vote for panda

when i married pos, he came with a few things neatly built in: a house. a car. an insurance agent whom he and other members of his family had used for years. so adult! i was a bus-riding renter who had filled out an online form to cover my apartment's contents in case carol, the elderly hoarder next door, fell asleep (or died) and a candle she had forgotten about burned all of her newspapers saved since the mid-80s and gutted our building.

i didn't realize that "i have an insurance agent" could mean "i will now receive totally ridiculous and insanely unprofessional emails from this person."

the first email was to announce her sister's dog's participation in some online beauty contest or some shit like that (i didn't really read very closely). i saw "hello to my family and friends" and assumed that she accidentally CC'd me. i mean, seriously, i've never met her; all i know is that she did FUCK ALL for us when our basement flooded with sewer water this summer after the city's infrastructure basically crumbled after a flash flood. that was an increadibly pleasant experience and i certainly don't resent my ruined basement, lost youth (goodbye to my CD collection and years' worth of writings, mementos, and irreplaceable items), or the fact that i was five months pregnant and surrounded by city of chicago fecal matter and gallons and gallons of bleach. interesting that FEMA came to our door, looked at the damage and wrote us a check; THANKS SO MUCH, INSURANCE LADY, FOR YOUR ZERO ASSISTANCE. i mean, what's insurance for, anyway, if not for us to pay hundreds of dollars a year and then be turned away when we actually need help, due to fine-print exemptions?

Hello to My Family & Friends:

We have entered Panda, my sister Rosalie's long coat Chihuahua, into the BISSELL'S MVP Photo Contest. Because of Panda's unique coloring/markings, we felt he had a good chance to win. With your help, if Panda wins, we would love to donate the first prize money, $10,000, to the Hinsdale Humane Society. Additionally, Panda would be featured on the Bissell Pet Vac advertisement.

Panda is Charles brother. Charles is my Long Coat Chihuahua that is a volunteer at the Hinsdale Humane Society. He is on the Pet a Pet program where he visits the assisted living facilities bringing joy to many of the elderly residents. See their picture together attached.

If I have sent this email, please know I consider you family or a close friend. It is not often I do something like this, however, it is for a good cause. The Hinsdale Humane Society would benefit greatly to be the recipient of this prize. 

So, PLEASE VOTE DAILY for PANDA. Just in case you forget, I will send you a reminder each day to Vote till the contest ends. If you wish not to participate, please reply to this email and write UNSUBSCRIBE ME in the Subject line.

i guess i could have unsubscribed, but i hadn't read that far. i obviously was not voting daily for panda.

the second email arrived the next day and said:

Reminder, please vote for today if you have not voted yet.

Thank you.

i deleted it, annoyed. the third arrived five days later. it was in giant, bold letters:

Last Day to VOTE for Panda., in this session Lets come in strong to get him into the finals.

Grand Prize will be donated to the Hinsdale Humane Society. Thank you to all my wonderful family and friends for voting.

the only reason i am sharing this is the fourth email, which just did it for me with its ridiculousness. there are so many unintentionally hilarious things about this email. also, how does she know that i didn't vote? and i kind of doubt that it's "ok too."

she's pissed about BLIND CATS. so fucking awesome.

Sorry to say, Panda did not place.

Sessions 1, 2, 3, and now 4 Blind Cats have won...Panda is not only the wrong species, he's not blind. Therefore, I choose not to enter him into the remaining sessions 5-12.

Blind Cats have a much bigger following than a cute little Chihuahua named Panda could have. However, I want to thank all my loyal friends and family who took the time every day to vote, I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.

Each and everyone of you know I would drop everything to help you, so your taking the time to help me for a good cause speaks volumes to me. I know who you are, and I really love you for being so wonderful....and those who didn't vote, I know who you are, and that is ok too.

MONDAY, JANUARY 31, 2011

concerted effort: j

i last posted on october 26 - a little over three months ago. my entire life has changed in those three months, and for the better. babyfriend arrived on november 19. she's a girl (! - despite my firm belief all throughout my pregnancy that she was a he, despite the ongoing morning sickness, the acne, how i carried high, my constant craving of sweets, and all of the other old-wives-tale signs that it was a girl) - a beautiful, funny, strong, smiley, sweet, and chill baby girl we named naomi siobhan. i have been off work, sequestered in the house (in the dead of winter - not that i mind at all), feeding and changing and holding and playing with this little person who i have absolutely no idea what i did to deserve. so, yeah, i've been a bit preoccupied.

