Monday, December 13, 2010

FWENDZ



I love the Muppets. A lot. This is one of my favorite scenes in the Muppet Movie. WAY TO RESIST, KERMIT! Who needs money when you don't have friends? Who wants to be a mascot when you can live your life? Why get sponsored when you can live (fancy)free?

Sunday, December 12, 2010

SLIMER



















What is going on in my local 99cent store?  I'm just trying to buy some cassette tapes!

Saturday, December 4, 2010

getting into the xmas groove



Paul and I went to a very cool Christmas train in Niles, California. It really put me in the holiday spirit. I am working on a mixtape -as I type even- for holiday exchange. Do you wanna exchange tapes? I do!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Contemplate the Road That Brought You Underground

I just can't get enough weirdo lady folk singers lately. Today, it has been all about Norma Tanega.

What a great performance! She's all smiles and urban self-reflection.
Norma Tanega was born right over in Vallejo. She went to Scripps for her undergrad and MFA in painting before moving to New York in '64. She is the only Filipina I can think of that was performing in the New York folk scene. Plus, she dated Dusty Springfield for years.

She was a one hit wonder in 1966 with "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog."


(You can buy this 45 for $5 on ebay right now. HINT. HINT.)









When asked about the song, Tanega explains: "I had always wanted a dog, but because of my living situation I could only have a cat; I named my cat dog and wrote a song about my dilemma." If there is one thing I understand, it is that problem. There is probably no one thing in my life that feels like a problem which I could so easily remedy. I really like that the thing I complain about the most became a top single by a lady who made out with the peroxide Queen of the Mods. 


Commiserate with this crucial babe:

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

COMO VES?






MUY IMPORTANTE!
Just saw the best punk movie I have ever seen. Como Ves? (What Do You Think?) was made in Mexico City in 1985. It is less of a narrative and more a bunch of vignettes that center around the thriving punk scene in the barrio interspersed with performances by a few bands.

Paul Leduc directed Como Ves? and also the 1986 Frida. While Como Ves? is worth watching for the time capsule of punk that it is, it also is really beautiful.
















































































This is what the show space was like.



This is what the circle pits looked like:



Some local punks:
DESTROY FUCKING NAZIS

My favorite punk, with a GIANT scar


There are some really sexy parts, some pretty violent parts, but the one of the most outstanding scenes centers around the punks going to a drag show.  The Queen performing blew my mind. 




Towards the end of the movie, punks steal a cop car and hijack a plane to party on. There is a riot outside where everyone is dancing with babies, sitting on each other's shoulders, playing music and chanting "FUCKERS!"





 Here is CECILA TOUSSAINT playing during the hijacking.



Cecila Toussaint is a huge babe. She and my favorite punk have a great love scene where she tries to bite his ankle.


Here is another clip of her singing in the movie. Check those high notes! and her cool teeth!


 Facets put this movie out earlier this year. The quality of the movie and also the subtitles are horrible (a common problem with Facets' releases Hannah pointed out). But, nonetheless, Como Ves? offers a variety of compelling scenes and a peak into a less represented moment of punk culture. It has all the antiauthoritarian strike and strife of Over the Edge (and even the same half shirts Matt Dillon sports) but in a context that is not about suburban blandness and all male revolt. The barrio setting and the presence of hard labor informs the movie without making it overly didactic. Labor is not the focus of the movie and it is not absent either as is the case in many Hollywood movies. Women are agents in the petty crimes, the hijacking, and the music. Queerness isn't written out of the rebellion or the experience of coming of age.
Explicitly critical of classism, Como Ves? isn't about how hard it is to be poor. It's not the kind of movie about poverty where one member of an oppressed group achieves some uplift out of misery. The movie offers that classic slice-of-life of the neighborhood. It's like the trope of the apartment building's fourth wall falling and the guy in the showercap is revealed in the tub and everyone is caught in media res. There is an implicit argument through the composition of the vignettes about the fullness of life, the pettiness of circumstance, and the necessary escape of self-made fun. All that punk shit.

