to the fact that as a band, we had no cogent aesthetic, image or statement and that failed to give context to the idiosyncratic, obscurely allusive, blatantly iconoclastic semi-pop songwriting that I provided for the last two years as a major influence for my decision to say farewell, but there are alot of others. It is not without a heavy heart that I say goodbye to that phase of my life, but I'm pretty amped up to figure out what comes next. A couple summers ago when I was 19, I opted to pursue the band instead of going to the one college I actually thought seemed cool that I could manage to get into, and I told myself I'd wait for the band to either break out or run its course and I'd return to college after that happened. Well, we definitely didn't break out, and I'm more than a little lacking in the punk rock passion of late, so the logical choice would be to go to school and take it seriously now.

The problem is, when I picture myself sitting in a classroom, alternately taking notes and trying to peek down the shirt of the cute short-haired girl two desks over, I have a hard time thinking of that as anything but a snoozefest. I have two personalities that are raging against each other in the jungle of my innards; one is this stupid fucking rockstar asshole who likes jumping off of half-stacks, quoting Paul Westerberg in casual conversation but playing the words off as his own, staying up until 5 am, calling cute girls "baby love" and swaggers when he's standing still. The other is this sweater vest-wearing guy who underlines profound passages in books, relishes a good intellectual debate, wants to make metaphors in poems out of esoteric physics terms like "neutrino", wants to master French so he can understand Rimbaud's work better, and every time I get onstage this blithering idiot starts whining about how he should actually be in law school somewhere.

I'm getting way sick of it. One of these inner demons needs to vanquish the other because the result of their contentious relationship is this awkward semi-nerd-quasi-rebeldom that has made me do things like skip school to hang out at the library. I am also under the impression that this same phenomenon is what kept me from attracting more 13 year old myspace addicts with my lyrics- I suspect that say, John O' from The Maine has never heard of Rimbaud and his band's popularity is all the better for it.

But of course, a part of me believes that the key to unlocking the true nature of my destiny is to stop fighting the persistent turmoil of these warring halves and embrace the duality of my impulses in a way that makes them coalesce into a bold and refreshing aesthetic that will provide direction and significance to my art, my personal life, and the general narrative of my existence. Exploring music as a solo act is a step toward this, I think (the Black Dylan, anyone?). Finally finishing a damn manuscript and selling it would be another.

I don't want to make a grand declaration I can't live up to about chronicling it regularly here, but stick with me, baby, 'cause I'm going places.

You ever see a fat chick driving a car with a bumper sticker that says something like " life is a banquet- why should I starve?" Or maybe in middle school you knew a portly young lady who wrote something snappy and empowering like that on her binder? It's sort of like how my mom would always tell me that highly intelligent people who had messy rooms can afford to because they have well-organized minds. It sounded good and gave me a perfunctory kind of reassurance, but if I thought about it too much, I could tell it didn't really make too much sense. It's really just rhetoric that takes a perceived negative and provides a spin that lacks logical sense to make it sound positive.

Would this be high-art or just awkward and depressing: What if I played one of my saddest songs solo and acoustic while I was really upset about something (the subject of the song or maybe something completely unrelated) and cried and raged alot while doing it and videotaped it? Like, the shitty video of a strikingly handsome but inexplicably maudlin black dude weeping and singing the song in front of some mysterious backdrop was the clip they played on MTV hits. I feel like if I were the audience, it would unsettle me quite a bit, but maybe it'd also be challenging and alluring and some kind of reality-tv-musical theatre or something, right?

Show days are so crazy.

From the minute I wake up, I'm scrambling around trying to make sure every stupid detail that goes into a successful 30 minute set of crappy semi-pop-punk music is in order and and properly coordinated. Typically, I first turn off whatever Death Cab record I fell asleep to the night before and put on the Matches or Fall Out Boy or Ryan's Hope to start getting amped up for the day, then I frantically throw dirty clothes across my room in an effort to find whatever cliched mall-punk threads I intend to rock on stage that evening. Right after this, usually several of my friends begin calling or texting me asking if it's too late to buy a ticket, what time should they get there, are we playing "Speak Too Soon" tonight, etc. and I become unnaturally distracted by this and waste alot of time tapping out overly wordy responses.

