Odd Future

Writing about music is probably the trickiest form of criticism out there. What's good to one set of ears can be hemlock to another and vice versa, and no two opinions are ever the same in intensity, regardless of medium. I've often heard "I don't love it" after I profess to do so, or "I see what it's trying to do but thought it was a bit much," a line I really hate though did use in regards to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. (Really, it was a bit much.) So I only try to write about things I feel passionately about, things that stir me to write, things that make me want to tell everyone within earshot about them and keep hounding them down like some sort of relentless pop-culturally obsessed bounty hunter. And that's exactly how I feel about Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All.

OFWGKTA is an LA based hip-hop collective nine members deep, ages ranging from 17 to 20. The group is led by Tyler, the Creator, a charismatic, deep-voiced 19 year old who shows heaps of talent both behind and in front of the mic. The whole group does, actually, so much so that in two years they have gone from kids fooling around to indie-cult internet darlings, making enough noise with their free mixtapes and albums that two of the members recently performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where they absolutely, irrefutably killed it.



These kids are just beginning to make their mark, and part of the appeal of OFWGKTA is knowing in a few years' time they'll will be on a whole other level, so high up and unknown not even Charlie Sheen could process it. And sure, they're damn talented, but this isn't the first time we've heard good rappers come out of nowhere; they'll continue to come and go, and as long as there's an ear to the ground, someone will be listening. To me, what I most like about this group--and believe me when I say I really like their music--is the ethos that holds them together, which can be summed up thus: Fuck Steve Harvey.

This three-word phrase can be likened to their mantra, but why Steve Harvey? you might be asking. Who knows? Maybe they don't like him and his uber-black mustache, and every utterance is a chance to voice their hate; maybe they do like him but are being subversive in an attempt to not lose their cool; maybe it's all calculated and the name evokes just the right level of celebrity to make people go, "Huh?" Honestly though, if you're asking yourself why Steve Harvey then you're missing the bigger picture: anyone and anything is fair game. They rap about rape, scat, necrophilia, violence, murder, along with the usual rap suspects drugs, sex, and hoes. And why not? It's not like they mean it, or have any intention of doing these disgusting acts in real life. I've always been of the persuasion the more you say "No" to something, the more someone else is saying "Yes," and Odd Future is saying yes to everything. They're a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale room, doing whatever it is they want to because they know better, and we know they know better; that's what makes it so great, and so captivating. OFWGKTA isn't just hip-hop, though it is, and they're not just swag (their term of endearment for something cool), though they most certainly are, Odd Future is fucking punk. Just check out their videos and tell me otherwise.

Odd Future Gets Signed from Odd Future

I know it's a bit late - 2010

I like music, but I tend not to follow the trends and get into things years after they first appear. I only got into Pavement a few years ago, yet I'm already digging the skewed, irreverent attitude of Das Racist and blasting Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Go figure. I guess I'm selective. This tendency carries over into other areas of our vast pop-cultural landscape, and with the Internet and DVDs making it ever easier to catch up on things both new and old, a year end list can quickly become a "Man oh man was I late to join the party" refrain. This is list is somewhere in the middle, highlighting the things I was into this grand year of 2010.

Biggest Disappointment: Seeing Wu-Tang Clan live
I was so, so unbelievable hyped for this show you would not believe. My excitement could have single-handedly made Wyclef Jean president of Haiti AND made peace between him and Sean Penn. With this much riding on it I was bound to be disappointed, and I was, but the first 25 minutes were fucking banging. Hit after hit off of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the whole crowd enthusiastically rapping and jumping along, energetic performances from the clan (minus RZA and Method Man who were MIA). Why did they have to get heavy into their solo stuff? No one knew it as well, and despite various efforts to amp up the crowd, the energy seeped out the room, leaving behind a bunch of idle bodies waiting to leave.

