obfuscated girl

w00t a note from hamlort

It is like three years later and this still makes me laugh. And laugh.

vampires will never hurt you

I have woken up exhausted for the past two days, both times because people were having parties on their porches until like three in the morning and I have been afraid to say anything to them because I have lost the ability to stand up for myself and also because I'm not sure if anyone else is bothered by it except me and I am all Princess and the Pea-ing. I need to make $30 last somehow until Tuesday, which means that I will not be leaving the apartment unless it is to go to the library which is free and/or to purchase 2 for 99 cents boxes of macaroni and cheese because I have no fucking groceries. I hate how the stretches of Extreme Poverty coincide with the phase where I get really sick of being inside my apartment and really just want to go somewhere, it is the weekend and everybody is working for it.
Last night I watched Moonlight because apparently I am 60 years old and also still in mourning over Veronica Mars, but holy shit if I was not bored silly by everything except Jason Dohring, otherwise known as Logan, otherwise known as half of VeGan, and oh my christ I need to stop. Basically it is Vampire With Conscience! Separates Himself From People So He Does Not Make Out With They Necks, But Also Is A Private Detective Guy! Because He Wants To Help Them! Get It? So He's Totally Tortured!
The problem is that this concept has been done to fucking death, and they have made vampires boring, and there is nothing new brought to it except Dohring, and even then it is a little jarring to see him go from college freshman to a guy who is supposed to be 800 years old (stopped aging at 30) and I just wanted the camera to follow him around so he could say more funny things. And suck on ladies' arms. Because that was kind of hot.

This has been "I Got Problems."

this isn't working, my little brow-fucker

Ok so the article is up here, after eight hours of agonizing and deleting and retyping sentences and realizing that The National is fucking impossible to Google and the general tsuris that comes about anytime I write anything ever that's all I gotta go meet someone for coffee now. Also I have an interview Monday with a place called Hope Street whose mission is to "bring hope to recovering addicts through the teachings of Jesus." I am somewhere between less-than-thrilled and Dear Fucking Christ Give Me A Job Right Now I Don't Care If It Is Shoveling Elephant Shit In The Circus.
Which, I am aware, is not terribly Christian of me.

in briefs

The photoset from The National is up. As soon as I figure out how the fuck I am going to write about the show that will be up too.
I did not know until I saw it performed live that the lyrics to "Mr. November" are not actually "I won't fuck you sober, I'm Mr. November," and are in fact "I won't fuck us over, I'm Mr. November."
I think that I liked my version better.

you know i dreamed about you for 29 years before i saw you

I am seeing those guys tonight. Excited is kind of an understatement. I am taking advantage of the fact that I'm not going with anyone (we journalists must have focus, y'know) and the fact that I have all kinds of free time to get there early and get close enough to maybe take some decent pictures for once in my god damn life. (They are an eminently photogenic group of dudes.)
My dreams have gone from dreaming about a white dog biting my arm and refusing to let go and walking around with its jaws clamped from my arm to my father announcing that he is in love with his sister. It has gotten to the point where I am kind of afraid to go to sleep.

dear diary, today i was pompous and my sister was crazy

Yesterday I got a short story that I wrote in college in the mail, forwarded from my parents' address and with a Madison postmark, and no return address. There are handwritten corrections in it that I made because I forgot to close a parentheses, but otherwise there's no indication of who it could have come from.
I am very, very confused.

be cool, soda pop

This is the best assessment of the fall television season that anyone could have ever written.

"I like television, ladies and gentlemen. I like how when it is good, it is awesome. I like how it is some of the most detailed fiction that is written. I like how every fall, your nights feel busier so you are tricked into thinking you have a life. I don't like what the world of networks and commercials and marketing marketing marketing does to the world. Recently I've been reading a lot of things about new and returning TV shows this fall, and I was thinking about that part of it especially."
[...]
"BROOKE SHIELDS: Hi, we live in New York, commonly referred to as an urban jungle, only we are ladies so for us it is lipstick. Hopefully you can tell a lot about our characters from the way we have each splayed our legs differently. Her on the left, she's peppy and has crrrrrazy style, and doesn't really worry about what you think. She looks like the girl who replaced Lisa Rinna on Days of Our Lives when you were in middle school, but she's not. Me in the middle, I'm sleek and beige and only laugh when I'm with a man. Her on the right, she gives off that Felicity Huffman vibe, plus her legs are crossed like she's a businesslady who also might have to leap up and dash out of the room to pick up her kids. Life is crazy, but what always pulls us together is the unlikelihood of our perfect jobs, and printed high-heels."
There is not only a TV show coming out this fall called Lipstick Jungle (and why they chose to base it on the worst Candace Bushnell book ever written the world may never know), but there is a TV show called Cashmere Mafia. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Oh god, what have we done.

