Eagle flies with the dove

Short one-act play

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:27:26 -0500

THE EASIEST BREAK-UP

Man: Don’t you think I’m sort of like Jim? I am, I’m totally Jim.
Woman: Yeah, you’re sort of Jim. You mean like you’re sweet and real cute and clever and all that stuff?
Man: Exactly.
Woman: Then I guess that makes me Pam!
Man: Well, maybe not,

Top 10 Best Songs of 2009

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:16:00 -0500

Did “Single Ladies” come out in 2008 or 2009? It doesn’t matter, it is the best song of the year. I want it played at my funeral and my wedding and when my kids are baptized and at the conclusion of my next job interview and when I buy a sandwich later tonight. I want to steal a fast car and drive through a desert with a beautiful Latin woman and play this song. I want the car to explode and for the song to continue playing; it is resilient like that. I want to hear that spaceship noise loop endlessly for the rest of my life.

Remember when we heard “Hey Ya” everywhere for two years, but now you can’t remember the last time you heard it, and you’d feel embarrassed, nearly apologetic, if it started playing? Will this song expire, too, or is it timeless like something Mozart wrote? I think that maybe everything Mozart wrote sounds like a wet fart compared to “Single Ladies.”

The higher up you get in academia, the more bullshitty it...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:46:00 -0500

The higher up you get in academia, the more bullshitty it becomes. It’s probably as serious as it’s ever going to be in 12th grade.

Galaxie 500, “Tugboat” I have said that my dream...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:08:00 -0500

Galaxie 500, “Tugboat”

I have said that my dream relationship distilled into a three-minute song is Galaxie 500’s “Oblivious,” and this song is the other half of the dream. I don’t want to go to your party, I don’t want to talk to your friends, I don’t want to vote for your president.

A commenter on songmeanings.net, a delightfully Web 1.0 site containing the occasional useful tidbit, explains the “tugboat captain” part:

Presumably written with Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison in mind - after leaving the VU he became somewhat of an isolationist, pursuing a Ph.D. in medieval studies and becoming a tugboat captain.

Traditionally I have two stock images to evoke when I am frustrated,
- “I’m going to move to Alaska and live in an igloo and freeze to death” (defeatist)
- “I’m going to move to Spain, a part with the rocky beaches, and hand out fliers for a Chinese restaurant and spend most of the day sleeping and reading” (escapist)

Now that I know the seed of this tugboat captain idea, I may add it to the mix. “I’m going to leave the Velvet Underground and become a tugboat captain; fuck you” (defiant).

Scenarios for future nightmares (in progress)

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:55:26 -0500

- Make out with a Huffington Post blogger

- Open a Subway franchise in San Diego

Photo

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:45:31 -0500

Photography as art

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:16:00 -0500

Miroslav Volf once said in class that substantive pieces should be read three times; lesser things can be read “like wood eats fire—it leaves only ashes.”

Maybe that metaphor explains why I have difficulty accepting photography as serious art. It is easy to enjoy, like ice cream, and like ice cream I can consume a bucketful in one sitting. I am not left with wood but ashes.

This week I have been reblogged by Justine Bateman and BONER PARTY, so I guess I am dropping out of...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:11:00 -0500

This week I have been reblogged by Justine Bateman and BONER PARTY, so I guess I am dropping out of school to become a professional Tumblrer.

One calls me “amazing”; the other seems under the impression I was making fun of the mom on ‘Family Ties.’

Anyway, hello, new followers—I wish that I could see all of your shining angel faces. Also I apologize for not writing about bush every day.

Field trip

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:10:40 -0500

Florida is an unsettling place to me, but I would like to visit this hotel in Key West where Wallace Stevens frequently stayed. He punched Hemingway there. He picked fights with Robert Frost, who you have to figure was an annoying wuss, a real sweaterwearer. But more important is that Stevens wrote at this hotel in Key West, and there’s some peacefulness, some orderedness encoded in his poetry that I would like to chase down and take for myself.