Best Show: Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Tour Chrimbus Spectacular
For those of you who don't know, Tim Heidecker and Eric Warheim of Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! are two weird dudes. Their humor lies in cringe-inducing silences and awkwardness and shoddy post-production effects reminiscent of public access shows. And for those of you who do know Tim and Eric, you're perhaps wondering exactly what I was: How the hell would their show work in a live setting? Suprisingly well, it turns out. Tons of videos, costumes, sketches (including Jim and Derek!), and songs--the highlight being the Ted Nuget-esque "Gumbo Wumbo," detailing how to make a killer titular meal--made for a fantastic show. Idiosyncracies aside, these two know how to give a good show.

Best Thing I Got Into Way Late: Howard Stern
The man has been on the air for 35 years, and for good reason too: He's fucking hilarious, and one of the few people whose reputation completely, and unjustifiably, overshadows them. Sure, Stern can be dirty, and crass, and blue, and incredibly vicious, but he can be equally charming, insightful, caring, and intelligent, and always funny. No thought goes unspoken, and his candor is like the one bright light in a string of dead ones that refuses to give out. Why chastise a man for that?

Best Read: "The Legend of Pig Eye" by Rick Bass and World War Z by Max Brooks
Pig Eye is a short story I read in my creative writing class last spring about a boxer and the unusual, almost tortuous training regimen his trainer puts him through. The writing has a boxer's rhythm, with long, winding sentences and sharp, colorful language, that really packs a punch (pun intended). WWZ is an oral-retelling of the international zombie apocalypse. Funny sounding premise, yes, but this book is straight up serious. Brooks recounts how it spreads and overtakes the world, and ultimately how the human population gets back on top, but what really makes this book shine are the stray, little moments. Black market organs coming to shores and bodies already infected, a swindler making a fortune selling a bogus zombie cure (and governments' cooperating to calm the masses), zombies being forever stuck in cars (lacking the cognitive abilities to open doors). It's scary how no details are spared.

Best Movie: A Prophet, Black Swan
Totally different films, both tonally and thematically, but each highly entertaining in its own way. The former is a French film about a young man who goes to jail and learns how to come out on top in the prison hierarchy. It's well-worn territory, but its ace direction and performances cast a new light on a familiar story. The latter, meanwhile, is a psychological, cerebral tale about a ballerina who struggles to become her latest role, the dual White/Black Swan in the famed Swan Lake. More than just struggling for one's art, it's about the trials and insecurities we face trying to grow as selves. Kind of a cheesy and new-agey statement, I know, but this one really stuck with me. Like Ed said, you gotta take risks.

Best TV Shows: Parks and Recreation, Breaking Bad, Terriers
Best comedy, drama, and new show, respectively. All excellently cast, written, and performed, each with memorable characters with a true sense of shared history and camaraderie. The only thing wrong with them is that they're not on TV right now. Parks and Recreation comes back later this month, Breaking Bad returns in July, and Terriers, sadly, is no more. At least there's DVDs to keep us company.

Best Meal: Chicken Pad Thai at the Thai House, followed by dessert at Diddy Reese LA, CA
I don't know how to write about food. My palate isn't that refined, and the number of taste buds on my tongue leaves me in the 'non-taster' category (the other two being 'taster' and 'supertaster' according to food scientists). The little taste buds that I do have, however, were ecstatic when they encountered the pad thai at the Thai House and the cookies and ice cream sandwiches at Diddy Reese. They were so good my mouth came, which I didn't even think was possible.

Biggest Waste: Netflix
Don't get me wrong. Netflix is pretty cool. Holding a DVD as long as you want with no penalty and streaming an ass load of movies and TV shows for an abysmally cheap price is more than cool; it's revolutionary. The least that can be said is you get the most bang for your buck, yet this is predicated on one crucial thing: use. If you're like me, who holds movies for weeks at a time, and generally doesn't stream, that monthly fee of nine bucks goes straight down the tube. To date, I've watched eight movies and streamed about five things--and I've had this since July. Still, I'm gonna keep it; it's too good to pass up. giped

