Highgate

Wednesday

It's my Birthday!


Insert you're Birthday wishes below:
(hint: i'll cry if i get less than 5.)

Eva made me a birthday video, check it out on her blog

If anyone out there is feeling randy, we'll be eating and drinking at American Flatbread tonight after 7pm, then later, just drinking at the O.P. come and say hi, and buy me a beer. or just give me a hug, cause i'll probably be drunk already, and just wanting to give hugs.

Saturday

Temptation of the Snake(s on a plane)



Here's the Bonus vid of the day.

Thursday

Sebald / Shelburne

As i sat there that evening in Southwold overlooking the German ocean, i sensed quite clearly the earth's slow turning into the dark.... .... The shadow of night is drawn like a black veil across the earth, and since almost all creatures, from one meridian to the next, lie down after the sun has set, so, he continues, one might in following the setting sun, see on our globe, nothing but prone bodies, row upon row, as if levelled by the scythe of Saturn - an endless graveyard for a humanity struck by falling sickness.

I stood before the grave for some time, not knowing what i should think; but
before i left i placed a stone on the grave according to custom.
Though there is little else that she can call her own, she always wears the most outrageous bonnets on these walks; one which features a seagull's wing, i remember particularly well because Herr Bein the teacher referred to it in school, telling us we should never kill any creature merely in order to adorn ourselves with its feathers.

The winter sun shows how soon the light fades from the ash, how soon night enfolds us. Hour upon hour is added to the sum. Time itself grows old. Pyramids, arches, and obelisks are melting pillars of snow. Not even those who have found a place amidst the heavenly constellations have perpetuated their names: Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osirus in the Dog Star. Indeed, old families last not three oaks. To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace?

Once father is home, the candle made of many interwoven strands of wax is lit to mark the end of the sabbath. We smell the little spice-box and go upstairs to
bed. Soon dazzling white lightning is flashing across teh sky, and the crashes of thunder set the whole house shaking. We stand at the window. There are moments when it is brighter than daylight outside. Clumps of hay are afloat on the swirling waters in the gutters. Then the storm passes over, bu presenty returns once more. Papa says it cannot make it over Windheim woods.
The Last entry in my great-uncle adelwarth's litle agenda book was written on the feast of stephen. Cosmo, it reads, had had a bad fever after their return to jerusalem but was already on the way to recovery again. My great uncle also noted that tlate the previous afternoon it had begun to snow and that, looking out of the hotel window at the city, it had begun to snow and that, looking out the hotel window at the city, white in the falling dusk, it made him him think of times long gone. Memory, he added in a postscript, often strikes me as a kind of dumbness. It makes one's head heavy and giddy, as if one were not looking back the receding perspectives of time but ratherdown on the earth from a great height, from one of those towers whose tops are lost to view in the clouds."
As i pictured him, he had taken off his spectacles and put them on the ballast stones by his side. The gleaming bands of steel, the crossbars of the sleepers, the spruce trees on the hillside above the village of Altstadten, the arc of the mountains he knew so well, were a blur before his short-sighted eyes, smudged out in the gather dusk. At the last, as the thunderous sound approached, all he saw was a darkening greyness and in the midst of it, needle-sharp, the snow-white silhouettes of three mountains.
I now sometimes feel that at that moment i beheld an image of death - lasted only a short time, and passed over me like the shadow of a bird in flight.


I saw with a shudder that went to the roots of my hair, a beetle rowing across the surface of the water, from one dark shore to the other.

In august 1992 when the dog days were drawing to an end, i set off to walk the county of suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever i have completed a long stint of work. And in fact my hope was realized, up to a point; for i have seldom felt so carefree as i did then, walking for hours in the day through the thinly populated countryside, which stretches inland from the coast. I wonder now, however, whether there might be something in the old superstition that certain ailments of the spirit and of the body are particularly likely to beset us under the sign of the dog star.


"For the history of every individual, of every social order, indeed of the whole world, does not describe an ever-widening, more and more wonderful arc, but rather follows a course which, once the meridian is reached, leads without fail down into the dark."
A shock of recognition shot through me at the grave of Maier Stern, who died on the 18th of may, my own birthday; and i was touched, in a way i knew i could never quite fathom, by the symbol of the writer's quill on the stone of frederike halbleib, who departed this life on the 28th of March 1912. I imagined her pen in hand, all by herself, bent with bated breath over her work; and now,
as i write these lines, it feels as if i had lost her, and as if I could not get over the loss despite the many years that have passed since her departure.

