Danzig

watch this

SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!

where did all the emo kids come from?

all these fucking hobbits with flat-ironed hair in their little sister's jeans with these fucking potato shoes!

has anyone listened to sunny day real estate within the last five years? if so, notice how they sound like the fucking Rush of our generation? Rush is cool, and yet Rush is really, really not cool. Consider this point, if nothing else.

Finally, conor oberst is at least 10 years too old to write the music makes.

oh boo,
rs

love

oh man the task of planning a wedding could go on and on if you let it. like if you really wanted, you could say "let's spend the rest of our lives planning on getting married," and no doubt some marriages would probably be better for it.

in the interest of actually having a married life, as opposed to just an engaged one, i've taken up the issues of music and poetry for the ceremony as of late. love poems and love songs, to be exact. it started almost two months ago, actually, and i'll admit my initial effort was rather tenuous.

a visit to the public library produced results from the almost satirical (irish love poems), to the all-but-uplifting (Ashberry), to the overly-ceremonious. I don't want something about love– i want something about our love, about my love, so much so that it almost need not even be about love; i could stomach not seeing the word on the page, even, if a poem really spoke to me.

Neruda came to mind immediately at the undertaking of this assignment, followed by the realization that some friends had just used one at their wedding last year, and that it might be crossing some proprietary wedding border to use another one in the same social circle too soon. Beat to the punch.

the next best option seemed to be to consult with a member of the aforementioned wedding party who chose as i would've, had i been engaged two years ago. Rilke had come up already; i found it a bit dramatic, though i'm really no expert. The suggestion of Rumi brought me back to being a teenager: the girl i went to prom with (whom i saw last week for the first time in a couple years, and is now married) gave me a collection of the 13th century persian philosopher's poetry, reminding me of how i went to bed reading Henry Rollins' anecdotes of seeing his friend shot in the face in front of their apartment (Now Watch Him Die)– tiring stuff indeed– and waking the next morning, finding the motivation to get myself out of my teenage, angst-padded bed with Rumi's Daylight. Perhaps...

One suggestion i received was for Frank O'Hara. O'Hara, a classmate of Ashbery's at Harvard, had a bit more of a soft side, or a different one at least. He's kinda blowing my mind:

Morning
Frank O'Hara


I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go


Balanced, yet raw. sentimental, but not too much. i like. gonna sit with it for a while.

And for some reason, it got me thinking about Ron Sexsmith, particularly his 1999 release Whereabouts, a great record that was produced by Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake and features my favorite electric bass player of all time, Bruce Thomas of The Attractions fame. this record is fucking sexy, and everyone should have it.

staring down these days ahead
and the days gone by
all these regrets
best make room for love

seems we're always racing
with trouble too close behind
we may never win
but where there's still hope, there's still time

SO GODDAMN GREAT

Dear Mike,

That was really great! Great on so many levels:

Congratulations on delivering a really inspiring lecture. I can't imagine how gratifying that must've been. Got me thinking about all the graphic artist lineage I have in my family, and how I'm connected to that even though I can't draw to save my life. There's always a challenge to grasp the inherent value of non-tactile objects, like some kinds of visual art, and I was reminded of how images can transcend just about anything. That power is really blowing my mind right now: the cultural significance that imagery creates and maintains, as well as my own personal connection to my family as a creative entity, my grandfather being the patriarch of both.

I think that even commercial work, which is often given relatively low regard as art, has an effect that is not to be underestimated. It reminds me of the idea that was central to understanding the role of the graphic artist in our culture when I was growing up: that one must simply make work, and sort out what pays the bills and what pushes the envelopes, so to speak.

Everyone involved in the creative process gets hung up on teliological issues, and the challenge always lies in lowering your shoulder to work through things when there's intellectual or emotional controversy within the creator.

What I really enjoyed your lecture for was the reminder that it brought, something that had been central at the onset of our friendship: the shared reverence for understanding one's surroundings through the creative process. Or, making it up as you go along.