Eventually I take a shower, meet up with the rest of the band, worry about my equipment, try to remember how to play the octave patterns to our set closer and fail, realize I didn't bring any guitar picks, and whine to everyone around me about all of these things. Then, a few minutes before showtime, I start running a pick through my hair every few minutes, bouncing up and down alot, running in place, clapping my hands together twice and crowing "Let's do this!", and flashing the same shit-eating grin to the guys in my band, any cute girls I see on the way to the stage, and to the fine young ladies who man our merch table. Finally, I get on stage, turn my amp on, forget how to play my own songs, fake it like I do remember how to play them, and try to be as much of an attention whore as possible for the next thirty minutes. More often than not, it's totally rad.

And that's exactly what's going on today. We're opening for the "Just Get Higher" tour (don't you love semi-cleverly veiled references to rock and roll drug use?) at Fletcher's in Fells Point. We're the only local act on the bill and all the other bands are fairly well established national acts, so we expect a decent turnout. We've played at Fletcher's a bunch of times before, but getting the chance to play with Just Surrender, The White Tie Affair, The Morning Of and the Higher all on the same date is pretty intense. As you may or may not know, we've had two fairly substantial lineup changes in the last six months, and I'm kind of seeing this show as the official kick off point for "Some Like it Hot version 2.0".
Here's hoping it's friendly to your browser and downloads quickly.

Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama. A man that many people thought had the most plausible shot at being the first black president in history has endorsed the man who could make good on similar promise. I think that's cool, but what I find more interesting about what he had to say about the '08 election is how disappointed he is in the direction of the Republican Party. Here's a guy who is a Republican, who even served under Bush, and even he's saying "Alright guys- how far are we gonna take this bullshit?" One thing I found especially illuminating was a tale he told about a Muslim American who at twenty years of age died serving his country in Iraq. He brought this up in connection to pointing out the fallacious, whispered insistence among the GOP and elsewhere that Obama practices Islam.

What I've been saying for weeks about this is that Obama does not appear to be a Muslim, but even if he was, don't we observe freedom of religion in this country? Is every Islamic guy alive a terrorist? Is there something inherently wrong with being Muslim? How blatantly prejudiced and exclusive are we really willing to be about what kind of people we are willing to accept in roles of American leadership? I think it's pathetic that Colin Powell even has to point this out, but when he did, I gained alot of respect for the guy. Repeatedly he mentioned that he thought the GOP was going more hard right than he is comfortable with and that the tone of McCain's campaign reflects a less inclusive nature than he believes is appropriate for the party. While I think it's big of him to condemn McCain's use of "robocalls" to voters to overemphasize Obama's relationship to former Weather Underground radical William Ayers, I have to wonder where Powell really draws the line in terms of what is too conservative for him. Did he previously think that the Republican Party was all about rainbows and hugs? Did he really wake up yesterday and begin to see it for the first time as the blatantly elitist and discriminatory vanguard of the wealthy, white and Christian? My point is not to demonize the right wing so much as it is to question whether the smear tactics that Powell expressed concern about represent any kind of deviation from the Republican ethic that any discerning American is already familiar with. Powell is clearly a highly intelligent guy, so why is he just now worrying about something I could've told you when I was ten?

I hate to go back to Harry Potter on you all, but it's kind of like the Ministry of Magic finally accepting the fact that You-Know-Who is back and dangerously close to returning to power.

1. Republicans are Death-Eaters (forgive the J.K. Rowling esoterica)

I don't know who Harry Potter's real-life counterpart is, but he better show up soon, because Barack Obama's current lead in the polls notwithstanding ( sup "Bradley Effect"?), I see Voldemort taking over unless someone steps in and does something drastic. 159,000 jobs lost in September? If a crumbling economy is a sign of anything, it's the impending reign of dark wizards. And I know I'm not the only one who sees Sarah Palin as lightweight Bellatrix Lestrange. Or the only one waiting for that turncoat Joe Lieberman to unveil a plot twist and half-way redeem himself- Severus Snape style- after the election.

2. People will always laugh at my middlename (forgive the self-pity)

No matter how often I tell the apocryphal tale of the brilliant military strategist who prodigiously decided to cross the Alps on the backs of elephants, the memory or suggestion of Anthony Hopkins wearing a muzzle and eating other humans will consistently overshadow any conception of the *other* Hannibal.