What a day its been. Sky Saxon of The Seeds dies of an illness, seminal poster babe Farrah Fawcett succombs to anal cancer, and Michael Jackson, the undisputed King of Pop as well as the undisputed defendant of several child molestation charges, all died today, or rather yesterday cause its currently 12:37am Eastern time. I'm not bawling about any of them cause I've got no heart and I never really cared for them either, but it is quite striking all three died the same day. Sickness deaths suck cause they're a slow and painful process, but Jeff Goldblum's death easily trumps the above three in terms of badassitude. News junkets have been reporting Goldblum fell 60ft to his death atop the Kauri Cliffs whilst filming a movie. Pretty manly, don't you think? But before you shed even more tears for a celebrity you never knew, they were just as quick to report it as a hoax. And the silver lining in all this? The New Zealand Film Commission was unaware that Goldblum was "currently filming anything in the country." It took a fake death to alert the kiwis of his presence; hopefully now that they're no longer in the dark they'll pull the plug and instead just show The Fly and Jurassic Park cause thats all the awesome he'll ever commit to celluloid.

This blog has definitely fallen by the wayside, but its not for lack of trying. I've just been a busy bee the last couple weeks that I haven't had time to properly 'blog' about my 'travels,' but rest assured this entry will more than make up for it. So let's start off way back, to the weekend where my two buddies Alex and Eric and I went to Munich, which, if memory serves me correctly, was March 19th-22nd. I still had two papers to write, but I didn't care about them, so we flew to Munich to experience a Bavarian slice of life, and upon our descent to the airport we get shepherded into a bus without knowing where its taking us. Funny how history repeats itself, huh? They very likely said in German what our destination was, but my friends and I were in the dark, chuckling at how reminiscent this was of a time not too long ago. Not that I'm saying the Holocaust is funny, but if you can't laugh at the similarities then clearly you're not a fan of gallows humor.

Our worries were all for naught, as the bus dropped us of at the main terminal, where we went through customs and entered a state of confusion as to how to get from the airport to our hostel. Everything was in German, and us three Americans were at a lost, looking every bit as confused as the thoughts in our heads. Luckily for us, an incredibly nice German man was heading in our direction, towards Hauptbahnhof, and proceeded to guide us there. He explained the ticketing system for the public transport, which is cheaper if you buy it in groups than a single passenger, so we split the costs and head on the train, making chitchat to pass the forty minute train ride. We arrive at our station and we say our thanks and goodbyes, going our separate ways: us, to drink a shit ton of beer, and him, on his way home. It should be noted that during all of this no one exchanged names and no tip or anything of the sort was given; it was done for niceness' sake, so at some point in time I'm going to have to pay it forward. Hopefully I won't get stabbed like Haley Joel Osment.

We make it to our place of stay, the awesome Wombat Hostel, check in and walk around the area looking for a place to eat dinner. We pass by a lot of kebab and Halal stands, but we settled on Thai. We head back and make our way towards two bars, one whose name I can't recall and the other X-Cess (I swear it was spelled like that). The former was a place inhabited by mid to late twenty-year olds, and even though the receptionist at the hostel told us this was "a place where you can get laid--easily" we left because it wasn't our scene. We wanted something young and rowdy, not pretending-to-be-a-sophisticate-while-kind-of-popular-music-plays-in-the-background. Onwards and upwards, we soldier on to X-Cess. It was nowhere near the type of place we thought it'd be (we secretely think it was a gay bar--TOO MANY DUDES), but we were able to have a good time nonetheless, drinking two Euro beers till our stomachs told us "I'm full." We mosey on back to our hostel just in time to catch Midnight Madness where, for thirty-three glorious minutes, beers and shots are a Euro and 1.50 Euro, respectively. We abuse the deal as Joseph Fritzl did his daughter, and in the process we meet two Londoners named Jack and Harry. We exchange greetings and stories: they just finished their A-levels and are spending some time traveling across Europe; we (as you already know) studying abroad and traveling for the weekend. We talk and drink some more, and at some point throughout the night we decide to go to a strip club. There were tons of strip joints in the surrounding area, so we pick one, and enter the saddest establishment I've seen thus far in my twenty-one years. I seriously think a cancer party, with whatever that entails, would've been more fun than this place. The club was empty, the strippers weren't at all into their 'job,' and the music playing was ill-fitting. As my friend Eric said, "When I saw that stripper grinding her ass to Rihanna , I just felt like crying." Afterwards, to rid our bodies of sadness and despair, we headed to the twenty-four hour Burger King near our hostel. We wore crowns on our heads and feasted like kings before we called it a night.