“Anecdote of the Jar” is one of my favorite flexible metaphors and the only poem that I can still recite off the top of my head. When I was in high school, I felt that an English teacher was legit only once they had nonchalantly rattled off a poem from memory. If I ever teach high school, I will keep this poem in my back pocket, waiting to impress (three students while further alienating) everyone (else).

cosmopsis: M’s post just reminded me of the time a high school...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:40:00 -0500

cosmopsis:

M’s post just reminded me of the time a high school boyfriend gave me an old copy of his collected poetry without knowing it was signed. It’s one of the better things that has ever happened to me.

I’ve led a charmed life, but not that charmed.

Look at how he signed it, too! It’d take an Eliot to pull that off; I can imagine someone like Rick Moody trying to sign a book like that, then he’d hand it back to you and you’d look down and just laugh and throw it in the garbage.

This was in the part of the store marked “Gifts for...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:17:19 -0500

This was in the part of the store marked “Gifts for Rapists”

There is no telling how long it took my mom to type this. She is...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:48:00 -0500

There is no telling how long it took my mom to type this. She is a new texter.

Invite O.J. over to “cut” your “bird”...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:30:00 -0500

Invite O.J. over to “cut” your “bird” WINK WINK

Be careful out there, ladies. It could happen to you.

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:00:00 -0500

Be careful out there, ladies. It could happen to you.

CDs

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:03:00 -0500

When high school friends would buy a CD and instantly throw away everything but the actual disc, I thought they were heretics. I thought they should be put in music jail. I thought they should be allowed to listen only to unserious music—compilations sold on commercials, soundtracks to TV shows, greatest-hits collections—which probably wouldn’t even phase them.

The migration away from CD format has happened so quickly and completely that CDs have already taken on some of the charm that attracted us back to vinyl: listening to one is an intentional act, a tactile experience, that encourages us to play a whole album in its intended order.

Years ago I sold most of my CDs but continue to lug around about 200 in their individual cases. It’s stuff I haven’t copied to MP3, so if I am listening to music from a CD, then I haven’t heard it in a long time, and I probably know it from a different phase of life.

Tonight I held my bi-annual Weezer singalong in the car. I cannot sing the same part in “Across the Sea” that I could not sing in 8th grade: “As if I could live on words and dreams and a million screams, oh how I need your hand in mine to feel.” My voice just turns off; it won’t get to some note he’s making there.

Also, I did not understand “Tired of Sex” in 8th grade, but it makes a lot of sense now. Though what is still true 13 years later is that the women’s names feel jokey, as if he doesn’t mean the song. Lynn? Louise, Therese? Denise? Is this song historical fiction, about women in 1955?

The novelty of holding the same case now that I did when I was 14 and excited about this shit is enough reason to justify lugging around the 200 CD cases.

(P.S. When I sang “El Scorcho” as a kid, I would insert different two-syllable band names in place of Green Day to make the song more about me.)

Destroyer, “New Ways of Living” (live with Frog...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:32:15 -0500

Destroyer, “New Ways of Living” (live with Frog Eyes)

This is not the version from the lackluster Notorious Lightning EP; this live radio session recording is played more violently and contains a lot more trilling and heavy breathing.

Destroyer was so lithe and scrappy at the beginning of the decade. Now he feels like a sludgy sea monster that has crawled up onto the land. Even “Bay of Pigs” was predictable.

Anyway if you sing along with these radio session songs on the highway, you will get a ticket: they are too sweeping and muscley not to get carried away on.

Real question

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:54:00 -0500

I need a hat but have no clue what to wear. I want it for warmth—walking outside in the snow—but if I could wear it inside without looking stupid, that would be a big bonus.

At Target I bought your traditional $3 homeless-guy beanie, but it will not do.

Can you recommend a sort of cool, boy’s hat?

From "The Marriages of Rush Limbaugh"

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:10:00 -0500

Third Marriage — Marta Maranda Fitzgerald:

Marta was a married aerobics instructor from Titusville, Florida, who Rush met on the Internet via Compuserve in 1990. … Marta and Rush were married on May 27, 1994 in Virginia at the home of Justice Clarence Thomas who officiated the ceremony.

[source]

(This Compuserve sounds interesting—does anyone have an invitation to send me?)

Eventually this school is going to make me put my head under the...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:15:55 -0500

Eventually

this school

is going to make me

put my head under the tires of a bus

Don’t play this Hangman game on a plane; it will frighten...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:46:23 -0500

Don’t play this Hangman game on a plane; it will frighten the nice African man sitting next to you