I'm still trying to work out my interpretation of the climactic scene where the the hijackers are put on TV and they just don't know what to say. The movie is called "Como Ves?" which is literally translated "as you see." It is used colloquially in a question to mean "what do you think?" There comes a moment when these kids who demanded to be heard are thrust in front of the cameras and  have nothing to say, no demands to the mass public. Then, after a panicked moment, they are taken over by the authorities. That is the best way to end a punk movie I can imagine -it is the tragic punk(and youth angst) parable. The movie is bookended by the longish single-shot scenes of two drunks hanging out in disused stacks of cement tubing that get a little too Waiting for Godot for me. But, that is probably the only thing that I would call a major flaw -where the movie tries something and fails. All the other imperfections seems to keep within the tone and even add to it. I just love it. If you don't have access to a video store as good as Lost Weekend or Plan 9 to rent the movie, you can still watch it and for free! It is available on youtube in 5 parts.




Wednesday, November 17, 2010

GET GOND

10 Rajendra Shyam, from Signature - Patterns in Gond Art (Tara Books)
I could look at this all day.

Signature - Patterns in Gond Art (Tara Books)  007




























The Gond are from central India. Traditionally, they paint these ropey, bright figures on the walls. Now, these fantastic creatures are ending up on paper for sale in the West. They feature all the same animals I like: peacocks, snakes, dogs, tiny birds, anything with horns and antlers.  The way branching and fanning works with the geometric patterns is so impressive to me. And the color is just spectacular. I would like to just lay here in bed and think about snakes forming branches for birds and antlers burst with leaves, if someone would just come over to flip the "Rumors in Disguise" LP that I can't stop listening to.


Shellshag "Resilient Bastard"

Monday, November 15, 2010

VISION QUEST/the best song of all



Little Wheel Spin & Spin

The Crazy Horse West | Myspace Video


I know I have been posting a lot of videos lately- which I know I skip on other people's blogs. But, if you watch one video all long internetting day, watch this one of Buffy Sainte Marie singing "Little Wheel Spin and Spin" on that show RAINBOW QUEST (see below). I first heard this song when Dan Higgs covered it in a living room in Berkeley. It is so fantastically haunting in tone and in lyric.

Buffy Sainte Marie is just the best. She is a Canadian Cree who has spent most of her later years in Hawaii. She likes surfing and was married to Jack Nietzsche, who wrote fucking "Needles and Pins." Her son is named "Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild." She breastfed him on Sesame Street, see? Sainte Marie appeared frequently on Sesame Street after being "blacklisted" by Lyndon Johnson for her participation and support of Native uprising in the US. You can read all about it on her website  www.creativenative.com.

Here are some clips from her appearance on Sesame Street. It is hard to imagine some of the stuff was on TV. Or, to put it more precisely, it is striking how little there is of quiet and communicative television for children or anyone.


Here she introduces the MOUTHBOW, which is so impressive that she can sing and play at the same time. 



This is a scary song about the moon that also features on of my favorite editing overlay techniques.


The chant at the beginning of this is so cool. I also like the aesthetics of the street itself.


Sainte Marie has been making digital art from the early 80's on. Most of her work is this hyper-color digital psychedelic manipulation of photos. I get that it's overdone and really cheesy but I like it so much.

"Elder Brothers"

"Wesakechak"

This is Wesakechak, the Cree mythological trickster. 


Sainte Marie is still making music. She won a Juno in 2009 for her latest record "Running for the Drum."

Saturday, November 13, 2010

"My head is full of me"


"No Hole in My Head," Malvina Reynolds featuring Ramblin Jack Elliot and Pete Seeger.


Malvina Reynolds was a radical San Francisco native who made music until the day she died. Fantastically smart and willfully dedicated, she earned a doctorate in Romance Philology from UCBerkeley in 1939. She spent her life writing songs that gracefully blast the social order she opposed. Working in metaphor and synecdoche, songs like "Little Boxes" and the "New Restaurant" expose the ever encroaching shittiness of modern life. "Little Boxes," first made famous by Pete Seeger, is about the suburban sprawl and vapid, unsustainable architecture of the Daly City. It is now enjoying a resurgence since a Regina Spector's cover was used for the opening of Weeds.