Secondly, it was really inspiring as someone who's current social status is most accurately described as "student." To be twenty-seven and a sophomore in college is in many ways analogous to being a newcomer to a big city: you're certainly pushing your own boundaries, and pushing them into territory that isn't always waiting for you with open arms.

Academia, out of due diligence, has little-to-no regard for the sense of entitlement that life experience can bring, though it does respond well to responsibility, organization, and other more practical fruits of maturity. In spite of this, I find my the events leading up to every moment of my life informative and guiding– as does pretty much everyone else. These points are obvious, but worth stating for the sake of being thorough.

But the realization came to me when contemplating your lecture, and analyzing it through the scope of an idea I'm assessing in an ethics class I'm taking (which in itself is quite sophomoric): In Confucian virtue ethics, which deals with the central question of How ought I to live? there is a principle that is one of Confucius' many trademarks called The Rectification of Names. The gist of it deals with linguistics, and how terms and names inform our ideas about what is good or bad or makes something virtuous, etc. A father is a father by fulfilling a culture's definitions of what a father ought to do, a son is a son by adhering to his respective roles, and so on and so forth. It's a simple device that can be used to segue into a much more diverse array of concepts and subtopics relating to a central theme, and, in Confucian form, guides us towards right action.

This relates back to my early description of myself as a student, and the atypical role that I play as an adult student. In contemplating your lecture, I saw the evolution of your "career" as an artist- from child to student, from student to designer, from designer to freelance designer. While I certainly have extremely limited insight into your experience in all of these stages, I have to say what really impressed me, and impresses me about you, is your natural inclination to inhabit these roles, and gracefully move from one onto the next, and carrying the spoils of each along the way.

What I feel like I've gotten so caught up on lately is the task of rectifying both my adulthood and my studentship. I have a lot more practice being (or acting like from time to time) an adult. The student part has been a lot less refined for me, and the cause for a great deal of internal conflict. It requires humbling yourself and maintaining the less gratifying assumption that the collective worth and meaning of life experience is something which need remain open to interpretation and revision, which is a simultaneously rich and often unpleasant state of being.

But such is life: if you grow averse to things like change, surprise, irony, and even mischief you'll find yourself very much outside of reality. What one can do is develop capacities for change, and openness to things completely outside one's imagination, intuition, or anticipation. It's the refusal to develop these strengths that, in short, make people old, in the truly negative sense of the word. Being reminded of this makes being a student seem like a privilege.

I can go on and on, but there was a certain representation of this modality which seemed to be the hallmark of your lecture, and the underlying quality of your personality, as well as our relationship. It's really, really inspiring, because I identify with that ideology so strongly, and to see someone I know also appreciates it being given the opportunity to propagate something so universally valuable made me very, very happy.

cheers,
rs

girl talk

was fucking blast. caught the end of dan deacon, who was my favorite of the pitchfork fest this summer. i just love his palate, and not in the "wow, it's so 80's!" sense. well, maybe i am a sucker for the bit-reduction, but other than tay zonday's set (which i believe to be a first live performance of chocolate rain) it was the only original music of the evening.

not that girl talk didn't SLAY. it doesn't bother me that all you need is kindergarten-level math skill to create a mash up– that was by far the most fun i've had dancing in mpls. the state of being totally crushed up against other people, constantly getting elbowed and apologizing for mine, too, was no bother at all. it felt great to just sweat like hell and dance. but it reminded me a ton of philly about two years ago a la 700 club, upstairs at the khyber, and silk city. that inward-from-the-coast transgression is certainly nothing new, but in conjunction with the fact that a) the audience is heavily populated with frat boys and whatever drunken lay they're trailing and b) we live in a digital age and the time lapse at hand is (or at least should be) incomprehensible.

help me out, minneapolis.

don't taze me, bro!

what a weekend: split town thursday morning for bayfield. on the boat about 3:30 with absolutely no wind. motored out to stockton island, where we docked (hooray for late-season!) and ate... and drank an entire bottle of lagavulin. whoops! thankfully the low wind meant little rocking through the night, which can lead to a perilous awakening once your stomach has done three or four dozen somersaults.