bands: 
j. tillman to justin vernon

worst band name: 
jimmy eat world. i like them, despite their terrible name

number of songs by the j artists:
at start: 766
at end: 684

dates:
7/21/10 - 9/2/10 (that seems forever ago!)

highlights/surprises: 
band with the most tracks before deleting anything: jeff buckley (91) and johnny cash (83)

deleted:
well, you know, lots of random crap that i hadn't even heard of before and decided was entirely inessential in my life. also, a bunch of random jeff buckley live tracks. you know, i adore him. he was beautiful, his voice was beautiful, i have beautiful memories of listening to his beautiful album grace during beautiful times in my life. his death was tragic. it is also tragic to release every inch of tape that happens to have his voice on it. diminishes the beauty.

james blunt. it was a goal of mine when this project started was to listen to back to bedlam, decide if it is any good, and, if it isn't, which i knew it isn't, delete. so i did listen. and it is bad. he has a creepy little china doll face when he sings with his bizarre voice. i first heard "you're beautiful" at a record store in galway, ireland, and thought that it was a woman singing. i can't imagine any additional releases of his selling at all. we shall see.

lessons learned/randoms:
i don't know a lot about the jam - or even when i discovered them - but i have had their greatest hits cd for at least ten years and good god do i love "beat surrender" and "town called malice."

i actually really love jamie o'neal's "all by myself" - i happened to have gotten it from cd's valentines day mix in 2003, which he entitled "i was drunk and it was dark and you were there."

"canned heat" by jamiroqui - shit yes. napolean dy-no-mite besides, that song is rad.

jane's addiction's nothings shocking and ritual de lo habitual are amazing. perry's onstage banter during lolla in 2009 was so lame that it made me sad, and i have disappointment towards that bullshitmarried to rock "reality" show he and his missus participated in.

rabbit fur coat by jenny lewis and the watson twins is outstanding. i didn't like acid tongue quite as much, and jenny and johnny is okay but not all that memorable.

i don't know how i obtained it, but there's a song called "love ain't just a four letter word" by jenny wilson that's totally bizarre and awesome. ditto "intelligentactile 101" by jesca hoop.

"head on" by the jesus and mary chain is perfect.

i didn't really know who joan armatrading was when a friend asked me to go see her at wolf trap outside of dc in 2000 and i just fell in love with her voice. "down to zero" and "love and affection" are two of my all-time favorites.

"take me home, country roads" by john denver was a karaoke favorite when we went to west virginny to go tubing/skiing/drinking in 2003.

johnny cash is much loved in my house. pos' dad was a huge fan, so he grew up listening to and admiring his social justice power-to-the-working-man no-bullshit music. johnny and i have the same birthday (um, different year). ecf and i were talking about what to name the babyfriend, and he let me know that there is a syracuse football player named Prince-Tyson Gulley - most likely because his parents loved prince and mike tyson. therefore we decided to name my child cash-coyne: for johnny, for wayne, and because it is ghetto fabulous.

i love joni mitchell. love.

"angel of the morning" and "queen of hearts" were my favorites when i was little - like six or seven. juice newton (i loved her name) played the rock county 4H fair one summer and i was pissed - like, PISSED - that no adults wanted to take me. just a kid and already totally suffering from FOMO (that would be "fear of missing out").

who is this just jack character? when i hear that, it reminds me of thewill and grace minstrel show character jack. i think the just jack band/guy is a brit and awesome.

there. proud of self. will get to the Ks in due time - i'm not done with them yet despite starting them in september but i've been, you know, busy. i was listening to the killers while i was in labor - and i'm not even all that big of a fan. just dedicated to the cause, friends.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2010

concerted effort: i

so, you (and there is only one of you, methinks) may have noticed that i have not been blogging. i have my reasons; for example, i am going to give birf in a month. i have been preoccupied. i will do these as i can - i'm up to the Ks right now, so i need to go back and blog the Js as well.

i'm driving to work now, so my hours of walking and el riding and listening to the ipod has turned into a happy ride with NPR. i don't feel the slightest bit guilty that i am now driving - i took public transit for 10 years and do not miss the waiting, the crowds, the germs, the ignorant assholes who let pregnant women stand while they "don't notice." i haven't been reading or listening to music the way that the train used to force me to, though. 

bands: 
from i'm from barcelona to ivana xl

worst band name: 
i'm from barcelona? i am kloot? i monster? take your pick. although i love you but i've chosen darkness, while not succinct, is a GREAT band name.