We made plans to meet up the next evening for the mini-Oktoberfest-esque festival that was going on, but before we did that we took part in a free walking tour that was part of our hostel. Our guide's name was Aussie, and he was damn good, taking us on a walk around Munich and telling us bits of history. Did you know, for instance, that all the buildings sans four are all less than sixty-years old? That's because every building got wrecked by the bombs during WWII, and rather than build them anew, the city decided to rebuild them as they were originally and aged them accordingly. This gave the city a kind of Disneyland vibe, where behind every door lurked some one, or some thing, that was pulling switches and levers to keep the city running.

The tour ends, and sometime passed before we made our way to the hostel bar to meet Jack and Harry and their friend Vic, a pretty blonde Australian who was traveling for two months and who defied the stereotype of Australians being loud, big drinkers. Vic goes her own way, promising us that she'll get in touch with one of us when she's heading to the festival, so we set off and board a train, then a bus, and walk a bit, till we arrive at the beer hall. There were, I'm going to guess, somewhere around 2,000 people, a lot of them decked out in traditional Bavarian clothing (aka white-collared shirt, lederhosen, boots, and a green hat) and all of them with a liter mug of beer in their hands. My friends and I followed suit, drinking two or three mugs each, all the while being in awe of how orderly and well-behaved the festival and its patrons were. No fighting, no violence, no aggression of any kind, and not even to us foreigners. We even got Proust-ed (Bavarian cheer where you say "Proust" and clink the bottom of the glasses together, because clinking the top could shatter it) by the man we dubbed the uber-German, a portly, tough-looking guy who had the traditional Bavarian clothing and one better: a feather in his hat! We talked amongst ourselves how a festival of this sort wouldn't fly anywhere else; too many macho-, aggro-, alpha-male characters who need to strut their stuff as if they have something to prove. Dicks, in other words, whereas in Bavarian culture people grow up with beer and treat it like any old thing. I don't mean to say there aren't assholes in Munich, cause they're like the human cockroach, but during our stay we didn't encounter a single one. Everyone was all smiles, as were we after the ample amounts of beer we imbibed.

We left the festival to, once again, take advantage of Midnight Madness. We drank and bonded some more, talking about American and British sitcoms, and got to know better some of the kids in our walking tour. Three of them were in their mid-twenties, sold all of their belongings and were traveling for as long as they could; one of the guys' plans was to be traveling for four years. That takes balls the size of grapefruits, and as much as I like traveling, my balls aren't nearly big enough to handle something of the sort. They're more the size of ping-pong balls, which is enough to handle a couple months and more than enough to handle the Munich club scene. Clubs there don't open till 1am, so at or around that time we make our way to the club district known as Haidhausen. The area as an ungodly amount of bars and clubs all within 60,000 sq. meters (645, 834.52 sq.ft, according to Google), making it look like some sort of carnival where debauchery and and fun are the main attractions. We ended up entering the first place we saw and were very disappointed. The club was empty, save for two people whose dancing was as awkward and funny as they were oblivious to it. The guy appeared to be jackhammering his lady friend from behind, in rapid succession, with quick one-two pelvic thrusts. This was all in the dark, but even so there faces bore no traces of amusement, especially the girl but not even the guy, almost as if each had a job to perform that they didn't care for, hence the absentminded expressions on their face. We cut our losses and took a cab ride home, cause at that point no one was in the right state of mind to make sense of public transportation.