ANYWAY, notably missing from that post is an analysis of Gossip Girl, and notably missing from this picture of the Gossip Girl cast

is OMG A BLACK PERSON AND ALSO I THINK THERE IS TOTALLY AN ASIAN GIRL TOO. But look at those kids, all leaning all inappropriately-sultry for kids in high school and stuff. Except the girl in the plaid skirt just kind of looks like her feet hurt. Also missing from that picture: VANESSA. How on earth is the CW going to bring a girl who has a shaved head and lives in Williamsburg or whatever into a cast like that? How are they going to depict all of the underage drinking and swearing and whatnot? And the Horrible Debilitating Marijuana Addiction Of Nate? This is going to be the best trainwreck I will ever cancel all existing plans on Wednesday nights for and refuse to schedule Wednesday night plans. You know, since Veronica Mars.
Reuters already hates it, but as you all know Reuters and I are not friends right now, and they actually use "oh, barf" in that article, although to their credit I never thought I would ever hear Veronica Mars be made to use the word "hottie" unsarcastically. Poor Veronica Mars.
I did not in any stretch of the imagination spend a good portion of last week rereading my copies of the books, why do you ask?

oh shit

found on this Flickr
a couple things, Spin Magazine: No one goes to the Safe House TO EAT FOOD, nor do they/should they go IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY,
and I can't believe that you mentioned Maritime and not Decibully, and oh hey Emily it's Juiceboxx.

dear america

This is not fat. Or "chubby."
She was not separated at birth from Miss Piggy. She was not embarrassingly out of shape." Do you have nothing better to do with your time, America? What are you trying to tell your girls? And most of these links aren't editorials or opinion pages, they are NEWS. It is A HARD FACT that Britney Spears is fat. Yes, we're a terribly out-of-shape country on the whole, but aren't we supposed to have curves? You're basically telling women that unless you can keep your body in the same shape it was when you were eighteen you have no business even THINKING you might be attractive to anyone. You may as well not venture in public, and don't ever think about having kids. Shut the fuck up, America.
Yes, Britney Spears is a hot mess, and yes, stumbling around and lip-synching and having your weave all in your eyes and looking like you are either bored out of your mind or on something is not the best way to make a comeback. But it also doesn't give your critics license to go off on you like you're Mama Cass. I have always had a soft spot for Britney, which may or may not drop my estimation in you-the-reader's eyes. I am the least-qualified person on earth to comment on what's going on inside her head, but it's painful to watch someone go down so far and so quickly. In a way, I think she is almost a cultural barometer/metaphor for pop music's state in general, and if we're extending the metaphor with this performance, MTV may as well give up the pretense of being a music show, kill TRL entirely, and rename itself "All That One Girl From The Hills And Also Nick Cannon,All The Time."
And that is pretty fucking sad.

i'm not over you

Those are my brother's hands. I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty that he is a better drummer than you are.
I had a three-day weekend at home and here are the Things I Learned:
1. there is a black and white setting on my camera, and it took three seconds of my brother fiddling around with it for him to point it out to me, and i have had the camera for three years
2. there is a type of bugle that plays Taps and nothing else because there are too few musicians in the military to be able to play Taps at all the military funerals (thanks, Wayne Coyne)
3.I would really like to hang out with Wayne Coyne
4. if I am going to take a 90 pound black lab for a walk it is probably in my best interest to stretch first
5. probably I should never go into my dad's bedroom again
6. if I spend two days basically with ice cream as my primary form of sustenance I am not going to feel very good on the third day
7. I do not trust people who do not think that L.A. Story is funny

the end!

i enjoy being afraid of russia

Were 22-year-olds in 1985 really so self-aware that they said things like "We're all going through this. It's our time at the edge."? Because I am really not sure if they did.
Regardless, I am swearing off dating again until I can figure out a way to locate Andrew McCarthy circa 1985.

Even if his lines did make me want to punch walls. Also he was WAY more stable than Ducky.

why we can't have nice things

The day after I find out that the Flaming Lips and the Cold War Kids are playing in my hometown for FREE at some kinda Satanic Southern Comfort-sponsored thing outside the Coliseum on a day that I have to be at a wedding in my hometown , I find out that the Ponys are playing too, at the Party In The Park Snake On The Lake festival, also for free. And I feel awful, because I love the Ponys but this is not even going to be a contest, assuming that I can get out of the reception early because I have Female Troubles and/or avian flu and oh can you just drop me off at the Coliseum because they have really good painkillers/antidote and I am changing into jeans in the car because I am cold and can you come get me in about four hours oh and I need Ben to come with me because I don't want to get lost. No you don't smell pot. Keep driving, you'll miss The Ghost Whisperer. I also have a feeling that every hackysack-toting motherfucker with a decent fake ID and within a 40-mile radius is going to be at this thing, and someone should really go see the poor Ponys. Emily said that she has a friend who is skeptical about whether it is truly free,
and after some intense interweb searching for lineup times I have come to the conclusion that it really, really is, unless you count the selling of your email address and/or soul to the liquor that killed Janis Joplin and frankly sort of tastes terrible.
I have been listening to the Flaming Lips a lot lately and I have come to the conclusion that there has never been a band that just sounds so much like joy, even when the subject matter isn't very happy. I remember thinking they were kind of ridiculous when they had the Jelly song on 90210, but years later I got a copy of The Soft Bulletin, and I didn't even realize that I was doing it but it became my go-to album for when I was sad or brooding or feeling like I was magical. They do things to your brain chemistry.
And I mean, look at these. How can you not be excited? GET EXCITED, BEN, WE'RE GOING EVEN IF IT MEANS WE HAVE TO PUNCH SOME DUDES WITH DREADLOCKS OR SNEAK OUT THE BACK OF THE WEDDING BEHIND SOMEONE WHO IS CARRYING THE CAKE AND HITCH A RIDE HOME.




If you have made it down this far, congratulations, because you get songs:
The Flaming Lips-Waiting For A Superman
The Flaming Lips-Mr. Ambulance Driver
so excited.