"The New Restaurant"

All these videos are all from Pete Seeger's show called "RAINBOW QUEST." Shot all in black and white from 1965-66, Seeger had a bunch of folk legends sit around in the sound studio and play some tunes.  I don't really like Pete Seeger very much, but I really love "Rainbow Quest."

Here is he is covering one of Malvina's songs about San Francisco called "Seventy Miles." It's a protest song about the mistreatment of the bay.






What up driven lady radicals from the bay?!

Also, Susan Wengraf made a short documentary about Malvina in 1973. Has anyone seen it? Does anyone have it?

Friday, November 12, 2010

STANLEY POOCHINSKI: THE BEST NAME FOR A DOG

I cannot, simply cannot believe that I didn't know about this until two days ago. Featuring the likes of Peter Boyle and also the nice guy with the Wrangler at the end of Adventures in Babysitting, POOCHINSKI is maybe the best buddy-cop comedy concept. Like a ghostly Turner and Hootch or Oh Heavenly Dog with a raunchier, poorly made puppet Benji, watching Poochinski one can only wonder how anything like this ever got made  -let alone how it is its own genre. Also where did they find such perfect villains? I hope in the late 80's at the hight of TV crime dramas that there was a whole bunch of actors that only played sunglasses wearing villains who robbed in the daylight.

The only episode ever made is below (in three parts).
Note: the overly cinematic shots, the horrifying puppet, and weird romance with a widow subplot.








STANLEY POOCHINSKI: TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.

Thanks to Hannah for showing me this, the best thing.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

can this camera

I was just trying to figure out how many flannels to put on before I go to see Let Me In for the second time (review forthcoming) and this is what I get bombarded with. I genuinely forget that these videos exist. And while I have a lot to say about the idea that the internet becoming a stockpile for a small but weird variety of media like this, I am mostly overwhelmed with shock when the internet suggests it to me. 




It's like how last night at the bar, this lady with nice glasses sent a dude with an old timey hat to ask me if I "hated" her because she thought I was giving her death stares. I wasn't. In fact, I was only looking at her because I liked her glasses! I had been told earlier in that same evening what an "honest face" I have -which I took as a particularly nice complement for what could be construed as an inability to prevent any insignificant passing thought from distorting my face. When the gentleman in the coal miner costume asked me if I had been giving her the stinkeye, I was shocked and could only reply "REALLY?" a lot of times before figuring out that it actually was hurting my feelings. "I try to be so nice!" and "I like her glasses! That's all!" was all I got out before the guy offered that he thought she was a crazy person.  He explained that his buddy was trying to hit on her and she wouldn't shut up about how I was looking at her so he was just trying to "put a cork in her ass" about it. While I like that phrase, I was still a little bent out of shape about the idea that I could unintentionally make someone feel bad like that. I feel like I try to put out good things into the world and more precisely to be friendly, but somehow the world gives me back felt hats putting corks in asses and bear attack videos when I am only trying to check the weather. I went over to smooth things over with girl who was still hanging out with those dudes who were international clothing importers or something. She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. It got weird only to get weirder when the boss of the two guys asked my name. I told him and offered my hand for him to shake and he tried to fucking lick my hand. I pulled back my hand and said "no fucking way" and walked off. No one seemed to laugh or even take note.


To bring this all full circle back to internet videos, I am one drink at the Hemlock away from becoming the Winnebago Man.



Watch this documentary. It's a fair treatment of a brilliant and true wingnut that a bunch of dumbdumbs like but don't really appreciate. Jack Rebney is a fantastic figure who isn't all that angry. His friendship with Keith is so great as is his love for his dog, Buddha. There is a really touching scene where Keith brings Jack the single biggest windchime I have ever seen. It's also interesting that one of the things that drove Jack to his hermit status is the faltering of television news media, particularly the lack of candor and dignity available in that form. Plus, you get to see his cool wingnut lifestyle near Mt Shasta. 