It has to be said Bavarian beer is the fucking jam: it tastes delicious and you get NO HANGOVER. The next morning we wake up feeling great, and because we missed our free hostel breakfast, we headed over to the next best thing: Pizza Hut. I had Hawaiian pizza and it tasted just like its American counterpart, delicious corporate fast-food pizza. We then head to the Deutches Museum, a monster of a science museum that would take weeks, if not months, to fully explore. We were there for four hours or so and saw a good chunk of things, though we didn't learn much. Much of the written descriptions were in German, but it was still fun to see tons of science-y things and to fiddle with knobs and whatnot. Later that day, my crew (and I say crew because we had enough people/we've been hanging out long enough to call it so) and I head to the Augustiner-Keller Beer Hall, home to the finest beer I've ever had. Seriously, their dark house brew is like none other, though it should be made public that I'm not a beer connoisseur. We drank a liter or two and started dancing on the tables, which is what is done in beer halls, before we make our way to the front of the band. That band knew exactly what to play for drunks; their set list consisted of Bon Jovi, Blink 182, Bloodhound Gang's cover of "The Roof is on Fire," and at this juncture in time I forget what else. People were lifting each other up into the air and dancing and hugging, everyone was just so happy (myself included) that words couldn't do it justice, so I won't try to. We head back to the hostel for Midnight Madness, where we party it up a bit more and where at some point Jack goes to Burger King, buys burgers, and hands them out to people in the hostel whilst wearing a crown on his head (though to be fair we were wearing crowns as well). He truly was the Burger King. We exchanged goodbyes, as well as pertinent Facebook info, and the next morning we flew back to London.

That's all...for now. I have more stories/travels to write about, but for the moment I'll just post some photos of Munich; I promise you I'll write at least twice this week.

Me, Alex, and Eric at the Beer Fest

Everyone Loves Catch

The past few weeks have yielded some interesting events, not in the sense that I've changed as a person or turned a new leaf, but more poignant, quirky, that-wouldn't-be-out-of-place-in-an-indie-flick. The first of these episodes occurred a while ago (probably towards the tail end of February) on, or "in" as a friend likes to say, the Tube, the good ol' reliable London Underground where people don't really converse unless they know each other, preferring to read the free tabloid papers where they complete suduko puzzles or read up on the latest celebrity gossip. They insulate themselves with their music of choice, eyes darting around from Tube map to person and vice versa, never settling on one for very long, and on the very likely chance that two sets of eyes meet, the encounter produces, well, nothing. No recognition, verbal or otherwise. It's as if the event doesn't even get registered, but more like an item gets scratched off a list. Then again, you can apply this to any form of public transportation. Such means of traversing amongst cities produce small windows of time where accurate judgments of people aren't entirely feasible and accurate, though Malcom Gladwell will argue (quite well, I may add) in his book Blink otherwise.

On this particular night, after filling our stomachs with mighty fine Mexican food, Mike and I board the Tube, take our seats, and await for the ride to commence. Before long we leave the platform, saying goodbye to the tiny and exceptionally cute mice that make their homes there, and it's here that the ride takes a turn. (Metaphorically, of course; literally, we knew where we were going.) A few seats over from us were two guys who were tossing around a little foam football, the kind that as a kid you would've traded tickets for. I didn't think much of it, and neither did anyone else. Just two people having a bit of closed-off fun. A few minutes into their game, they toss the ball to one of the many neighboring Tubees; she tosses it back, and, to the surprise of everyone, they proceed to throw the ball to another rider. Pretty soon they have a full-on game of catch going, getting everyone in that section of the train, including the quintessential irascible old man reading a newspaper, to lower their guards and play a game thats as fun as it is simple, which is to say very. No wonder the originators kept repeating "Everybody loves catch." I think it's embedded into our pleasure center, the nucleus accumbens, since conception. Needless to say, it was a memorable and truly unique Tube ride, one that'll in all likelihood never happen again: I played catch with a bunch of strangers, and when I stepped off the train, part of me wanted to stay, not just to say thanks, but to, in a naive sort of way, make friends, or at the least acquaintances who are down for impromptu catch sessions.