3. I'm not alone- but I might as well be (forgive the self-aggrandizement)

As alienated from 90% of humanity as I feel most of the time, popular culture and the Internet consistently provide glimpses into the existence of other over contemplative weirdos like me. Recently I was reading the Lawrence Arms' singer/bassist Brendan Kelly's blog and he complained of being "restless and bored but without the desire to do anything", which is how I feel most of the time. I felt a similar kinship through a description in S.E. Hinton's "Rumblefish" of the mysterious character known as the Motorcyle Boy. It characterized him as being "tragically miscast in a play" and "born with the ability to do anything and interest in doing nothing" . Similarly, years before I ever read "The Catcher in the Rye", lots of better-read and more ambitious magnet school kids told me that they thought the main character reminded them of me, and when I finally got around to reading it half-way through my teen years, I couldn't help but agree. These literary and punk rock archetypes should make me feel like but one link in a grand tradition of "beautiful losers", but that reassurance is undermined by the fact that while these kindred spirits exist, none of them are really going anywhere.

Brendan Kelly is 32, sounds as confused as I am today at 21, has no money and dreams of being "discovered", tends bar for a living and goes to shitty writing workshops in his spare time, then blogs complaints about all of it. At the end of "Catcher", Holden Caulfield is weeping while watching his kid sister play on a carousel after being under suspicion that one of his favorite teachers was plotting to molest him in his sleep, and I'm pretty sure the Motorcycle Boy ends up getting shot to death while robbing a pet store or something.

I've got a bright future ahead, huh?

4. When your band's name is "Some Like it Hot", everyone seems to think it's necessary to make some kind of quip along the lines of "but some prefer it cold!" "what about lukewarm?" etc. (forgive the reference to my shitty band)

While not nearly as offensive, this is reminiscent of calling me gay or saying that I "act white" in the respect that I'm not really surprised that so many people come to this so much as I just wish people would stop and think of how many other smug asshats have already had this trite idea and given voice to it, and then determine whether being the fifteen thousandth person to say something idiotic is really worth it.

5. At some point in life, I had an "outie" bellybutton, and now I don't. (Forgive the navel-gazing, and the lousy pun about it, too)

My older brother, bless his heart, teased me as a youngster by telling me that only displaced space aliens had "outie" bellybuttons, and the combination of this with my perception that outie bellybuttons were really gross on girls helped me to develop a pronounced neurosis about it by the time I was about eleven or twelve. I don't know what date it happened, or if the process was instantaneous or gradual, but somehow I miraculously grew an innie (read: normal) navel and have been a hundred times more comfortable at pool parties ever since. Not that it wouldn't have been cool to have been a displaced space alien. Which brings me to the realization that...

6. Christianity insults my imagination. (Forgive the contrived iconoclasm)

Have you ever read anything by William Sleator? How about Jonathan Lethem? Did you think K.A. Applegate's "Animorphs" series was the cat's pajamas back when zits and the fear of inopportune boners consumed your consciousness? If you answered no to all of these questions, there is a significant chance you are getting laid alot more often than the people who answered yes. But that's neither here nor there; I reference all of this sci-fi literature (I know what you're thinking; does crappy ol' "Animorphs" really belong in the same breath as those other two? The answer is maybe not, but that's also not at all significant to my point) to point out that there are humans out there with the ability to devise these elaborate and far-fetched scenarios and throw in just enough of a pinch of realism and character development to keep it rooted in some semblance of a sense of reality most people can understand, and by extension purchase and become fanatical about.

If the Bible is truly God's definitive attempt at doing the same thing- that is, if God is essentially William Sleator made infallible- I'm a little disappointed in Him. The answer to the universe's dilemmas and meaning of my seemingly worthless existence can be summed up by a tale that primarily concerns the public execution of a hippie prototype by nailing him to a set of perpendicular sticks? I guess that's all well and good and everything, but where are the brain-stealing, purple-complexioned aliens with multiple heads and telepathic speech? Where is the micro-sized conqueror race that wields the technology to turn all humans into beings the size of a grain of sand? And, of course, the question that really looms large for me is, can the answer to everything really be so simple that it does not in any way involve these things? See, for me, the idea that God, in all of his infinite wisdom, would trigger the capacity for human imagination to be immensely disproportionate to the factual scope of existence's possibilities is a fallacy. I need the answer to everything to be an indisputably better read than anything Dick or Tolkien or fanfic-writing losers on the internet have concocted, otherwise I might as well bow down and worship those drips instead.

