I’m tired of them.

I have an unhealthy fascination with reality shows along with a whole host of far-flung theories about what their proliferation means which perhaps I’ll one day foist upon the world in a book of staid, inscrutable and self-satisfied cultural critical essays referencing things like the Frankfurt school and tropes. In the meantime though I’d just like to make out with all the producers of Joe Schmo. And so for reasons both adulterated and un, I was looking forward to MTV’s Reality Show Awards Show, which I didn’t realize only concerned reality shows that had aired on MTV. I mean, entire categories were based just on Punk’d. The whole show could have been packaged as a Top 100 Outrageous Moments in MTV Reality Shows or A Look Back at MTV Reality Shows or Ashton Kutcher Did Not Just Say That Ohmigod. The Awards Show conceit was quite a stretch though, and I could have been watching I Love the 80s or SVU. Network, please!

Tonight I saw Comets on Fire and Sunn0))) (I have no idea if that’s really how they spell their name, it’s some aggravating combination of letters and punctuation. This just in: that is how they spell their name!) at the Knitting Factory. While I could review the music, I think my words would be better used reviewing the smell of the show: ripe with a musky gamey funk I haven’t enjoyed since riding public transportation in Europe. About two-thirds of the way through Comets on Fire the scent suddenly turned decidedly skunky and acrid and I looked around to see whether someone was burning something hydroponic but I didn’t see anything of the sort leading me to the sad conclusion that I was just smelling the same smell I’d been smelling before, and maybe it was fermenting. Overwhelmed, I stepped outside, thus reducing the show’s female population by 50 percent.

This story was going to be a feature and then it was going to be a cover but then it turned back into a feature and now it’s just long.  Read it here.

Listening to two albums back to back that aren’t instrument based causes me to feel this way.

The Brooklyn Speech, which is delivered by people who’ve moved to Brooklyn and can’t believe how much they love it because they thought they were going to miss Manhattan but blah blah blah, best of both worlds, blah blah, bike riding, yadda yadda yadda, know the deli guy’s name etcetera parks et al.

The I Just Love All Women Speech, which is delivered by guys curiously driven to announce that they just love woman in general, all kinds, ever since they were kids, and there’s just something about women they love, they way they smell, the way they move, the way they sound, etc.

I’ve been thinking lately that it seems there’s a new breed of rock star (not talking about shtick bands anymore) for whom the idea that a journalist’s agenda is anything other than to write fawning publicity pieces is inconceivable. (Do I need to make that sentence less doubly negative? I don’t not need to.) Why is this? Are they cutting their teeth on fanzines? Which is not to say that I’m trying to rip anyone a new one or even be unduly harsh because I think I’m a pretty gentle writer especially compared to some music critics who give off the impression that they delight in verbal evisceration but just that my job is not to patch the dings in some inked neophyte’s public image and that my allegiance is to the truth and reality first and foremost. And I realize how frigging grandiose that sounds and at the end of the day it’s all fluff anyway but journalism and truth are supposed to be pretty closely affiliated and it’d be a shame, and kind of dangerous really, to forfeit such a beautifully lofty goal.

That said, off the record is off the record and my allegiance to human decency probably guides me, as a reporter, more than the aforementioned ideal.

This is screedy! And pretentious!

it makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

I’m so very tired but I’d be remiss if I didn’t post the following sentiment which appeared tonight on the Best Fortune Cookie Ever. Look on it, ye mighty, and despair:

OUR FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE IS… SELF-LOVE.

I have unbelievable hostility for the people at the gym who refuse to tell you their rates and instead make you take a tour and tell them what you’re looking for in a gym and whether you’re training for a marathon or just looking to feel the burn cuz it’s go time and you can sleep when you die and summer’s coming and nothing tastes as good as thin feels and tone it up etc and then sit you down and throw a bunch of numbers and conditions at you and work their way around a piece of paper until it’s just an inscrutable black blob of numbers and x-es and you’re sure that if you could just hold it all in your head, including the special promotions they mentioned at the beginning of the gym tour which they’re now not mentioning anymore so you should remember to remind them about that you could get the best deal but you also suspect, or rather know, or really, feel, that no matter what you’re getting fucked even though they’re flashing you a shit-eating grin and asking if you have friends who would be interested in training, not to contact them, but just they can “get some ammunition on you” for when they go to their manager because they don’t even know if she’ll okay this deal and she’ll want to know how they even got the number so low but it’s ok because they like you and want to help you out.

I’m reminded of room draw in college where you’re each given a number but if you draw into a room together you combine the numbers and take the average so while looking at rooms you must carry a calculator and have various back up plans for if person A goes with that plan or B goes with that plan or abroad, etc. Frustrated, my friend Wendy declared that this was like a horrendous word problem and she suspected if we could just figure it out somehow we could get an entire dorm.

And loosely related is trying to get an apartment in NYC where you’re walking around with a broker and trying to butter them up because maybe they can help you on the price and they’re trying to butter you up because they want you to take the apartment and so it’s just a big ass-kissing free for all.

harrumph