friday morning was a bit of a bust, as far as sailing was concerned. motored around in this 36 ft. C&C at an utterly goofy pace of 3.5 knots/hr. threw up our sails occasionally, only to have a weak wind dissipate into dead air, watching the water lose its ripple and feel the sun reflecting back at you. we made our way out towards the perimeter islands, skipping from gust to gust via "iron breeze," until finally (and i think it awoke me from a nap or something) we had the 10-15 mph winds we were waiting for. we headed out around devils island on some nice, slanted tacks, watching self-loading freighters reveal their hulls from below the horizon. made what was possibly the best meal i've ever made and finished the case of, um, MGD we had on board. a beer run would be imminent.

saturday, well, there was wind. and we went downwind for the first time. really fast. like with a handkerchief sized piece of sail. 3 ft. chop going up and down for hours. not the crashing over the bow i've experienced before, but a rocking that i felt for two days after i got off the boat.

iran

Ahmadinejad is definitely SO FUCKING CRAZY. when you consider spirituality, doesn't organized religion just make you sad? the dude's definitely living in some fabricated, megalomaniac reality. but, seriously…

breakfast

some things i saw people eating for breakfast today:

white castle
pop tarts
red bull
coffee
diet coke with lime


meanwhile, i read about the 99942 Apophis.
...that was cool.

blast off!

fucking squirrels busting walnuts all over my yard and house 24/7 right now. annoying.

going to SF today. going home! need a trip to yosemite. anyone with the willingness to do a little backcountry hiking this winter should contact me. can't wait for shamus and maya's wedding! probably will end up doing mushrooms in the middle of the central valley with a bunch of Reed grads who will go back to their jobs working for Feinstein, DeutscheBank, etc. next week. life's rich pageant...

point of order: I am the only one who can make you hate candy.

sizzler and nona helm the sauna this weekend.

also, school has taken over my life. you need be proactive with me again. activities include:

Ethics
Algebra
English
Astronomy
and...

...wait for it...

FUNDAMENTALS OF MUSIC

after reviewing the workbook lessons, i have determined that i could teach this class.

hearts,
rs

hair

Photo by Cameron Wittig

had fun finally getting to play our loring park show last night. pins and needles for me during the 24 hours prior, watching massive storms roll through the dakotas and western minnesota. but luckily nothing came our way until later in the evening.

except a whole hell of a lot of wind. i spent the entire set trying not to choke on dust or my hair, both of which were constantly flying throughout the set. got a pretty killer rainbow out of the deal though.

the band sounded great, from what i was told. there were moments where i could hear what other people were doing, but for the most part i felt like i was performing in a vacuum. in reality, i was performing in the opposite of a vacuum– with nothing to keep sound bouncing around within earshot, anything not pointed directly at your head is pretty much lost on you when you play outdoors.

so i heard a lot of my guitar last night (good to get to turn that amp up last night- got all the way to 2 on the volume knob! who needs amps that go to 11 when 4 will melt your face!?), and my voice, which has undergone a lot of changes over the last three years. either my range has increased up into the tenor realm, or i've only recently learned how to use it. my pitch control, projection, and falsetto have solidified greatly since i made my last record, and in the recordings i've made over the last year i've noticed i've acquired, of all things, vibrato. my high school choir teacher would be proud of me.

but the mix onstage was rather uninspiring and at times (and for reasons unknown) precarious. i was really looking forward to singing out as i had been in rehearsal the last two weeks. our rehearsals had been very moving despite their novelty; marshall, nona, joanna, and ellen brought new vigor to old songs and new songs into fruition. at one point i even got choked up during a song as i drew breath to sing after hearing nona sing a solo counterpoint part she wrote for hungry ghost. but alas, this was all in rehearsal, and while there was a much appreciated element of catharsis from last night's performance, i awoke today glad that i have another opportunity in the near future to attempt to fulfill the very personal, esoteric, and at times abstract and unrealistic standards by which i define a good performance.

TOO HUNG OVER

... to blog. jesus, people who live in the middle of nowhere can drink. one day and i was ready to go back to appreciating things for what they look like without the beer goggles on.