... And so they are ever returning to us, the dead. At times they come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edgeof the Moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots.

Who the young women are in the picture i do not know. The Light falls on them from the window in the background, so i cannot make out their eyes clearly, but i sense that all three of them are looking across at me, since i am standing on the very spot where Genewein the accountant stood with his camera. The young woman in the middle is blode and has the air of a bride about her. The weaver to her left has inclined her head a little to one side, whilst the woman on the right is looking at me with so steady and relentless a gaze that i cannot meet it for long. I wonder what the tree women's names were - Roza, Luisa and Lea - or Nona Decuma and Morta, the daughters of night, with spindle, scissors and thread.
And Sir Thomas Browne, who was the son of a silk merchant and may well have had an eye for these things, remarks in a passage of the "pseudodoxia Epidemica" that i can no longer find that in the Holland of his time it was customary, in a home where there had been a death, to drape black mourning ribbons over all the mirrors and all canvasses depicting landscapes or people or the fruits of the field, so that the soul, as it left the body, would not be distracted on its final journey, either by a reflection of itself or by a last glimpse of the land
now being lost for ever.

Ahhahahahaha



Yeah, ok so i'm drunk.

Tuesday

Green Door Studios Present:

This is a line-up that you will not want to miss.
Mark your calenders. For more information
go here, here, or ask jb a question here, or here.

Friday

Eva gets Props


My baby's famous! web famous anyway. Eva just got featured on SF360, a popular weblog in the San Fran area. Congrats cutie!

Of all the remixes, mashups, and repurposed curiosities littering the YouTube landscape, none have mined the rich veins of celebrity and irony in the San Francisco Bay Area quite the way "The Deadbeat Club" does. The only problem: It's broadcast from Vermont. Apparently, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and a little more reckless, as Eva "Deadbeat," a ten-year resident of Northern California, reminisces on good jobs and bad, megastars and mini ones, and a variety of other subjects in her regular broadcasts.

more...

Wednesday

Memories of Bikey

It's my birthday!
Well... not for another 2 weeks, reguardless i just recieved my first birthday present, and it's from my sweet baby Eva, It's a Bicycle!

With handle bars, and grip shifts w/ 14 thousand speeds, and breaks in the front AND back, and a thing made to carry things, and a nifty generator that makes the headlights work, and alloy wheels, and mud guards, and that's all i really know about it. It's got a trek frame too. That is good i hear, now i am sporty.

What really matters is that it's sooo much fun to ride my new bike, that i call affectionatly. "Bikey (mk2)." It's been far to long since i felt the joy that is automotion, the wind in my hair, the bugs in my teeth, the obligitory rolling of the pantleg (you better believe i'm rockin the pantleg; in fact, im thinking of getting a tattoo on that part of my lower right calf, just so i can show it off whenever i ride... it'll be a tattoo, of me riding my bike, but... like, jumping an SUV stuck in traffic, no make that "Ollying" an SUV stuck in traffic!)

It's been almost three years since i've had a bike, far to long i know... before bikey, i had this shitty silver racing bike that i found literally in the middle of the road one night walking home from drinking (no i didn't steal it.) My guess is that it fell out of the back of a truck... (stop looking at me like that.) Or someone else stole it, and then decided they didn't actually want it. (yeah...)

I really liked that bike for what it was worth, i repaired it's tires and rode it all over the place, although it was a bit to small for me... At the time I was living in winooski and didn't have "Truckey" yet and if my memory serves me, that may have been the "year of many jobs" for me, an endless succession of shitty jobs that i succeeded in getting fired from within a month of being hired. Dominoes (ask me about the raw sewage backing up into the handwashing sink), Vermont Sandwich Co, and then there was Macro, everyone knows macro right? they're the annoying phone call people, i was one of them for a while till i got fired... i was doing the Housing and Urban Development questionaire, but some of the lucky ducks i worked with got to do the Feminine Hygene Product Questionaire. (excuse me miss, would you describe your monthly flow as "Average" "above average" or "Biblical Flood?")
Yowzer.
After that i moved to Saint Paul Street, i found my dream home, close to downtown, an entire house with upstairs and downstairs, wrap around porch, a back lawn, just one roomate, and only 250$ a month... except that that roomate was a suicidal 45 year old alcoholic who was haunted by the ghost of a past roomate that he had infact murdered (accidently of course.)