The truth is out there.

I know that you know how I feel.

You're checking your phone every thirty seconds, too, to find out if the Obama campaign has sent you that all important text revealing who the presumptive Democratic nominee's running mate will be. Barack Obama is channeling the behavior of that certain class of criminally gorgeous girl from high school who you managed to exchange numbers with in fourth period. That girl who's a little out of your league but who suggested coyly that maybe, if she was in the right mood, she might text you later that Friday night and tell you exactly where her and the elite class of cohorts that made up her entourage would be spending their evening.

Just like we all know that the VP pick will have little to do with which party succeeds in November, you know it won't mean much to be so casually invited to that coveted destination that is sure to be a wellspring of sexy strangers, illicitly acquired alcohol and a pervasive air of exclusivity and entitlement.

Just the same, you just...want to be a part of it.

What furthers the analogy is that the McCain campaign is on edge as well, waiting with similarly baited breath to answer swiftly and Rachel McAdams-like to the upstart Obama's Lindsey Lohan-ish fanfare. McCain/McAdams is eyeing his text inbox (or maybe he's not; if he can't use a computer, a cell phone might prove equally difficult) with the thought that Obama's decision will priortize the qualifications that McCain will need to evaluate in his selection of his own running mate, or how far he needs to raise the bar to crash Obama/Lohan's party. It's a no-holds-barred battle to the top, and it's anybody's guess which Queen Bee will prevail.

Perhaps I'm naive in hoping Obama selects Kathleen Sebelius, the current governor of Kansas, if for no other reason than that it will put quite a bit of pressure on McCain to answer with a pick that generates a similar buzz. If McCain is opposing a ticket that boasts the first ever African-American presidential nominee and a female vice-presidential nominee, he's going to be a little hesitant to make a boring and predictable selection like Joe Lieberman or something. An Obama-Biden or Obama-Edwards ticket, for instance, would be somewhere around the excitement level of a pizza party thrown by the anti-drug organization D.A.R.E. (Adding Edwards to the ticket would confuse some people as to whether Obama's mantle of "change" meant to change who you regularly have sex with, which could give the party some extra pizzazz in a slutty Hollywood sort of way) Sebelius would be like Obama/Lohan throwing a foam party, and as such, McCain/McAdams would have to go for broke with something of the caliber of a naked square dancing theme, in which case Sarah Palin, the current governor of Alaska, would become a strong contender to deliver that kind of hype.

The more one breaks this all down, the more one's got to wonder if both candidates are every bit the celebrity attention whores that McCain was trying to paint Obama as in those goofy ads that attempted to connect him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Then again, I bet Spears and Hilton could probably tell you off the top of their heads how many houses they own.

Yo, I heard Max Bemis (of Say Anything) is for a limited time offering to write personalized acoustic jams for SA fans for something like one hundred and fifty bucks. Some other band I'd never heard of until now, The Swellers, are doing something very similar to honor him (i think they make a point to say "honor" rather than "copy"). This kind of blows me because we did something pretty similar a few months ago, as many of you know, to promote the pre-release of "To the Mattresses", although I'm not saying it's an identical idea. We wrote a song that lyrically included 71 of the names of Some Like it Hot fans that preordered the early bird edition of our debut full-length, and that jam can be heard at www.myspace.com/gapostropheramusic. It's not the exact same move Max is making, especially since our shoutout was free with the album, but I'll admit I am a little jealous that some big name is getting all the glory for something like that.

Anyways, that's really neither here nor there; what is here is a video of me playing a personalized birthday song for my good friend Leah Delsack, who turned 20 a few days ago and was gracious enough to spend part of her birthday with us at our cd release show at Sonar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1-8UFHLgAg

1. Dunk a basketball in an actual pickup game.

I'm only 5'9, but I can grab the rim on one out of five tries or so, and there was a badass on my high school's team who could dunk when he was 5'7 and 16 years old. I believe it is totally doable, and as of recent my passion for playing basketball has come back with a vengeance, so I will be working toward this goal starting now.