The other mildly amusing episode happened two weeks ago. It was a Friday afternoon, and as per usual I had nothing to do. I could've done a bit of work, but let's face it: Do college students ever do so except when they absolutely have to? I opted out of the former and instead decided to treat myself to a movie and dinner, the one-two combo that can knock anyone's ennuic fog on its ass, the kind that you get constantly through adolescence. Make that shit bite the curb and stomp it, as per Edward Norton in American History X, with some steel-toed boots. I decided to see American Teen, a documentary about a Breakfast Club-like group of teens in their senior year of high school. I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. Some parts of it were a bit too sensationalized I felt, but the film's protagonists dealt with problems (girls, the future, being a big pussy, etc.) I can still resonate with. As interesting and engaging as the teens in the documentary were, they weren't nearly as captivating as the guy watching the movie behind me was. I met him prior to the movie starting, in the men's restrooms. I used the urinal and then washed my hands, and down the end of the counter is a guy who would be the end product if the voice of The Boondock's Uncle Ruckus Gary Anthony Williams merged with his cartoon, forming some kind of creepy, definitely weird, and certainly startling version of life meets art. As I leave, he looks up into the mirror from washing his hands and simultaneously pumps himself up and fights the reflection. Our eyes meet, if only for a second, but in that fraction of time I see the look of a man who is very likely to do something crazy. I bolted on to the theatre, walking quickly so as to not be seen. I sat down, hoping the next person to come in wasn't the potential crazy man, but it was him! And he turned out to be actually crazy! Throughout the movie he kept shouting "Fucking white people...(some other expletives)...(expletive)...shut up!" and coming in and out of the theatre. At one point he got pretty angry at something--could've been those white kids; he especially cursed when they appeared, and they were a SHITLOAD of them in the film--and started to play his fat belly like a drum. My initial worry turned to amusement, and then annoyment because he kept doing this throughout the movie. Normally I would've gone up to him and been all like 'Hey Brah, is there a problem?! Are we gonna need to take this outside? Huh?' But I decided against it; who knows what a crazy man would've done? I for sure did not want to find out.

The cartoon character Uncle Ruckus

The voice behind it

Edit: I started this entry March 6th. It's taken almost two weeks to finish. Damn my instantly gratified, scatterbrained ways! But I should warn you, though, the next few weeks aren't going to fare too well either. I'm off to Munich this coming weekend, and the weekend after that I'm off to visit my good friend Chris in Siena. And somewhere in all of this I have to find the time to write two papers.

It's been some time since I've last written in this here blog--two weeks, but really, who's counting besides me?--but I've been quite the busy guy. My parents, my brother, and my grandma were here last weekend, which made for good fun. With their help, it was the first time I considered myself a 'tourist' in London, taking pictures of the telephone booths, which at night become plastered with escort ads and by morning are gone; posing with the Royal Guards, who are every bit as serious as their reputation leads you to believe; entering most souvenir shops, with their must have refrigerator magnet replications of the Big Ben and Buckingham Palace; going to Harrod's, a huge department store that has EVERYTHING; and participating in a day-long bus tour, which was pretty neat. It took us to St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey, a boat cruise along the River Thames, and we got to see the changing of the guards. The latter is such a spectacle. It's an old tradition, dating back to the time of King Henry VII (1485-1509), and it seems like not much has been updated. They change guards every two days, and when they do it it requires an army of guards wearing big black long fuzzy hats called Bearskins, which resemble Butt Head's hair, prompting my brother and me to dub them the 'army of Butt Heads.' Each guard carried an instrument as well, so not only can they kick your ass but can do so to the beat of a drum.

