drunkenbee

Palpable and Mute

It's true. In my ongoing aesthetic experiment here -- that this blog not mean but be -- there's been quite a content vacuum here. But perhaps you weren't aware that what I was doing was an aesthetic experiment. Consider yourself corrected, then.

The vacuum, and blog, will keep sucking, though, as we're off to Colorado tomorrow to go camping for a week or so. And even though I've got a ton of packing and sorting to do, I've spent the last few hours futzing around with music mixes for the road trip. I've gone with two themes: "Mountains!!!" and "Robots!!!" Tracks are listed below. "Robots!!!" is "in the style of robots." A line from a Broadcast song sums up my approach there nicely: "My feet are dancing so much. / And I hate that. / My feet are dancing so much." "Mountains!!!" on the other hand, is basically just me trying really hard to not put every Will Oldham/Palace/Bonnie "Prince" Billy song in the entire world on it. As you'll see, I only vaguely succeeded.

"Mountains!!!" is definitely for listening pleasure, jangly guitars and all that. "Robots!!!" is perhaps more challenging, but with some surprise picks. Obviously, I start out with Battles, the gold standard of robot music right now. (And, even back in the day, when Dave Konopka lived in Chicago and I had a huge crush on him and cornered him at parties a lot...he was a robot then, too).  So obviously: Battles. And, obviously David Bowie. But, listening to, for example, Brenda Lee (a track off the Girl Group Sounds compilation some very fine folks -- here's one!-- gave me) through the "Robots!!!" frame is really kind of exciting and fresh. OH MY GOD I have to get packing. Love!

Mountains!!!

Summer Wine    Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood       
Lay and Love    Bonnie "Prince" Billy       
Women Of The World    Jim O'Rourke       
Elvis Cadillac    Rickie Lee Jones       
A Man Needs A Woman Or A Man To Be A Man    Bill Callahan   
Little Eyes    Yo La Tengo       
25 Minutes To Go    Johnny Cash   
Work Hard/Play Hard    Palace Music       
Sent You Up    Knife In The Water       
Poison Cup    M. Ward            
Yellow Sun    The Raconteurs       
Summer Days    Phoenix       
What Are You ?    Matt Sweeny & Bonnie "Prince" Billy   
My Darling    Wilco       
Gideon    My Morning Jacket       
Dirty Knife    Neko Case       
A King and a Queen    Okkervil River       
sending the photographs    Julie Doiron                   
Buick City Complex    Old 97's       
The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack    Liars       
What I'm Looking For    Brendan Benson   
Density    Sam Prekop               
The Big Country    Talking Heads   
Manitoba    Tapes 'n Tapes       
The River    Bruce Springsteen       
You've Got Her In Your Pocket    The White Stripes

Robots!!!

HI / LO    Battles       
Can You Do That Dance?    The Pink Mountaintops       
Raising the Sparks    Akron/Family & Angels Of Light       
The Good Thing    Talking Heads   
Life on Mars?    David Bowie       
Cryptograms    Deerhunter       
Coffee And Tv    Blur       
Mass Romantic    The New Pornographers       
Only Shallow    My Bloody Valentine   
Black Swan    Thom Yorke       
Totally Wired    The Fall   
When Doves Cry    Prince   
Song Against Sex    Neutral Milk Hotel               
Good Girl-Carrots    Panda Bear       
Is It True    Brenda Lee
North American Scum    LCD Soundsystem       
i came as a rat    Modest Mouse       
choo choo    Arctic Monkeys       
Nance Music    The Prima Donnas       
Michael A Grammar    Broadcast       
Save Your City    Radio 4       
Paco    Shellac       
Staring at the Sun    TV On The Radio       
The Rat    The Walkmen       
Maps    Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The More Things Change

Ed just emailed me to say that he is halfway done with the June 2007 Fatso Office Worker Eat-a-Thon taking place at his work today. For lunch: Frontera Grill . For dinner: Fogo de Chao . The two meals taking place within four hours of one another. It reminded me a little of one of my favorite stories about Ed, the one where, at the now defunct Butcher Shop Christmas party, Ed had turned the dial a little past eleven and so needed to, uh, what do the frat boys say? Puke and rally? The line for the bathroom was super long, so he steeled his belly and got into it. Drunk enough to promptly forget that he needed to use the facilities in that urgent way, he struck up a convo with two ladies in the line ahead of him and was chatting chatting chatting away when – glurgle! glump! erp! – it started rising up out of that tummy and so he just repurposed his Solo cup into a makeshift puke receptacle. Right in front of the ladies. In mid-sentence. A nice, clean, simple little yak. He paused, looked up to meet their horrified looks -- one of them gasped, "Did you just puke into that cup?"-- assured them that he had and then jauntily turned on his heel to return to me on the dance floor whereupon we proceeded to GET DOWN to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.

