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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

My friend Mike who used to be in Smile but is now in Satisfaction wrote this which I think is pretty fucking ingenious so I’ve reprinted it here:

It’s alright.. cocaine.

It’s alright. It’s alright. It’s alright..

Cocaine.

And here’s my contribution:

When you’ve been waiting to use the bathroom for like 25 minutes and the door is locked and you can hear a whole bunch of giggling bitches in there, one of whom asked to borrow a “key” or “pen cap,” cocaine.

the phrase “owning” your “sexuality.” Not the concept, or the notion, or the idea, or the H&M-clad strut it implies, but simply the phrase. I rent mine.

Similarly, while I can’t stand “walk the walk and talk the talk,” I really can’t stand when people say “walk the talk” or sometimes “talk the walk,” which actually just goes to show that these phrases are meaningless ultimately because how do you walk the talk? Uh-oh, now I’m beginning to wonder if walk the talk is right and I’ve actually had it mangled this whole time? walk is a weird word. everything’s losing meaning. help.

So I’m not really the karaoke-ing kind. I just don’t love it, perhaps owing to the stick up my ass. (note: not owing to the stick up my ass). Anyway though, late Saturday night I was bamboozled into accompanying old college friends to Sing Sing where, if you can push your way through the crush of frat guys clogging up the front artery without getting date raped, you’re allowed entrance into a small room with a large TV and some vinyl couches upon which you’d be remiss not to either spill something or film yourself engaging in all manner of kink, which we didn’t do, because all we did was sing and drink beer. Stupid us!

But anyway, while turning in a surprisingly heartfelt rendition of Dolly Parton’s stirring “Jolene” I was forced to recognize what a truly amazing set of pipes I have and when a friend said to me “good work” and “nice!” I truly believed her and felt that it was almost unfair to the others the level to which I was just killing at Karaoke and my god, is everyone sitting there taking in how much talent I have and thinking that they never knew I possessed such a pitch-perfect angels-singing type tone coupled with obvious hard-won technique? I mean, it was impossible to miss.

And it was only when I heard the same friend say “good work” and “nice!” to another friend after a really painful piss-poor slaughtering of some popular song that I began to wonder just what the hell was going on and also it occurred to me that I bet everyone who holds that mic and sings along to incorrect lyrics on a screen thinks all the people around them are secretly in awe of their alarming talent, and my god and who knew and how come you never told us and look at you, all bashful. You should go on American Idol!

Is that the appeal of karaoke?

Useless and yet very me-festooned.