Butt Head, for comparison

The real deal

Being the resident Londonian, I took them to a few museums throughout the weekend. We went to the Tate Modern and laughed at Paul McCarthy's video installation. It consisted of five videos playing simultaneously, each of which showed the 'artist' either jumping whilst naked and flopping his wiener around or wearing panties and shoving things up his butt or covering himself in ketchup or some such liquid. Silly and stupid, yes; art, I'm not so sure. And as an aside, art in video format never translates well. What critics deem 'transgressive' and 'shocking' just comes out making the 'artist' in question looking like a complete ass. The other mediums work well because they're just moments in time, fragments of a scene you may not know the beginning or the end of, hence they're lasting power (or so I think). While films are also a series of moving images, they at least don't try to realize surrealist ideals or confront personal demons by defecating on the floor and then eating it.

Art?

Anyways, I digress. We also checked out the Natural History Museum and saw the dinosaur exhibit, which I somehow missed the first time through--I'm not sure how; it's a big room filled with dinosaur fossils--but nonetheless was really cool. And then on Monday we saw Wicked, my first proper show in London. I'm not a big fan of musicals, but this one I liked. It's the backstory to the The Wizard of Oz, told from the Wicked Witch's perspective who, as it turns out, is quite nice. It was a good show, and it left me with an urge to check out some of the shows London theatres have to offer, specifically Avenue Q. I know nothing about it, but the fact that it's an all puppet cast definitely bodes well.

The left thigh bone of a Apatosaurus, a 75 foot 20-30 ton plant-eater

Not a dinosaur, but the cutest little Fennec Fox I ever did see

My parents left the next morning, and later that night I saw Wire, the seminal British post-punk quartet. Their whole ethos and attitude can be summed up with vocalist Colin Newman's opening remarks to the crowd, "Yeah, we're Wire and all that shit." Later on, someone in the crowd requested a song, to which Colin responded with "No fucking chance...wouldn't know where to begin," and to which bassist Graham Lewis added "You've more chance of seeing God." Pretty fucking punk. Cool attitudes aside, it was a very good show filled with a nice collection of new and old material, and not one, not two, but three encores! They would play a song or two and then leave, to only come back out and play another song. Mike and I thought this was pretty funny. The venue itself (Cargo) was good as well. The stage wasn't too high, it's a nice, big room, and the sound was tight. The Fall is playing there April 1st, so I think I'll check that out.

It's Valentines Day in London, and all day I've seen plenty of couples locking lips and whispering sweet (presumably meaningful) nothings to each other, holding hands and caressing each other ever so softly, all under the guise of a Saint Valentine buried north of Rome. As per usual, I'm all by my lonesome, but no worries; that's why I have hands. To type. To you, dear reader, and thus keeping me company. The only time I came close to ever having a valentine was in sixth grade. Her name was Denise, and she was tall, skinny, brunette, and wore glasses. She had a small mouth with thin lips that always appeared pursed and long legs that, since she was skinny, always left a sliver of space in her clothing. Her hair was thick, but tame; she always had a scrunchy or some other hair clip. I had seen prettier girls than her, but for whatever reason, perhaps due to Cupid's arrow or to our 'chemistry' or 'pheromones,' I liked her. I fancied a her, she fancied me, and as things were done in middle school, there was an intermediary to whom we professed our like-likeness towards each other. We became a couple, but at that age all that really means is holding hands and having lunch together, both of you hoping for a kiss but worried about who was going to initiate it and things like the time and place and whether or not people were watching. I suppose your average things a kid at that age with not the highest sense of self or self-esteem would ruminate over. A few days into our 'relationship' she tells me she loves me, and even at that age where I had no notions of love and all I had gleamed of it I gathered from small and large screens, I knew what we were experiencing was not 'love.' It was attraction--prepubescent attraction at that--and to confuse the two would lead you towards a world where you're committed to people you may not even like that much. And not wanting to experience that at the tender age of thirteen, I broke up with her a few days before Valentine's Day, and ever since I've been flying solo, the only company being Lisa 'Left Hand' Lopez. I'm not exactly sure why I decided to write this; I suppose I thought it'd make for a good read, and it gave me something to write (which I've been trying to do more of, hence this blog). But if there's a lesson buried here I guess it's not to toss around the word 'love' lightly. There's a lot of people and things in this world that I'm fond of, but I only love a select few of them, and I like to think they know it as much as I do.