number of songs by the i artists:
at start: 223
at end: 187

dates:
6/21/10-7/6/10

highlights/surprises: 
band with the most tracks before deleting anything: indigo girls (71)

deleted:
india.arie's second album, "voyage to india." i kept her first album, as it was earnest but cool singer-songwriter guitar-driven acoustic jammy stuff, but then i got bored.

lessons learned/randoms:
omg the indigo girls are fucking boring. eb has a great story about how her walkman was stolen out of her locker when she was in high school, but the thief had taken her indigo girls tape out and left it - that is hysterical. i have so many indigo girls albums because my good friend in high school was obsessed with them and would give me one of their cds for every holiday and birthday so that i could also understand the importance of this band to her. in retrospect, maybe she was trying to tell me something.

i only have four iggy pop songs, but they all feel really iconic and are awesome.

my parents' first date was to see ike and tina turner, which is hysterical, because my parents are and were SUPER SQUARE. my favorite is "river deep, mountain high." it's too bad that ike is even mentioned on these songs - tina is the badass and the talent.

interpol is a band i never think about but enjoy when they are playing.

INXS. hearts.

the isley brother's "summer breeze" makes me think of drinking malibu run with cranberry juice and eating half-price burgers and chainsmoking at the toledo lounge in 2003, when my favorite bartender would play this on the jukebox and slip me free drinks. this song even reminds me of how the bar smelled - water damage and stale smoke. sigh. good times.

SUNDAY, JULY 04, 2010

concerted effort: h

bands: 
from haale to howe gelb (who and who?)

worst band name: 
hootie and the blowfish, of course. legendarily bad. if i had a hoobastank song or two, that would win, but alas, no.

number of songs by the H artists:
at start: 291
at end: 222

dates:
6/2/10 - 6/21/10

highlights/surprises:
band with the most tracks before deleting anything: hole (53) and hanson (46). they really don't have a lot in common.

i downloaded harvey danger's little by little when they posted it for free online when it first came out in 2005 and you know, i really really like it. "little round mirrors" is a fantastic song, and the entire album is smart, fun and good. you can still get it here.

i love horace andy's "feel good all over." i first heard it at my friend's apartment in brooklyn on a steamy summer day and i got all excited because it sounds like an elderly woman who has nothing to be happy about but is anyway. spoiler: horace is a raggae dude who was in his 20s when it was recorded.

my love for hanson has been documented before. i will just say that i had a drunken conversation with pos' cousin's girlfriends after a black keys show and we were talking music and she is a total hipster and we started naming guilty pleasures and i mentioned hanson and she got really intense and was like "DON'T EVER APOLOGIZE FOR LIKING HANSON." turns out she is a total superfan. so, yes, hanson still has a fan base, hidden amongst those you wouldn't ever suspect.

deleted:

to the chagrin of many of my friends, i really don't like the hold steady. that guy's voice is totally annoying. the guitarist is from my hometown. i have tried to listen and enjoy and just can't.

a hot snakes album. i saw them in dc. that's all i remember. the album is pretty forgettable as well.

the particulary bad hootie songs. yes, i kept some.

lessons learned/randoms:

i was at my eye doctor's last week and they were playing one of those really bad top-40 radio stations, and hootie and the blowfish's "hold my hand" came on in between some katy perry monstrosity and no doubt's "hella good." that single came out in 1994, yo, SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, and it's still getting played on top-40 radio, and it still fits in. their debut album (the only one i own) went platinum SIXTEEN TIMES. so hootie and the blowfish are not revered artists, and their subsequent albums went nowhere, but me and 15,999,999 other people liked them enough at one time to pay for the cd. listening to this for the first time in forever, it's not that bad. it's cargo-shorts college-town jangly pop with acoustic guitars, so this band paved the way for the dave matthews band's popularity, along with a handful of non-threatening southern dudes with earnest love songs (edwin mccain, sister hazel, fastball, other bands you haven't heard from since the 90s). i actually think it's pretty awesome that darius rucker ("hootie" as he will forever be thought of) became a country star and has had three #1 country hits, especially considering a black dude hadn't been at the top of the country charts in 25 years.

hot IQs is a fun denver band who i got to see open for someone once (and i got a cute little button that looks like a calculator with HOT IQS in the "screen" area, like where you could type 55378008 and turn it upside down and it would say "BOOBLESS" to the delight of other 5th graders, and i made it into a magnet that resides on my fridge). anyway, look for "retromuff," which is my favorite.