2. Lay a girl or woman who is famous enough that my saying I did so will provoke absolute disbelief from anyone who knows me

I dunno why, but I think this is a hilarious idea.

3. Play a show with MxPx

Incredible band now having been around for sixteen years and counting. Opening for them someday would kind of be like the culmination of the nuttiness I've descended into starting in ninth grade when I began to teach myself guitar and listen obsessively to this band.

4. Stage dive and not break any bones, ideally by actually getting caught

This one seems the most immediately plausible, but it ain't a guarantee. I have seen the frontmen of absurdly popular bands get dropped on their asses. As the non-frontman of a not absurdly popular band, my odds are further complicated ha ha.

5. Spit in Sean Hannity's face, Roberto Alomar-style

That guy, for me, is the epitome of what's wrong with every sophistry-dependent right-wing ideologue/jingoist I have ever met, and as such I think I could weather the legal hassle and defamation of my character that would likely result.

After much deliberation, careful consideration, and discussion with my closest advisers (thanks, Mom), I have determined that it is time for me to promulgate a decision that will rattle the world, and confound pundits and analysts across the political spectrum.

I have decided to endorse Democratic contender Barack Obama.

Now, as a forward-thinking, left-leaning, artellectual (yeah, I made it up; artist+intellectual in case you were lost) young black man, it would seemingly be a no-brainer that I would be an Obamaniac- but even though I'm announcing my full-throated support for him now, don't think I'm some sort of fanatic. In fact, it was the stereotype that a person of my social location, taste, political leanings, socioeconomic status and race was all but certain to support the Illinois Senator's bid for the highest office in the land that made me hesitant to jump on the bandwagon. In short, I have been in no hurry to conform to the expected behaviors of a nonconformist.

But now I feel that I must, and not merely because he has endeavored so admirably as to succeed in becoming the first black person to win the nomination of a major party for president. Despite what you hear on message boards, in blog comment sections and on Fox News, black people are not so impressed with the blackness of others that we would unanimously vote Snoop Dogg into the White House if he mounted a campaign. That would be a sacrilege, and the implication that we would do so is insulting, to put it mildly.

Nay; everyone knows that blind, ignorant unconditional support for a fellow black candidate is an honor we would only reserve for a better rapper - like Jay-Z.

I have yet to encounter any politican who I have not been at least moderately suspicious of, and there are very few I find impressive. A guy in a suit behind a podium reading from a teleprompter sets off every inkling of a spider sense I have, and politics as a general rule seem inherently superficial, divisive and woefully removed from the plight of the people to my admittedly biased 21-year-old punk rock kid sensibility. But I have been following the presidential campaign very closely since late last fall, and gee golly, I like Barack Obama. Even given this, I have been less than eager to throw my complete support behind, because as far as I can tell, I am utterly pre-disposed to like a candidate like him. In many ways, when I see this guy, I feel like I'm looking at a version of me, or at least someone who could plausibly be my dad. Hear me out-

Obama is constantly derided by critics as being all talk and no substance; soaring rhetoric that offers no tangible solutions. This is something I wholeheartedly relate to because as far back as I can remember, I have constantly weathered mockery, jealousy, or flat out distaste for my way with words, a phenomenon I find particularly dispiriting because I think verbal skills are inherently linked to the strength of one's ideas. So naturally, when I see a guy who I find eloquent and inspiring being excoriated for what I perceive as a powerful asset, and when this public criticism has been carried out in a way that is remarkably consistent with my own experiences, my first inclination is of course going to be to defend the guy I really can't help but identify with.

I tried to empathize with Hillary Clinton. I really did. I played devil's advocate with myself over the issue for a long time, but it's hard to stick up for someone who makes casual allusions to the possibility of Obama's assasination as a reason to continue to pursue the Democratic presidential nomination, hard to believe in a candidate who seemed to suggest that only she could connect with "hardworking Americans- white Americans", against my constitution to buy into the rhetoric of someone who stressed her credentials over Obama as a doer and fighter for and of the middle class when she raked in nearly 110 million dollars on her 2006 tax returns. If she'd won the nomination, however, I'd have voted for her in a heartbeat over John McCain of course. (Did anyone else notice that the thing the Hulk had to fight in the final battle of the film kind of had John McCain's face? I half-expected the creature to challenge the Hulk to a series of town hall meetings.) But every time she gave an address, all I could think about was how much she physically resembled and had the speech cadences of all of the middle-aged white ladies in pantsuits who were the Junior High administrators that gave me detention all the time. And if you think I'm eager for them to have influence over my life again, you're crazy.