Once in a while he'd smoke some crack too. but the worst was when he'd be up at 7am frying sausages in his boxers, blasting and singin along to Annie Lennox or Kate Bush or fucking Concrete Blonde, somehow managing to chain smoke and chainbooze the whole time... that sucked.

Around this time, Bikey (mk1) disapeared from the porch, and i was inconsolable - i searched high and low, but i knew it was gone, i chastised myself for leaving her unlocked, but in the end - well i thought, easy come, easy go. Then one day walking past the parking garage on N Winooski, the glinting of silver caught my eye, i turned, rubbing them against the sunlight, and as i peered into the darkened garage, there behold, was bikey (mk1) I looked left, then right, and with lighting speed, reclaimed my sweet sweet bikey (mk1) and road off laughing at my fortunes.

That lasted about a week. Then it got stolen again....

Then i found it again!

but then it got stolen again.

Then my roomate killed himself

Then i didn't have a bike for 3 years... it took me a while to get over Bikey(mk1) but now that Bikey (mk2) is in my life... i feel that i can go anywhere, without paying for gas, as long as it's in the downtown burlington area, and it isn't raining, and traffic isn't bad, cause i'm still kind of nervous about ridding in traffic still, and there's not really any bad hills, and it's not to hot... Yay Bikey!

Strobedelic!



Woah dude, i just watched this video and now i'm late for work, time travel man, it's a bitch.

Monday

Can you see your house?

Sunday

End of an Era (pt.1)

Tonight me and fellow pure poppers (we're a tight crew, old school and current) found a quiet watering hole (t.rugs) and celebrated another pure pop graduation. Tonight it was Sue and Nick, two friends that have been pure poppers as long as i have, in fact Sue's first day was also my own. From here, they're moving on to Berlin, no their not going to take advantage of the amazing deals at Berlin City Automotives, but rather, Berlin the thriving European city. ( aparently their is a thriving neo-nazi skinhead scene that they want to check out...haha joking.)
I couldn't be more excited for them, partially because now i'll have a couch to crash on now when me and chris invade next year, but mainly because i've been watching as they've created their dreams stitch by stitch, day by day , and stuck with them as they've slowly been realized. Most of us at one point or another find ourselves saying something like "I'm going to move to Berlin....", it's inevitable, we all want out, always - even if it's out of bed, or out of work, out of town, out of your now too tight booth seat at Denny's or out of that weird guy's car - then we take another shot of Dos Dedos, and pass out into our cherios. That's life, right? (right!?)

But these two hardasses have done it, and in the meantime they've managed to record a brilliant album - i'm not talking "tapes n tapes" fucking, "Clap your hands say insta-indie" i'm talking about a long, involved, intricate, detailed, (www.thesaurus.com) abundant, accurate, all-inclusive, amplified, at length, blow-by-blow*, circumstantial, circumstantiated, clocklike, complete, complicated, comprehensive, copious, definite, described, developed, disclosed, elaborate, elaborated, enumerated, exact, exhausting, exhaustive, full, fussy*, individual, individualized, intricate, meticulous, minute, album - pure heart and soul, at the moment they're on their... what, almost 3rd year of work on it, daily work - in fact they have 3 tracks left to master... And from the previews i've heard it will all pay off.

So in two weeks they're hitting the road, back to dirty jerz for a few weeks vacation then out into the big bad world with their sweet beagle Janx in tow - I'm going to miss them alot, especially Sue who's been my good friend and co-worker for a while now, and when i say co-worker, i mean more like, roomate, cause when you work in a 30x30 basement with only 5 other people, 40 hours a week, you might as well be living with them... in fact i see my actual roomate far less than the poppers.