Saturday, November 6, 2010

TAKE THIS TRIP



New tattoo? I think so. This is a photo of an acid blotter in an original rowboat wrapper. It's on display in a show of Mark McCloud's LSD collection at Ever Gold Gallery I would like to row a boat to today. I would like take a trip today in a rowboat. 

ACK




Yesterday, I called myself a postmodern Cathy. I just need larger speech bubbles to be able to fit "Split Subjecthooooods!" Rather than a chocolate obsession, it's rambling about locovore food angst. Insecurities dramatized on the internet rather than the dressing room.  My alienation might be different, but the sweat beads are just the same.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

NO SWEAT





Giants won the World Series. Hannah and I got crushed in a stampede away from riot cops. It was worth it.





This version edits out the first part where Brian Wilson is told he is in violation of the "California Catch a Wave Statute." Watch it on this unembeddable link: SURF SQUAD 

Friday, October 22, 2010

STAY TRU

PIERCED ARROWS TONIGHT!


This song is so good. In surfin' da u-tube for Pierced Arrows videos, a word of advice: if you've liked Pierced Arrows since it was Dead Moon or you get what makes them magical at all, then don't watch the Scion/Vice video for this song. I know the video above kind of sucks too, but it is nothing like a visual representation of punk by people who also put cars that look like toasters and this kind of garbage into the world:



The video looks and sounds all wrong. Clean guitars and visual aesthetics that indicate they thought Pierced Arrows was a goth band.  It's disappointing to see a band that is so meaningful be so misconstrued and to know they had a hand in it. I'm not even talking about a selling out (although, I think there is probably plenty to say about that -it's just boring and sad to write about). I mean more that seeing something that used to feel so fantastically weird and specific get gutted and polished to fit a totally weird perception. It's also strange to consider that the exec's over at some pretty big places seem to think teens want to idolize Fred and Toodie and even more deranged that those same teens could possibly do that and want to buy a Scion too.  I like the idea of teens seeing the way that Fred and Toodie live as a valid, admirable and obtainable model. But DIY and punk isn't supposed to be about hero worship and copying


Let us not forget our great obligation to ourselves.



Here's the link to the Scion video if you really want to see it: crapola

Thursday, October 21, 2010

enwrapped

It's getting cold now. It's time to drink tea and get under some blankets and listen to these kind of jams.


Find more artists like Broken Water at MySpace Music








These are meant to be interpreted as a Christmas textile wish list. ALSO, Broken Water is playing two BAY AREA shows in a week. Let's slow head bang.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

MAUI WOWIE




Got my nails done did.
VAY-CAY

Thursday, October 7, 2010

A Great Costume



the future me, originally uploaded by tree branch.


I had been planning to be CATHY (from the comics) for Halloween. But this looks SO COOL. 
I'd really like it if other people went as comic strip characters. But, not Doonesbury. I hate Doonesbury Anyone from the Peanuts gang or Haggard the Horrible would be welcome. 



Friday, October 1, 2010

CALLING ALL HOT FREAKS


Very excited to see Guided By Voices this Tuesday. Plus, they are playing with their fellow Buckeyes Times New Viking! One time when I lived in England and had no friends to hangout with, I told the drummer/singer of Times New Viking that he looks like a perfect mix of Charles Manson and young Henry Rollins. He totally agreed!! Turns out, he is something of a Chuckles Manson enthusiast also. I also saw them play in a basement with Psychedelic Horseshit who were on acid (for real) and their drummer lost his some of his equipment and used a cardboard box for a bass drum complete with kick pedal (for real). It was one of the best things I have ever seen. 

Come to the Warfield. We can eat at the vegan version of panada express in the mall across the street before. 