Brasa

As some of you may or may not know, I'm into food. Pretty into it. I've had the good fortune to travel a lot, and in my travels I've gotten hungry. It's been a rather unemotional time for me, watching restaurants come and go through here; it always seems that food in the midwest is a tandem of quality and inaccessibility, unlike what you find on the coast. I can't eat at JP's, Alma, or La Belle Vie every night, sorry. Contact me about donations, though.

It just so happens, though, that the last time I really got excited about a restaurant, it was soul food. I used to be neighbors with Big E on Loring Park. I could walk up the back porch stairs and order red beans and rice, greens, catfish, fried chicken, pork, etc.- until his electric stove set something ablaze. Not an advantageous position to put yourself in when looking to eventually legitimize yourself in the restaurant industry, but whatever. I think his restaurant, amongst other things, got shut down because he didn't pay his electricity bill.

But last night, after dilly-dallying for several weeks, I ate at Brasa.

Yes, that event deserves its own paragraph. All I'll say is this– simple food, done incredibly right. Local, organic, slow-food. I've eaten wonderfully like this in Portland, OR to New York– the idea that slow-food is a southern-only tradition is simply obsolete.

GO!

corn pancakes

brekkie, you say? do this:

1 egg
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 c milk/soymilk/buttermilk
3/4 cup corn meal
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
5 tbsp honey
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp shortening or vegetable oil
1/2 c corn
1/2 c blueberries

goddamit i had a great breakfast.

moustache rides!

Photo by Cameron Wittig

cheered me up

i guess i'm just one of those people who feels neither kanye west nor will oldham can do wrong, but put the two together and it gets just a little ridiculous.

pretty fucked up

that's all i got to say about it. hard to be more descriptive when you can't get within about 500 yards of something, but i found a good vantage point from the guthrie's "endless bridge". we've all seen much better photographs than mine, but nothing compares to the experience of taking the photos yourself.

snaggletooth

look... there's a whole conversation involving dental history that could ensue, but let's just say that i have "perfect" teeth, except for my left wisdom tooth. fuck that thing. no cavities, no braces– yet i've spent days passed out in the back of a van on tour, obliterated by painkillers, on account of said tooth. it is, almost literally, the bane of my existence– all i know is that i have this tooth in the back of my mouth that is not hospitable to things like tortilla chips, and prone to infection.

that said, vicadin sucks. i had a long-standing idea to have a halloween costume titled "Vikes", in which i'd wear a mn vikings uniform and pop a couple vicadin and drink some beers, while uttering only the word "Vikes!" vicadin is doing nothing for my tooth. wrong drug. thanks, though, john.

other things that suck today– bridges in mpls. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! i'll take some pics tomorrow, but in the meantime, peace be with the families of people they are pulling out of cars that have been underwater for about 6.5 hours now. i can't imagine. i thought this shit just happened in california and southeast asia, but apparently someone will (hopefully) be held accountable for today's catastrophe.

the best thing you can possibly do in mpls this summer

...is steal a canoe from the lake calhoun rental place around midnight, and paddle up to brownie lake with some brews and go nightswimming in the middle of the lake. there's usually one or two of canoes left unlocked, though you'll need to rustle up a couple paddles. it's postitively the most relaxing, roguish, sexiest, cleanest fun you can possibly have.

some other things that i thought were cool today:

tarragon
white beans
shrimp
corn
simpsons movie
iced soy lattes from CRC (34th and Lyndale)
the accordion
noah please's glasses
shady deals at baker's square on university
$32,000 guitars with no necks

guess i got a blog now

Photo by Ellen Fitzgerald

blog about it:

I figured I see enough movies, make/eat enough food, read enough stuff, listen to enough music, drink enough drinks, hear enough gossip and bullshit that I too should begin to think that someone might actually give a damn about some of the information I could parlay into a blog. As if a website and a myspace page weren't enough (oh yeah friendster, too, which i never check, but no facebook for me), behold: It Smells Like He-Man And Weed In Here.