So when he just expressed some trepidation of whether or not he was going to make it through this Fogo de Chao experience, I told him that even though he might very well be wearing business casual pants today rather than a thrifted party suit, and so what if it is bacon-wrapped veal rather than vodkatonicmillerlite, but, still, he needs to reach deep, turn it to eleven, get his head in the game, eat that meat, puke into a cup, AND THEN FLIP THAT LITTLE DISC BACK TO GREEN.

DC U Later!

I'm moving home on Sunday. Happy! Happy happy happy!

Happy because of all the delicious last times happening and to come! This was the last Sunday of depression because I had to leave Chicago and come back to DC. Last time dragging my suitcase through all the chicken wings and pork chop bones that litter the sidewalks between the Columbia Heights Metro stop and my Mount Pleasant hippy hovel. (Seriously, DC, you have serial killer clean subway trains but the NASTIEST sidewalks I've ever seen).  Last time I have to make the Leslie Mann disgusted grunt noise when opening the door to my hippy hovel only to find that I know exactly what ration of quinoa to garlic somebody used while cooking last night.

Last time! Last time! I want to sing it from the the Gallery Place Chipotle! I want to shout it from the Potbelly! I want to free verse rap it from the corner of 9th and H! (You might want to now suggest that if these are the places I've spent my time, then I haven't quite gotten the DC experience, and sure, I'm no native long-timer here, but when's the last time you took the green line to Anacostia? For me, it was a week ago, so there, I do know how to get off the beaten path. And straight onto the beat-me-up path! Ba dum dum.)

I'm a nice girl, and I feel bad for making fun of DC so much, because I love me some people up in this place but, damn, this is not my city. I'm sanguine, and also quite adaptable. New York? Los Angeles? Austin? Detroit? Newark? Baltimore? Birmingham? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, aaand, yes! I worked Monroe, Louisiana. But Washington, DC? No thank you. (Also: probably no thank you Philly).

Here is a list of the books I read for fun while here. I'm putting this here, because this blog is like a never ending grocery/to do/got done list for my life. I'm thinking of submitting this list to my doctor in the hopes of getting a recreational Adderall prescription:

Voyage in the Dark, Jean Rhys
What is the What, Dave Eggers
Hairstyles of the Damned, Joe Meno
Twin Study, Stacey Richter
Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones*
Making Waves, The Autobiography, David Hasselhoff**
The Omnivore's Dilemma, whatshisname
The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
Heat, Bill Buford
Wonder When You'll Miss Me, Amanda Davis
Looking for Alaska, John Green
Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
The Life of P.T. Barnum, P.T. Barnum
US Weekly: The Collected Works, Unabridged, The Bard

Currently reading: Helter Skelter***

*Awarded Blue Ribbon Sarah B Best of a Bad Time Award
**Awarded Most Poignant in Light of Recent Hamburger Developments
***Wouldn't it be weird if the hippies had finally gotten to me and I started proclaiming that Dave (the Hippy Who Is Open With His Rommates About His Scalp Treatment Solution) was Jesus and would lead us all to the promised land that happened to be deep in the earth beneath Death Valley?

Why?

Why would you do this? Why would you redesign your product so that it could no longer be dispensed with ease? Crap-ass Olay Body gets it, It even says so right on the label: "Store bottle upside down to ease dispensing." Do you enjoy seeing me try to balance this stupid bottle on its precious little nose? And, while I've got you here, Dove Body Wash, wasn't it you who started this whole "upside down for ease of dispensing" thing? Which, I thought we all agreed, moved our culture forward one tiny, beautiful little bit?