In a fellow employee i couldn't ask for more; Sue has always worked above and beyond the call - for every morning i've stumbled in a half hour late, she's been there without judgement and with a sly smile - and everytime mike's be on the edge of total fucking meltdown, she's been around to calm him and keep him from killing us all. On top of all that - she's always been the level headed one, staying out of people business, not one to gossip, not one to judge, but whenever a sympathetic shoulder was needed or a bit of good humored practical advice, she was there. Sue also single handedly changed the language we use at pure pop, "popper" being a "sueism" but a few more accurate examples might be

The 'Zon (amazon.com)
A Kizy. (phone call.)
Ma' Babies (hello fellow co-workers)
The Liz / Jankinson / etc etc (Janx, the dog.)
the dirty jerz (home)

There are so many more and i invite anyone who knows sue to write in some of their own Sueisms, i know you all have at least one, so let's here them.

I'll right more later, but for now it's late, i've had a good night out with friends, and i want to get up at some point and go to sneakers - so i guess, i'll say;

here's to setting goals, having dreams, following through, and a getting out. cheers,

Friday

Neil Young: Sunset Strip

Ok, so this professionally done bootleg comes into Pure Pop, and usually i don't give a shit except that it's Neil Young, and from around the Tonight's the Night period, you know the "infamous ditch period" etc, so i crap my pants and quickly make a copy of it for myself....

Now that i've gotten it home and listened to it, it's amazing, i won't get into detail here now, but suffice to say it's a bit muddy but really captures Neil at his most drunk and desperate, raw and ragged, and just pain fucking great, the band is really on, tight and also loose and downright drunk. So good.

Anyway, i just wanna share that with anyone who cares, all the Tonights' Era tracks are there, and here's one to wet your taste buds - interesting enough, i can't find info on this bootleg anywhere... yet when i loaded into Itunes, it came right up with the track listing, my guess is Ben already has it and updated the CDDB database... that Sob.

Wednesday

Goin' up the country...

The village Voice has an fun and excellent point making article about freak folk, and the brooklynites who love it... (i love alot of it too, more the No-neck /sunburned/ six organs side, not so much the Devendras and the Danielsons, though i do like the Thompsons... not the twins, but Richard and Linda, and the fairport sound... anyway...)

I've always thought it interesting that the majority of the folkers now adays are coming out of the city, but as i've looked back - for that matter i guess it's always been that way, iron and wine came out of, what Miami florida? and for that matter, The Band, who wrote songs like, up on cripple creek, and the night they drove old dixie down, were... from, what, Toronto or Vancouver (either way they were Canadians...)? CCR... Los Angeles... etc.

Seems like the realities of the people, places, and things that inspire us often tend to leave us less contented than the fantasies themselves... unless of course you're Toby Keith or Lynyrd Skynyrd (as if Toby Keith spends anytime at all livin' the country life... douchebag.)


Taken from the Village Voice, read the whole article here

"Well, I explained, there's this art-farm place down the road in Acra, and they're having an overnight . . . folk . . . show. I didn't want to get into it, really, assuming Brian and Betty probably wouldn't care much about "freak folk" or know much about Free103point9, a somewhat specious if totally well-meaning nonprofit arts organization that had invited eight or so bands, many of them from Brooklyn, to upstate New York for an idyllic mid-July weekend of performance and communion called Campfire Sounds 2006.

"S'cool," Brian replied.

Most of the actual crowd—also primarily Brooklynites interested in getting drunk on a different lawn—camped in the meadow. Nothing against that meadow, but it was obvious that while most had come up the Taconic State Parkway in search of some pastoral ideal; they weren't going to risk a rash for it. Thus their hammocks struck a laudable balance between taut and tender. Park Slope's quietly majestic Stars Like Fleas were the only band who bothered to actually drag themselves into the woods—the second stage was a minuscule tree clearing—for an afternoon set on top of their evening one. (Bonus: They have a harpist.) The afternoon yawned with sets from Melanie Moser and the Dust Dive, the latter weaving half-sung poetry over slow, drifting plates of funerary folk-rock. They also played a song in protest of the new Nets stadium; I scanned the crowd for concerned looks and found none. Flanked by babies and Labradors, some townies, happily deaf to the idea of city kids getting free in the grass because that's what they thought country folk did, sat contentedly in sensible, breathable fabrics we won't concede to until middle age. Later, a local 'tween in a Volcom T-shirt passed me and said, "Hey dude, yeah, hippies, peace!" I smelled my armpits."