eb put hip hop hoodio's "dicks and noses" on a mix cd for me a few years ago and its super juvenile but i love it. they're a latino jewish rap group (yes) and some of their lyrics include "you like our dicks and you like our noses/you see a jewish guy and you forget where your clothes is."

heartless bastards' female lead singer sounds . . . how shall i put this . . . a little, err, "touched"? she has a great gravelly voice, don't get me wrong, but there is this odd twinge of daniel johnston mentally deranged that i detect layered in there.

hole. the irritating thing about courtney love is that live through thisis completely amazing (many people believe it's because kurt wrote most of the music) and celebrity skin, while irritating in that grating starfucker hollywood namedrop mode that courtney wants you to be envious of, it is also a really solid album. i fucking LOVED that band in high school. and now . . . and now. the wrong one died.

i said to pos near the end of this installment, "i should be done with the Hs tomorrow," and he replied, "the real question is, when do you get your life back?" i laughed so hard i teared up.

i'm running a little behind - i'm almost done with the i's already. the j's are gonna take forever.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 02, 2010

concerted effort: g

bands: 
from gang of four to gypsy and the cat

worst band name:
get him eat him (both songs were deleted)
(also: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, howeverthefuck that's pronounced - apparently they broke up in 2006)

i didn't do this category for the previous letters. i should go back and do so.

number of songs by the G artists:
at start: 570
at end: 375

dates:
4/23/10-6/1/10

highlights/surprises: 
band with the most tracks before deleting anything: green day (53) followed by guns n roses (50)

deleted:

a live girl talk set. i often have an aversion to live albums, especially if they aren't off of the mixing board, and a live dj set from a guy who just presses play on his laptop kind of defeats the purpose, right? pos and i saw the girl talk set at lollapalooza last year or the year before. fucking asshole kids with their asshole fashion and asshole dancing. i had never been surrounded by a more annoying group of assholes in my life. proof that i am approaching too old.

this may be unpopular to admit to my hipster friends, but most of guided by voices. i don't get it. sorry. also gone: all of grandaddy. couldn't force myself to care.

more than half of gwen stefani's vapid, retarded solo album.

i tried to delete a godsmack song and pos removed it from the "maybedelete" playlist. foiled again!

lessons learned/randoms:

and i thought that eminem had a persecution complex - em has nothing on w. axl rose (or, you know, bill bailey). supermodel-beatinghomophobic racist sexist piece of shit (although he claims that songs like "one in a million" are just, like, misunderstood, and he loves elton john. wait . . . so does eminem). i'm not gonna lie. i like some guns n roses songs. i kept a few. the singles mostly, and the ones that i somehow know by heart, because as a kid in rural wisconsin, you don't listen to "get in the ring" and think "what an angry, petty little man," you think "hahaha, he just said some nasty shit. this album rules." also, i can't listen to "welcome to the jungle" without thinking of jim carrey (in a daring dramatic role) poorly lip syncing in the dirty harry movie the dead pool (and the members of gnr attending his funeral). omg i just watched the jim carrey scenes for the first time in like 20 years - liam neeson! what are YOU doing there? also, i am pregnant (yes, for real, eeeeeks) and even though i am only 15 weeks along and there is no way that babyfriend can hear, much less understand, i don't like listening to piss and vinegar. bad mojo.

greg laswell covering kristin hersh's "your ghost" is beautiful. i love that song. both versions. michael stipe is on kristin's.

sigh . . . i really dislike genesis. pos really likes them. they stay. unfortunately. that's what i get for marrying a prog rock fan who was 15 in 1985.

i love george michael. he's a literal hot mess and really needs to stop getting fucked up (and fucked) in public, but he is awesome. even if the lyrics to "father figure" makes me throw up in my mouth. i like how he spent the 80s and 90s projecting a complete "i only fuck supermodels" vibe, just to come out later and be like "oh, by the way, i'm totally fucking gay, so, yeah, anyway . . ."

ghostland observatory are this random electroclash band that i thoroughly enjoy. surprisingly, they are from austin.

i only have three goldfrapp songs and i like. might look into more.

big hearts for gorillaz. i overpaid to see them in dc a few years ago, but it was still mad fun. cartoon band better than fat albert's.

listening to green day's dookie made me feel 17 years old. i actually really like american idiot, even though i hadn't listened to it all the way through until now. not quite sure how well it translates tobroadway, but still a fun powerpoppunk record.

on to the H's.

MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2010

concerted effort: f

bands: 
from fabienne delsol to fyfe dangerfield

number of songs by the f artists:
at start: 454
at end: 367

dates:
3/31/10-4/23/10


highlights/surprises: 
band with the most tracks: flaming lips (120)

faith no more's angel dust is one of the best hard rock albums evah. "be aggressive" and "everything's ruined" fucking KILL.

even though i like feist, she can get pretty effing boring.

i love fiona apple. always have, always will. when the pawn (i am not going to type the whole name out) is an excellent album and one of my staples.

i really like florence + the machine's lungs. i was really disappointed with their show at the house of blues last month. their cover of robert palmer's "addicted to love" is awesome - pick it up from one of theseposts.

i don't speak french but for some reason i always end up with random french pop songs in my itunes (perhaps i have plastic bertrand's "ca plane por moi" to blame - me and ps, driving in a shitty borrowed car in dc ten years ago on our way to shows, this song on an old mix tape turned up loud). i dig the france gall and francois hardy i somehow acquired.

fujiya & miyagi - love them. awesome electobritpoprobotrock. i saw them open for peter bjorn & john with cd and zp a few years ago at the 9:30 club and i thought that f&m were way better than pb&j. i love "collarbone," and the hood internet's mash-up "the new collarbone" is with dr dre and snoop and i fucking love it. get it here.

the face's "ohh la la" - never get tired of that one. and i like that it's ronnie wood and not barfy old rod stewart singing. not that ronnie wood isn't gross. he is. not as sick as bill wyman, though, of course.

deleted:

the futureheads debut and franz ferdinand's second album - i've seen both of them before, and was pretty meh about them, and their albums are pretty meh for me as well (although i am keeping the first franz album because i bought it when i was on vacay in rehoboth with mob and cd and i am nostalgic like that).

the foo fighters album there is nothing left to lose - except your dignity, i suppose. that's harsher than it needs to be. they're fine. i just want the first two albums and have little use for the rest of them - although "one by one" is a great song. i really like the foo's first album - it's so quiet and not-nirvana (or later dave grohl projects like them crooked vultures or queens of the stone age) that i was really taken with it when i was in high school, and "walking after you" on their second album is super-perfect creepy-stalker lovely. then they seemed to lose the plot - perhaps around the time that grohl donned a fat suit for their lame "learning to fly" song's heavy-rotation-on-mtv-designed video. but maybe that's just his power pop group and he has his other projects to make different types of rock with. while i know better than to care about musician's personal lives, i have to believe that he seriously fucked over louise post, if veruca salts' resolver is any indication. the fact that he is co-owner of the black cat in dc makes me completely appreciate him. 
a bunch of frente! songs that i found on music blogs. i had a moment where i remembered liking them a lot in high school, so i downloaded a bunch and now they are making their way right back out of my library. not a good name for a band. not a good band.

i was torn about deleting the frank zappa song "ride my face to chicago," because it is a song about chicago, but then i just went ahead, because it is a song about riding frank zappa's face.

lessons learned/randoms:

so you know how some couples have a pact where each person gets to choose the one person who they are allowed to sleep with if the opportunity ever arises, and the other person can't get mad? this usually works best when the person is a celebrity or world figure and not, like, your neighbor. early on in our relationship, as a joke, we decided that pos' is eva green, and mine is wayne coyne. yes, i could have picked anyone in the world, and i picked wayne. first of all, i think he is soooo cute. i love his graying curls and beard - in fact, when pos' hair curls in a certain way around his face i get all excited and say "wayne coyne hair!!!" secondly, he is a creative genius, and i love his raspy voice. so this past halloween, i was in new orleans for work, and i heard a rumor that the flaming lips were staying at my hotel (which i believed, as it was the voodoo music fest weekend, i was at the w, and i had spent the previous night drinking with kiss in the lobby bar. and when i say "drinking with" i mean that we were in the same room drinking at the same time). i texted pos with this information, excited that i might run into wayne. he texted back something like "i know that he's your one, but please don't sleep with him." which i thought was soooo cute and charming. i think pos wasn't taking in consideration the other half of the equation - your one has to want to sleep with you, too. i personally think that wayne is too classy to fuck some random star-struck girl who is staying at the same hotel - maybe that's why i chose him in the first place. as for ms green, my husband is a very attractive man, but he doesn't spend much time in france, so . . .

anyway, have i mentioned that the flaming lips is probably my favorite band? my brother had me listen to the soft bulletin on a discman while driving home from my grandma's house on christmas night 2000, and my jaw literally dropped. i used to buy that cd for everyone for every occasion, i just wanted everyone to have it and love it the way i do. "what is the light?" is one of the greatest love songs of all time. i make sure to always try to go see the lips when they are in chicago, which is almost every year, and i always feel like i am at the best birthday party that was ever thrown for me. i even carry around a piece of orange confetti in my wallet from last december's show at the allstate arena - they just make me so goddamn happy!

TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2010

concerted effort: e

bands: 
from eagle seagull to extreme

number of songs by the E artists:
at start: 585
at end: 439

dates:
2/28/10 - 3/30/10

highlights/surprises: 
band with the most tracks: elastica with 52 (this is more than the number of actual songs that they ever wrote - this includes a BBC Radio One session that they recorded and some covers)


deleted:

a ton of eminem. i had a few of his albums and i never listened to them, and three days of that shit was more than enough. i'm all for creative license and artists' rights and freedom of speech, but fuck, i don't want to listen to shit about some douche rapper raping and killing women. i kept a few tracks but i'm not really all that interested. he has quite the persecution complex.
"more than words" by extreme. very 7th grade for me. no use for it.

the elected. now i know that i only like jenny lewis' contributions to rilo kiley. blake sennet, on his own, is a whiny mess.

about 20 songs from everclear. oh, is this song about how you grew up poor with bad parents and then you did a lot of heroin, and you love your daughter? i do love the song "now that it's over" - a great fuck-you break up song. their cover of "brown-eyed girl" is really bad. what's awesome is that when i was trying to figure out what song we should dance to at my wedding for the dad/bride dance, my sister was like "how about 'brown-eyed girl'?" it gave me a complex that my own sister doesn't even know what i look like, or care enough to have noticed that my eyes are blue.

lessons learned/randoms:
every time i hear "the boy's bad news" by eagles of death metal, i look around for my phone - it's the ringtone that pos chose for himself when he calls. i love that song. that laugh at the beginning! it always makes people jump when my phone starts laughing.

when "u make me want to drink bleach" by easyworld (from the albumbetter ways to self-destruct) popped up, i was expecting a dirge mess with possible emo overtones - but it's a really pretty song! apparently i have the "stylophone mix" of the song - how DO i find these things? - so i can't vouch for the original, but i like it a lot.

echo and the bunnymen - rad. "the killing moon" is fantastic, and "bring on the dancing horses" and "lips like sugar" are perfect.

engelbert humperdink is due for a resurgence - maybe quentin tarantino can use some of his songs in an ironic way and make all the kids want to sing along like he did with "son of a preacher man" inpulp fiction. the name engelbert humperdink alone is fucking amazing.

i love erasure - listening to them for two days was like a big gay dance party for a commute. my favorite is "drama!" - i was once extolling the virtues of that song to mob and he said that he and his friends always substituted "one homosexual drama after another" for the lyrics "one psychological drama."

eva cassidy had such a beautiful voice. so sad that she died so young. also gone too soon: elliott smith. you must have to really want it to be over to stab yourself in the fucking heart. stupid.

sometimes amazon.com makes a mistake when they send you your order. i was just talking to mc about this - he and jk hosted a bacon dinner party (i made these - seriously - and everyone made comparable ridiculous and amazing bacon-wrapped and bacon-stuffed food. i can't eat bacon for weeks, if not months, now) and there was a shrink-wrapped cd called bellydancer superstars 3 or something, and mc said that it was randomly mailed with the books and stuff he had ordered, and didn't bother to send it back. this happened to me a few years ago - it's how i ended up with the very best of edith piaf. this might be sacrilege, but i thought the biopic a few years ago was too boring to finish.

of all of the shows i've been to, i think the most fun i have ever had at a concert was elastica at the 9:30 club in dc in october 2000. peaches opened and i'm sorry, but she was terrible. there was this strange guy with her named gonzales who sort of provided beats for her with his boombox. i was already totally drunk and booing (as were many others) and she was like "you fuckers better not be like this for elastica." no worries, peaches - i fucking love elastica. i was so wasted i curled up under a green line metro bench when it was time to go home. i'm so glad i got to see them - i read in a recent spin that justine is now a painter in america with no plans to return to music, and donna became a born-again.

elton john. hearts. huge hearts. what's funny is that i LOVE him and HATE billy joel, and since they always seem to be touring together, i will not pay money to sit through billy joel. elton is trashy and classy and recorded some of the most senseless, weird pop ever (see: my years-ago analysis of "grey seal") but can still convey amazing heartbreak and love and longing. when not singing about the lion king- that shit is lame.

the song "fuck it" by eamon is so juvenile. love it.

Posted in: axel_achmad,axel_rock