More than that, unless the favorite in a given competition is the St. Louis Cardinals, I'm for the little guy; I will all but invariably pull for the underdog. And Obama came into this race about as resolutely the underdog as was possible, especially in the mind of someone like me, who thought the prospect of a black commander-in-chief was severely implausible for the forseeable future. I honestly believe that the fact that he is the last remaining Democratic candidate is a testament to his campaigning acumen, his ability to see the less visible weaknesses in the competition, his embrace of technology as way to galvanize the common man's ability to effect change on the political landscape, his conscientious decision to take on a message likely to resonate with a broad coalition of Washington-weary voters, his shrewd placement of talented and efficacious advisers and aides on his team, and an innate durability and determination that allowed him to weather the might of one of the most powerful political machines in history. Plus, the guy's got balls! I would be profoundly deterred from running from President as a black dude in America not just because of the immensity of the Clinton influence but the mere possibility of Redneck Clem being pissed off by my audacity in challenging the white political establishment and pumping my skull full of lead. The thought of that is enough to make this progressive black dude want to stay home and watch TV, so I have a fairly appreciation for the fortitude it takes to circumvent that.

Pretty much all of that is indicative of the kinds of qualities I would want in a president- and that has little to do with the fact that his physical appearance is not altogether different from anyone I might see at the next family reunion. Snoop Dogg's isn't either, but give me break- I don't even own a single Snoop record.

I can admit my bias; black or no, Barack Obama is precisely the kind of candidate I would be inclined to find appealing, and as such I was particularly suspicious of him, but I've come to see that his obvious appeal may make my endorsement predictable, but it doesn't make it any less necessary.

Let's send the right packing this year. Obama '08.

So Some Like it Hot has been nominated for "Best Band No One's Heard Of" in the annual Scene Trash Awards.

What are they? Pssh I don't know, ok? But call me egotistical, I just like winning things. Even when I'm not entirely clear what they are.

As such, you should vote for us at www.scenetrash.com/STA, and maybe by doing so, you can help us to become wholly unqualified for such an award in the future. I don't know that being recognized by anything called "Scene Trash" is necessarily superlative, but winning would be a good way to find out.

Also, I need some headshots. If you can help, and have some shutter skills, challah at me. I don't have any money, but I'm sure we could work something out. By work something out I mean, "maybe you'll do it for free?"

NBA Finals tonight. Let's go Celtics!

The funny thing about moving out of your parents' house and in with some dudes is the realization that somewhere down the line, someone is going to have to clean all the ass hair from the toilet seat, and this time there is no way it's gonna be your mom.

I believe this week marks the two year anniversary of my leaving home. I can't believe I haven't been evicted, murdered, fired, raped, crucified etc in two sets of 365 days. (Gargantuan Knock On Wood!)

Also, I am completely done playing instruments, making vocalizations, or conjuring rhyming patterns of clever words out of thin air for "To the Mattresses", in addition to being completely done with CommunityCollegeWork, so I believe that my summer starts today.

Does anyone else find the phenomenon of Presidential candidates rapping "on the stump" kinda reminiscent of wrestlers in the WWE taunting each other from the ring? Same kinds of hand gestures, same childish assaults on opponents character and "honor", same noises of obsequious approval from the peanut gallery.

Thinking about it, it's a source of supreme comfort to think that no matter what life throws my way in the future, its pretty hard to imagine any of it being worse than being circumsized (with no anesthetic! I realize this is the typical way) way back at age zero. Sure, I have no recollection of that catastrophic event at all, but that's a blessing I can't even describe. With any luck, that will be the lowest, most agonizing point of my life, and it's many, many years behind me.

Next time you're having a bad day, think about your (or your brother's, or your father's, or your boyfriend's) circumcision, and consider:
Is this really worse than getting part of your dick chopped off when you were a few hours old?
And be consoled.

Look crotch-ward, ye mighty civilization, and find strength in your circumcisions!