Tuesday, August 24, 2010

CHICAGO GETS A LIFE

Well, that's not true. But, there is a cool thing going on in Chicago tonight.















































From 6 to 9 this evening, you can peruse the first ten books Tano has put out through LA ANONIMA. Also, there is supposed to be a slide show at 7:30. Loyal readers might remember the previous post about the blurbs I wrote for the first few. I wrote some more for the latest books and they will all be bound together in zine form, available at the show.

Eat a great falafel at Sultan's and check out some really thoughtful books. They are never straightforward texts. They are pilfered reprints of architectural thought, studies of of carpet fragments, distorted images of an imploding building. Each presents a visual history, never assuming a neutral tone of the critical observer or allowing the possibility of an uncharged take on the aesthetic. 

Friday, August 6, 2010

K00L KATZ AND CHILL DAWGS



Spending a lot of time in the place you grew up can make you feel like you've done everything a place has to offer. Eaten every sandwich, taken every walk. But, during this current visit to Bloomington, I'm trying to do some things I haven't done before as well as the things I already know I enjoy. I'm swimming, hanging with buds, staying up late and sometimes going to be early and now PARTYING WITH BIG KATS.

I highly suggest that you make a visit to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center. About an hour west of Bloomington, in scenic Center Point, Indiana, there are 211 big cats hanging out behind some chain link. I cannot believe how these massive beast hang out. I've been around tigers before, but this was a totally different experience. The rescued tigers are unbelievably friendly. It took considerable conscious effort to not touch them as they rubbed against the fence a foot from me making this greeting sound called chuffing. It's like tiger purring mixed with huffing. I can't believe I had never been there before. Even in the 95 degree heat the cats were active -playing in the water, sounding off, leaping, eating.

I want to scratch that belly

Melissa and I got the full tour. They offer overnight stays too! We drove back on back roads, passing through Gosport and Stineville, two tiny Hoosier towns I had never been to before. We went a real deal mercantile complete with vintage soda bottle collection, While we were there we checked out some awesome buildings people have been revamping in these crumbling bergs.

 Then we went to the NAUGHTY DAWG -the new hot dog restaurant in Bloomington. There is a whole restaurant of only hot dogs now. It's in the Big Lot's parking lot, near the Dollar General between the Check'N'Go and a tattoo shop (WHAT'S UP INDIANA ONE-STOP SHOP?).

Chili dawg after chill cats

It's cool though because I got VEGAN CHILI DAWGS and Melissa had her first VEGAN CHICAGO STYLE DOG.  I like their giardiniera but will skip the neon green relish. Also the guy that works there really loves the Silver Jews, which is cool because I do too.

TWO THUMBS AND PAWS UP.


Friday, July 16, 2010

NO BRAINER



I mean really. This show is going to be so goooood.
WITCHES
UNIVERSE
FAT SHADOW (mems of Pink Razors and DoorKeys -listen to that song LSD- SRSLY)

Also, I had a really great time making this flier. Let me know if anyone would like me to make one for them.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I PRESENT TO YOU A SUMMER JAM

As you may or may not know, I am nine days into a MONTH AND A HALF long VACATION. I'm getting ready to go swim in my favorite lake, eating a peach and drinking iced coffee. I strongly suggest you try to do the same.

My jam of last summer, in a fresh funky version for 2010



Beach Fossils' "sometimes." I missed them three days in a row this week -once in Bloomington and twice in Chicago because I went to a family reunion. 

Isn't it weird to consider that literally a fossil isn't a fossil until it is dug up? It comes from the Latin "fossus" which means "having been dug up." Before that it is just some chunks of calcium in a rock .Well, I dig this rock, so it's a literal fossil.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Nu Vu

The view from my new window in my temporary home.



clickittomakeitbig

Thursday, May 6, 2010

THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH


IMG_0657, originally uploaded by disneyfarm.

I went to Disneyland the day before and let me just say DAPHNEYLAND
Basset Hound rescue is the best place on earth.

60 bassets in a hot desert. What could be better?

Thursday, April 29, 2010